V. Limits on Freedom of Association

Independent Non-Governmental Organizations

Article 26 of the Iran's constitution guarantees the right to form "parties, societies, political or professional associations, as well as religious societies, whether Islamic or pertaining to one of the recognized religious minorities." Under Mohammad Khatami's presidency, the government played a key role in promoting public discussion regarding the formation and activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). On July 29, 2004, near the end of Khatami's tenure as president, as a step towards institutionalizing NGOs and facilitating their functioning, the Ministry of Information submitted to the government draft executive regulations regarding the establishment and activities of NGOs. The government ratified these in July 2005.  The ministry cited Article 138 of the constitution, which grants "Council of Ministers or a single minister" the authority to "to frame procedures for the implementation of laws."

Prior to ratification of the executive regulations, NGOs required permits from both the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Information in order to operate. Under the new regulations, state-sponsored institutions like the National Organization of Youth made the work of NGOs easier, including those that operated in the provinces. By acquiring permits, the NGOs gained official status and legitimacy, making it easier to carry out their work.

The Kurdish regions were among the provinces that saw growth in the NGO sector during Khatami's tenure, as a larger number of groups dealing in environmental, women's, children's, and literary issues, and sports organizations carried out activities.

The new regulations mandated the creation of councils to oversee NGOs, ostensibly to facilitate the process of obtaining permits and running NGOs. Under the Ahmadinejad administration, officials instead have used the councils to suppress activities of civil society activists as the councils by denying NGOs permits to operate.

Article 1 of the regulations established councils on the municipal, provincial, and national levels to oversee and facilitate the formation of non-governmental organizations. Members of the municipal-level councils include the mayor, a representative from the city council, as well as a representative from the NGO community. Members on the provincial level include the governor, a representative from the provincial council, and a representative from the NGO community. On the national level, the council is made up of a deputy from the Ministry of Interior, a representative from the High Council of Provincial Representatives, and a representative of NGOs.

Under President Ahmadinejad, the attitude of the government shifted from tolerance and encouragement of NGOs to suspicion and hostility. The government increasingly applied a "security" framework in its approach to NGOs, often accusing them of being "tools of foreign agendas." The role of the councils during this period has been to suppress the work of activists by denying permits to NGOs to operate, often refusing to meet their legal obligation to provide written explanations for rejecting applications. This trend is particularly evident in minority regions, including Kurdish regions, where the government often denies permits or prevents the registration of NGOs. Organizations that are able to register and obtain permits still face harassment and worse.

The Organization for the Defense of Human Rights in Kurdistan is one such organization. Sadigh Kaboudvand established the NGO in April 2005 and served as its director and spokesperson. According to its mission statement, the organization considers itself a "non-governmental, non-political, civil society institution" that works for "establishing the basic rights, freedoms, human rights of people in Kurdistan and Iran." The organization, based in Tehran, has members active throughout the regions mainly inhabited by Kurds.

On July 1, 2007, authorities arrested Kaboudvand, on charges stemming from his peaceful activities in collecting and publishing accounts of human rights abuses in Kurdish areas. According to one member,

In the more than two years that we have been working, the security forces have arrested a number of our organization's members on charges such as "disturbing the public mind," "propaganda against the state," or "collaboration with opposition parties." Right now two of our members, Mohammad Sadigh Kaboudvand and Ejlal Aghvami, are in jail, and thirteen others have cases in court. In addition, security, judiciary, and communications officials have limited or filtered websites belonging to our organization.

On June 22, 2008, a branch of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Kaboudvand to 11 years in prison for his NGO activities on charges that he had "acted against national security." The government had previously detained and prosecuted Kaboudvand for his work as a journalist (see above).

Farzad Kamangar is another member of the organization currently in detention. (A list of persons who faced governmental persecution as a result of their NGO activities appears in Appendix 3.) Authorities arrested Kamangar, who is also the superintendent of high schools in the city of Kamayaran, in July of 2006 in Tehran and held him in various detention centers in Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Tehran.

In a letter smuggled out of prison, Kamangar described undergoing torture and ill-treatment,

In 2005, I started working with the Organization for the Defense of Human Rights in Kurdistan as a reporter. In July 2006, I was arrested in Tehran, where I had traveled to find our about medical treatment for my brother, a political activist in Kurdistan. They took me to some unknown place that day, some narrow and dark basement without ventilation, empty cells with bare floors, and nothing inside them.

They took me to a room where they questioned me. Every time they asked me about my ethnicity, I answered, "Kurdish," and they beat me with a whip that looked like some kind of a hose. They also insulted me and beat me because of my religion. They beat me because of the Kurdish music that was on my mobile. They tied my hands, sat me in a chair, and beat me on the sensitive parts of my body. They also took off my clothes and threatened me sexually with batons and sticks. My left leg was really damaged in this place, and I passed out from simultaneous blows to my head and electric shocks to sensitive parts of my body. I feel like I have lost my sense of balance and I constantly shake.

Sometime later they transferred me to Unit 209 of Evin prison. They blindfolded me in the entrance hallway, and then they took me to some small room. The next day they transferred me to Sanandaj where they arrested my brother. From the moment I arrived at the detention center there, they insulted and beat me. They tied me to a chair and left me in the clinic of the detention center from seven in the morning until the next day. They didn't even let me go to the restroom so I wet myself. Then they returned me to Unit 209 again and they continued to harass and beat me in the room on the second floor, the green interrogation rooms.

On August 27, 2006, they tortured me so badly that they took me to see the doctor, who was on the first floor near the interrogation rooms. The doctor recorded all the signs of torture that were evident from the bruises on my back, neck, feet, and thighs. For the two months of August and September I was detained in solitary cell number 43.

On February 25, 2008 Branch 30 of Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced Kamangar to death on charges of "endangering national security." The prosecution claimed that Kamangar was a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but provided no evidence to support this allegation.  In July 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, and Kamangar remains in prison; according to Kamangar's lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, appealing to the head of the judiciary to intervene is the only remaining option for challenging the sentence.

Other activists have been unable to register their organizations, and if they decide to engage in activities they do so at risk of being detained and seeing their efforts shut down.  Roya Toloue, a Kurdish civil society activist, along with several colleagues, planned to establish an NGO called Kurdish Women for Peace and Human Rights. She told Human Rights Watch about the difficulties she faced in obtaining a permit to operate:

In the last month of 2004, we started getting the necessary documentation together and submitted them to the office of the Kurdish governorship. They asked us several times to provide additional documents. In Kurdistan there was a conflict between the governorship and the Ministry of Information over who should issue the permits. A while after the mandated time for reviewing our application passed, someone called me and told me over the phone that I and Negin Sheikholeslami [another member of the board] did not meet with approval. They weren't ready to announce this to me in writing, even though we had followed all of the required application procedures.

Toloue told Human Rights Watch that she and her colleagues turned to publishing activities.

We decided to put out a publication. We worked really hard to find someone who would rent us their publishing permit, since the government would not grant us permission to publish on our own. We decided to carry on the goals of the NGO this way, by writing about women's issues and carry out our workshops at the office of the publication. We managed to put out the monthly Rasan despite many pressures, and we'd succeeded in making connections with women of various backgrounds, including women from villages. But I was arrested after only five issues came out. Of course when the security forces had figured out that I was involved in the project, they questioned the owner of the publication about why I had been chosen to be the editor. After the first issue came out, they said that our logo was feminist and told us to change it, which we did. After every issue, the office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Kurdistan would issue warnings to us despite the fact that we always considered the law in whatever we wrote.

The authorities accused Toloue of having connections with the summer 2005 protests in Kurdish areas and charged her with "acting against national security through leading protests." A branch of the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to six years in prison on this charge, as well as that of "propaganda against the state and disrupting the public mind," "being anti-revolutionary and an enemy of the state," and being a member of the Komala party. A branch of the Revolutionary Court convicted her on charges of "acting against national security" and gave her a suspended five year prison sentence. She fled Iran after the authorities released her on 100 million toman (US $100,000) bail.

The government has been hostile to NGO activities throughout Iran, and particularly in minority areas, on the pretext that they have political agendas – in itself not a legitimate reason to restrict their work. In September and October of 2007, authorities arrested Ronak Safarzadeh, 21, and Hana Abdi, 21 on charges of "endangering national security." The two women were active with the Azarmehr Society of Kurdish Women, a group that organizes capacity-building workshops and sports activities for women in Sanandaj and elsewhere in the province of Kurdistan. The two were also active in the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality, a project to raise general awareness throughout Iran about and change discriminatory laws against women. In statements to the press, a judge presiding over the case of the two women denied that their arrests stemmed from their involvement in these projects, and instead claimed that they cooperated with opposition groups "under the cloak of civil society organizations." To date, the authorities have not offered any evidence to support these allegations. On June 19, Branch Two of the Revolutionary Court in Sanadaj convicted Abdi on charges of "gathering and colluding to commit a crime against national security," and ordered that she serve five years in a prison in the city of Germi, in the largely Azeri province of Ardbil. In October 2008, an appeals court reduced Abdi's sentence to eighteen months. Prosecutors also accused Safarzadeh of the more serious charge of "enmity with God." Her trial on this charge has not yet concluded at the time of writing. However, the court found her guilty on a new charge of illegally crossing borders and possessing illegal satellite equipment.

As noted, even in cases where NGOs manage to obtain the preliminary permits to establish an organization, they often face difficulties in securing additional permits necessary to carry out various functions, such as workshops, seminars, and festivals. Given these obstacles, some NGOs have chosen to engage in activities without applying for permits.

Bahram Valad-Beigi, the Kurdish journalist profiled earlier, is also a civil society activist who faced government persecution for his political work (see above section on the suppression of free expression). In 2000, Valad-Beigi founded the Tehran- based Cultural Institute of Kurdistan, with the aim of building links among the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Despite receiving the required permits from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Valad-Beigi faced difficulties in obtaining additional permits for routine activities.

In general it is very difficult to obtain permits for conferences and cultural seminars in Tehran. Over the last eight years, in Tehran, we've made numerous requests for permits to organize various events and conferences, but we only succeeded twice. There is a negative attitude towards our activities as Kurdish cultural and political activists. And this attitude seems to be the basis for the decisions they make about our activities. They ignore our rights and consider us second class citizens and think about us in political and security terms in a way that makes a Kurdish person regret living here. We believe Iran belongs to all Iranians. It shouldn't be the case that all of the resources are available to certain people, and others are neglected and have their legal activities denied because of illogical and unclear reasons.

Religious Gatherings and Groups

In addition to excluding Sunni Kurds from top government posts, the authorities have persecuted those Kurds active in Sunni religious movements. The Maktabe Koran (Quran School, in the sense of a school of thought), founded in 1978 by Ahman Moftizadeh, is one such movement. In 1983, authorities arrested Moftizadeh and a court later sentenced him to ten years in prison. The specific charges against him were never known. At the time the government often accused Kurdish religious and political activists of "endangering national security through separatist activities" but did not always bring formal charges. As a religious leader who called on the government to respect the rights of Kurds, it is likely that the charges against him were similar to those of other Kurds persecuted at the time. Moftizadeh died in 1993, only three months after his release from jail.

On October 14, 2007, security forces in the city of Bukan, in Kurdistan province, arrested several followers of the Maktabe Koran while they were gathered to celebrate the final nights of the holy month of Ramadan.  Four months after this incident, on January 6, 2008, security forces arrested Maktabe Koran follower Abdullah Fazi in his home without providing any reason.

Security forces have also harassed Sunni clerics critical of the ruling government. Ayoub Ganji is one such cleric. In January 2008, Ganji disappeared, shortly after delivering a Friday sermon in Sandandaj in which he criticized the government's arbitrary exclusion of candidates from upcoming parliamentary elections and condemned the death in custody of Ibrahim Lotfollahi (see below).

Throughout the thirteen days Ganji was missing, local officials denied responsibility for his apprehension and claimed that they had no information as to his whereabouts. After members of his mosque and other locals threatened to carry out mass demonstrations in protest, an unknown car dropped Ganji off in the city of Sanandaj. He was not in good physical condition, and he reportedly still suffers from amnesia and hallucinations.

Student Organizations

Like elsewhere in Iran, student activists in Kurdish areas often face charges of "acting against national security." Authorities also accuse students of endangering national security by "working with opposition parties."

One way authorities suppress student activism is through the university disciplinary committees, which have the authority to expel or transfer students to other universities. These committees have a record of using their powers to punish students for peaceful political activities.

Souren Hosseini, head of the Democratic Student Union, an organization for Kurdish students headquartered in Sanandaj and with branches on campuses throughout Iran, is an example of a student who faced punishment and persecution for his activism. In May 2005, Hosseini and several others applied to the Kurdistan provincial government for a permit to form a student union, but three years later they have yet to receive a response. On December 14, 2006, the university disciplinary committee expelled him from campus on charges of "disturbing the public mind" for organizing campus protests and transferred him to a university in the city of Dehghan. The university also banned the student union's publication, Haref (Praise-Giver). Hosseini told Human Rights Watch that he had no knowledge he was under suspicion and had no chance to defend himself against the allegations before the university handed down its decision.

Yasser Goli is another member of the Democratic Student Union punished for his participation in peaceful political activities. In September of 2006, the administration of the Azad University of Sanandaj banned him from continuing his studies as punishment for his political activism.

In October 2007, authorities arrested Goli outside Sanandaj University on charges of "acting against national security." Harassment extended to members of Goli's family as well. Three weeks after his arrest, Goli's father, Saleh, went to a court in Sanandaj to inquire about his son. The prosecutor ordered Saleh Goli's arrest without providing any reasons. In December 2007, Yasser Goli's brother Amar reported receiving threatening phone calls after he gave an interview to the activist student news service, Amir Kabir Newsletter.In January 2008, security forces in Sanandaj summoned Fatemeh Goftari, the mother of Yasser Goli, for questioning. Upon her arrival, the security forces arrested her on the orders of Branch 4 of the Revolutionary court. Other than Yasser Goli's mother, who was active with the One Million Signatures to End Discriminatory Laws Campaign of the women's movement, Goli's other family members had no background in political or social activism.