Iran prepares for staged elections with crackdown on dissent

Opposition boycotts poll and calls for free and fair elections 

فارسی

United for Iran is deeply concerned about the escalating crackdown by the Iranian government on expression and assembly ahead of the March 2 parliamentary elections.

Since the start of 2012, more than 100 Iranian citizens have been detained for non-violent political activism surrounding the elections and two have reportedly died in custody. Opposition parties, high profile political prisoners, and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi have said the elections fail to meet international standards and have called for a boycott.

Local human rights activists have reported that 65 citizens of Iran’s Arab minority in the southwestern part of the country have been arrested in recent weeks. Mohammad Kaabi and Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan were reported to have died as result of torture after being arrested in Iran’s Khuzestan province.

Internet access in Iran has been severely interrupted by Iranian authorities ahead of the elections and a planned protest on February 14. The websites and search engines Yahoo, Google, Gmail, and social networking sites were reportedly inaccessible to millions of Iranian users in the past two weeks. In further efforts to crush dissent, the newspaper Roozegar, one of the few remaining reformist outlets, was shuttered on February 5. BBC Persian has also reported that Iranian authorities have recently targeted family members of its staff in Iran in an effort to intimidate BBC employees abroad.

Iran’s opposition Green Movement called for protests on February 14 to mark one year since the house arrest of Green Movement opposition figures, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard. However, Iranians were discouraged from gathering due to a heavy security presence and threatening messages from security forces.

On December 26, 2011, 39 high profile political prisoners released a statement from prison calling for a boycott of the March elections due to political repression and the ongoing house arrest of the opposition figures. Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi has led a growing international chorus for their release. United for Iran has also called on Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to release the Green Movement leaders.

Iran’s reformist parties have refused to register candidates in protest of the opposition figures’ continued detention. The Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope, an organizing committee for the Green Movement, has called the elections “illegal and unfair” and has called for free and fair elections. In a letter to the Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a group of former Iranian lawmakers wrote that the Iranian government has violated the Union’s charter by imprisoning several former MPs and by planning “completely flawed and engineered elections.”

Iran’s political system is a hierocracy led by the Supreme Leader, who is an appointed Islamic jurisconsult with no term limit. Popular elections are held to determine the presidency, the assembly of experts, and the parliament.  The Guardian Council, an unelected 12-person body of jurists controlled by the Supreme Leader, vets the candidates based on their loyalty to the regime and often times partisan considerations. The assembly of experts is responsible for appointing and dismissing the Supreme Leader, yet the Supreme Leader through the Guardian Council’s approbationary supervision indirectly influences its membership.

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Over the last decade, the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council have exploited democratic deficits within Iran’s constitution to further consolidate autocratic control in the hands of the Supreme Leader. In 1991, the Guardian Council re-interpreted its supervisory role over the elections to be approbationary and began to vet candidates for all of Iran’s elections. The Iranian Parliament formalized the new procedure in 1995, despite strong objections by politicians and legal experts. The amendment, which has been termed unconstitutional, was approved by the Guardian Council, essentially subverting its role from ensuring free and fair elections to one that enables the obstruction of free and fair elections.

While the Iranian government claims to hold democratic elections, the country ranks at the bottom of the world’s leading independent democracy assessments. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2011, Iran was designated as an “authoritarian” state and ranked 159 out of 167 following an analysis of 60 democracy indicators – lower than China, Sudan, and Syria. The country received the lowest possible score in the category of “electoral process and pluralism” – a zero. In its 2012 study of political freedom and civil liberties, Freedom House ranked Iran at the bottom of its “not free” category and noted a downward trend due to the “imposition of severe restrictions on nongovernmental organizations and the prosecution of an increasing number of civic leaders.” The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s 2010 Transformation Index places Iran in the bottom 15 percent (111 out of 127) of the category measuring democracy and political economy.

Intra-conservative infighting has resulted in electoral committees of both the Guardian Council, aligned with the Supreme Leader, and the Interior Ministry, under the administration of the President, to ban their opponents from running in the upcoming elections. There has also been a significant drop in candidates registered due to the reformists’ decision to boycott the elections. The Guardian Council, which has final say as to who is eligible to run, announced the final list of vetted candidates on February 21. Supporters of the Supreme Leader have used the vetting process to disqualify those candidates that are known supporters of President Ahmadinejad.

According to the International Federation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the percentage of candidates disqualified by the Guardian Council increased from 16 percent in 1988, to 35 percent in 1992, and to 39 percent in 1995. The Guardian Council has disqualified more than 90 percent of presidential candidates over the past nine elections. IFES notes that the absence of an independent electoral commission in the country allows Iran’s competing political organs to disqualify candidates based on partisan considerations.

In a December 2011 resolution on the situation of human rights in Iran, the UN General Assembly expressed deep concern regarding the continued house arrest of Iran’s opposition figures and has called on the Iranian government “to ensure that the 2012 parliamentary elections were free, fair, transparent, and inclusive” and “to allow independent observation.”

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that the will of the people shall be the basis of government authority and enshrines people with the right to freely choose their representatives through periodic and genuine elections. The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights outlines the legal basis for the principles of democracy including freedom of expression and assembly (Article 19 and 21); the right and opportunity to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives (Article 25); and the right to vote and to be elected through genuine periodic elections (Article 25). Iran’s political system and electoral procedures fail to uphold any of these rights for its citizens.

Since 1988, the UN General Assembly has adopted a biennial resolution on the strengthening of elections for the promotion of democracy. The resolution notes “member states, in the exercise of their sovereignty, may request that international organizations provide advisory services or assistance for strengthening and developing their electoral institutions and processes.”

United for Iran urges the Iranian government to invite independent electoral assistance and monitoring and to establish an independent electoral commission. United for Iran reiterates its call on Supreme Leader Khamenei to allow for freedom of expression and unhindered access to information, to free opposition leaders and all prisoners of conscience and guarantee due process for detained individuals. Authorities should investigate the deaths of Kaabi and Alboshokeh Derafshan and launch a credible accountability process for other alleged human rights violations.

Furthermore, United for Iran calls on Supreme Leader Khamenei to institute democratic reforms, including electoral reforms, to ensure elections reflect the will of the Iranian people, meet international standards and Iran’s obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

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