Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iranian authorities continued arresting hundreds of opposition members and accused the United States and Britain on Tuesday of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Sunday.

The sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi was detained on Monday night, according to opposition Web sites quoted by news agencies.

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said countries including the United States and Britain had miscalculated in criticizing the government’s response to the demonstrations, which the government said left at least eight people dead in Tehran. The opposition counted five more deaths in other cities.

“Some Western countries are supporting this sort of activities,” said the spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, according to The Associated Press. “This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it.”

He said the British ambassador to Iran would be summoned for discussions.

The British government said its ambassador, Simon Gass, would respond “robustly” to any criticism and would reiterate calls for Iran to respect the rights of its citizens.

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The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, rebuked American and British officials for their “disgraceful comments” about the demonstrations, according to the state-run PressTV. The criticisms of Iran’s action were “disgustingly vivid that they clarify where this movement stands when it comes to destroying religious and revolutionary values,” he said.

Iranian authorities arrested at least a dozen opposition figures on Monday, including former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, the human rights activist Emad Baghi and three top aides to the former presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, Iranian news sites reported.

All told, more than 1,500 people have been arrested nationwide since Sunday, including 1,110 in Tehran and 400 in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the pro-opposition Jaras Web site reported.

In Hawaii, where he is on vacation, Mr. Obama condemned the violence against protesters and called for the release of those “unjustly detained.”

“For months, the Iranian people have sought nothing more than to exercise their universal rights,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “Each time they have done so, they have been met with the iron fist of brutality, even on solemn occasions and holy days.”

He added that the protests in Iran had nothing to do with the United States or other foreign countries. “It’s about the Iranian people, and their aspirations for justice, and a better life for themselves,” he said. “And the decision of Iran’s leaders to govern through fear and tyranny will not succeed in making those aspirations go away.”

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The streets of Tehran were largely quiet on Monday and early Tuesday, as citizens absorbed the shock of Sunday’s violence. Thirteen people were reported to have been killed and many more wounded in street battles in cities across the country between security forces and protesters, who fought back more fiercely than ever before. The government said Monday that eight people had been killed in Tehran, and opposition Web sites catalogued five deaths in other cities.

The government said that it was holding the bodies of five protesters, including a nephew of Mr. Moussavi, the state-run IRNA news agency reported, in what appeared to be an attempt to prevent funerals that could turn into more demonstrations. The bodies were being held pending autopsies.

The authorities’ use of deadly force on the Ashura holiday drew a fierce rebuke on Monday from the opposition cleric and reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who noted that even the shah had honored the holiday’s ban on violence.

“What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” Mr. Karroubi said in a statement, according to the Jaras Web site.

Mr. Karroubi, a fierce critic of the government, was attacked Sunday by plainclothes security officers, and other attackers later smashed the front windshield of his car, the Sahamnews Web site reported.

Government supporters blamed opposition members for the violence and called for their prosecution. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement calling violence by the protesters a “horrible insult to Ashura” and called for “firm punishment of those behind this obvious insult,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Large groups of police officers stood guard in several central Tehran squares on Monday morning, witnesses said. At least three subway stations were closed, apparently to prevent any further gatherings.

Still, there were reports of continuing scattered protests on Monday in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir square and other areas, Jaras reported.

The police fired tear gas to disperse a group of mourners who gathered outside the Tehran hospital where the body of Mr. Moussavi’s nephew, Ali Moussavi, had been held, the Nowrooz Web site reported. A prominent opposition figure with ties to the Moussavi family said Ali Moussavi had been killed by assassins.

Family members said Mr. Moussavi’s body disappeared from the hospital overnight, and on Monday IRNA reported that his body and four others were being held while investigations were carried out.

A 27-year-old journalist who was reporting on the street clashes on Sunday was reported missing. The reporter, Redha al-Basha, who was working for Dubai TV, has not been heard from, according to a statement issued by Dubai TV. Mr. Basha was last seen surrounded by security forces in Tehran, witnesses said.

The group Human Rights Activists in Iran said that the 1,100 people arrested in Tehran were being held in Evin Prison, the Gooya Web site reported.

Among those arrested in Isfahan was the son of a senior cleric, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri. Ayatollah Taheri is the former Isfahan representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his son Muhammad is married to the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Ayatollah Taheri tried last week to lead a memorial service for the dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died Dec. 20. The arrest of his son was viewed as an effort by the authorities to pressure the ayatollah.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Peter Baker from Honolulu.

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Malaysian Arrests Put in Question Vow of Rights

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — Soon after coming to power four months ago, Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, vowed to temper the country’s repressive laws and respect civil liberties though they have often been ignored.

But Malaysia’s honeymoon of liberalism hit the rocks over the weekend, when the police broke up a large rally in Kuala Lumpur, arresting nearly 600 people and reaffirming the governing party’s longstanding policy of zero tolerance toward street protests.

Opposition parties, which organized the rally, were calling for the repeal of a law that allows the government to jail its critics indefinitely without charge. The opposition is also pressing the government to expand an inquiry into the recent death under mysterious circumstances of a political aide after a late-night interrogation by anticorruption officials.

News services estimated that the rally on Saturday, which was broken up by thousands of police officers using tear gas and water cannons, drew about 20,000 protesters, making it the largest demonstration in two years.

“We can provide them stadiums where they can shout themselves hoarse till dawn, but don’t cause disturbance in the streets,” Mr. Najib said Sunday, according to the Malaysian news media.

Since taking office in April, Mr. Najib has gained favor with investors and businesspeople by partly dismantling a system of racial preferences that long caused resentment among the country’s minorities.

He also released 13 political detainees held without trial. An opinion poll conducted from June 19 to July 1 showed 65 percent of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with his performance. The poll, by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research, surveyed 1,060 voters.

More recently, Mr. Najib’s government has been criticized as reverting to the authoritarian tactics of previous administrations.

A former health minister and stalwart of the governing coalition, Chua Jui Meng, defected to the opposition in July, saying that Mr. Najib represented an “iron fist behind the velvet glove.”

Lim Kit Siang, a prominent opposition politician, said in a blog entry on Sunday that the large number of people detained “underlines” that the “greatest violators of human rights are often the police and the law enforcement agencies.”

The death of the political aide, Teoh Beng Hock, in July has galvanized opposition parties and caused widespread outrage, especially among the minority Chinese.

Mr. Teoh, a legislative aide in the opposition-controlled state of Selangor, was found dead beneath the 14th-story window of the offices of the country’s anticorruption commission after a nightlong interrogation. A pathologist’s report said he died of internal injuries from a fall.

A government minister initially said Mr. Teoh, 30, committed suicide, but his belt and back pockets were torn, adding to speculation that he might have been forced out the window.

After initial resistance, the government bowed to public pressure and ordered an inquiry into Mr. Teoh’s death as well as the interrogation tactics of the anticorruption officers.

Deaths in police custody have increased in recent years, according to Suaram, a human rights group. According to the Malaysian Home Ministry, 1,535 people died in police custody between 2003 and 2007, the latest year for which data is available.

Greece: Halt Crackdown, Arrests of Migrants

July 27, 2009

Greek authorities are arresting large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers in the country's cities and islands and moving many of them to the north, raising fears of illegal expulsions to Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch received reports from a credible source that, in mid-July 2009, police transferred a group of Arabic-speaking people from Chios Island to the Evros border region, where they were secretly forced to cross the border into Turkey. On July 23, local human rights activists prevented authorities from transferring 63 migrants from Lesvos Island to the north by blocking access to the ferry. On July 25, the police took most of them to Athens under heavy police escort.

"These operations and transfers are very worrying," said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch. "We fear that people are being prevented from seeking asylum, that children arriving alone are not being protected, and that migrants are kept in unacceptable detention conditions and possibly even being secretly expelled to Turkey."

In another recent episode, in a large-scale police operation from July 16 to 18, police in Athens surrounded what appeared to be several hundred migrants and locked them inside an abandoned courthouse. The police arrested anyone who left the building. It is feared that some of them may have needed protection and did not have a chance to file a claim for asylum, the police prevented Human Rights Watch from speaking to the people held inside, and Human Rights Watch does not know the whereabouts of those who were arrested when they tried to leave.

In a November 2008 report, "Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union," Human Rights Watch documented how Greek authorities have systematically expelled migrants illegally across the Greece-Turkey border, in violation of many international legal obligations. These "pushbacks" typically occur at night from detention facilities in the northern part of the country, close to the Turkish border, and they involve considerable logistical preparation. Human Rights Watch at that time interviewed 41 asylum seekers and refugees - all privately and confidentially - in various locations in both Greece and Turkey, who gave consistent accounts of Greek authorities taking them to the Evros River at night and then forcing them across.

Human Rights Watch also documented how Greek authorities miscategorize unaccompanied children as adults and detain them for prolonged periods of time in conditions that could be considered inhumane and degrading. (See the December 2008 report, "Left to Survive: Systematic Failure to Protect Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Greece.")

In yet another recent incident, on July 12, police destroyed a makeshift migrant camp in Patras, on the Peloponnese peninsula. In the days before the camp was destroyed, the police reportedly arrested large numbers of migrants there, and according to credible sources, transferred an unknown number to the northern part of the country. On July 17, Human Rights Watch met with several Afghans in Patras, including 12 unaccompanied migrant children now homeless as a result of this operation, who were in hiding in abysmal conditions out of fear of being arrested.

A 24-year-old man told Human Rights Watch: "We're living like animals in the jungle ... we can't take a shower and we don't have proper food ... before I lived in the camp, but all of my things and clothes were burned. Now I have a shirt and a pair of pants, nothing else."

A 14-year-old Afghan boy who arrived in Greece one year earlier said: "The worst situation during the past year is now, in Patras - now that I'm living in this forest .... There's not enough food and we only eat bread with water."

Human Rights Watch also observed on July 17 how more than 1,000 migrants lined up all night, largely in vain, trying to file asylum applications at Athens' main police station. Greece recognizes as few as 0.05 percent of asylum seekers as refugees at their first interview and passed a law at the end of June that abolishes a meaningful appeals procedure, making it virtually impossible for anyone to obtain refugee status. It also extended the maximum length of administrative detention for migrants to 12 months - and under certain circumstances, up to 18 months - from previously 90 days.

"It appears Greece is doing everything it can to close the door on persons who seek protection in Europe, no matter how vulnerable they are," said Frelick. "The European Union must hold Greece accountable for acts contrary to international and European human rights and refugee law, and it needs to act fast, as the lives of many are at risk."

Mehsuds in Pakistan Held Responsible for Taliban Leader's Actions

By Joshua Partlow and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- The Sina Diagnostic Center and Trust does not appear to be a menacing enterprise. The clinical pathology laboratory's 15 staff members conduct ultrasounds, X-rays and CAT scans and run free hepatitis and HIV tests for poor people and refugees in this teeming northwestern city.

That did not stop about a dozen Pakistani government revenue officers and police from marching up to the lab's second-story office this month to demand that the owner, Noor Zaman Mehsud, shut it down. They ushered patients and staff members outside, pulled down the metal gates and wrapped white cloth around the padlocks. Within 15 minutes, they were gone.

"They just said, 'You are a member of the Mehsud tribe, and we are going to seal up this business,' " Mehsud recalled. "My crime is that I belong to the Mehsuds."

Beyond the frustration of closing a business he ran for nine years and the sting of losing an income averaging $1,400 a week, the most vexing part of Mehsud's situation is that he is on the wrong side of the law. The Pakistani government has declared war on Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and his network of several thousand fighters in the nearby tribal district of South Waziristan. And under regulations formulated a century ago by British colonial rulers, Pakistan's tribes are still bound by a legal concept known as "collective responsibility," under which any tribal member can be punished for the crimes of another.

The crackdown on the Mehsuds was spelled out in an order from the top political official in South Waziristan, Shahab Ali Shah, on June 14. Because the Mehsud tribesmen had not handed over Taliban fighters, Shah wrote, he was satisfied that they had acted "in an unfriendly and hostile manner toward the state" and that the tribe's "people and their activities are prejudicial to peace and public tranquillity."

Senior government officials have said repeatedly that their target is Baitullah Mehsud and his followers, not his entire tribe, but Shah's wording was broader. He ordered the "seizure, where they may be found, of all members of the Mehsud tribe and confiscation of movable/immovable property belonging to them in the North-West Frontier Province and the arrest and taking into custody of any person of the tribe wherever he is found."

That sweeping order has led to the closure of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of businesses in towns such as Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province, according to lawyers, human rights officials and residents. One South Waziristan political official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said 25 Mehsuds have been arrested in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank.

"This is the law of the jungle, not for civilized people. They are treating people like animals," said Noor Zaman Mehsud, the 39-year-old lab owner, who denied he had any connection to the Taliban. "If I am a criminal, they should arrest me. But they are giving other people's punishments to me."

A few hundred thousand people in Pakistan belong to the Mehsud tribe, a Pashtun network divided into three major clans: the Manzai, the Bahlolzai and the Shaman Khel. Although they are scattered across the country, their home territory is South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan and is a refuge for fighters operating in both countries. For a civilian, it is not a welcoming place, caught as it is between the repressive rule of the Taliban and the military's preparations for a ground invasion. From the skies, Pakistani fighter jets and U.S. unmanned aircraft regularly bombard Taliban targets.

The violence has pushed tens of thousands of Mehsuds out of South Waziristan. But there is little respite wherever they turn.

"They are asking the people who are besieged, the people who have left their homes, 'Why you are not tackling the terrorists?' " said Said Alam Mehsud, a doctor from the same sub-tribe as Baitullah Mehsud. "Just imagine, what a demand. It's like if America asked me: 'Why are you practicing as a pediatrician? Why have you not captured Osama bin Laden?' "

The move to arrest and seize property of "hostile or unfriendly" tribal people is allowed under Section 21 of the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations, a legal framework developed to help the British Raj control rebellious Pashtuns. The regulations, which tribal leaders have tried to repeal or amend for years, give vast powers to the top official in each tribal district, known as the political agent. Aimal Khan, a tribal areas specialist with Sungi, a Pakistani humanitarian organization, said political agents are popularly referred to as "kings without crowns."

In the past, the regulations have been used to block tribal movements, recover hostages and punish those who attack government installations. Latif Afridi, a lawyer and expert on tribal laws, compared Shah's order to economic sanctions against a hostile country. The current pursuit of Mehsuds is not particularly widespread, but it remains an affront to human rights, he said.

"This is an order which is a remnant of the colonial days. Mehsuds should be treated as Pakistanis, their fundamental human rights respected," Afridi said. "It is a very cruel law, but so long as it is a law, I would definitely concede that the political agent has this power."

Habibullah Khan, a senior government official for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, of which South Waziristan is a part, said the collective punishment policy does not mean the government will make "blanket arrests" of Mehsud tribesmen, but rather allows authorities to capture criminals. Another senior FATA official said five close supporters and financiers of Baitullah Mehsud had been arrested.

"We will be very choosy in our activities against the tribesmen in South Waziristan agency, as we know all of them are not terrorists," Khan said.

In June, Abdul Karim Mehsud, a lawyer, filed a petition with the Peshawar High Court asking for Shah's order to be repealed on the grounds that it is discriminatory and that taking such action in North-West Frontier Province is outside the jurisdiction of the tribal area political agent.

The FATA's Khan argued that arrest warrants for Mehsud tribesmen from South Waziristan are applicable outside that region. Lawyers familiar with tribal regulations said the Supreme Court has been divided on the issue. Lawyer Mehsud said last week that his petition had been denied.

"The actions by the government against the Mehsud people are pushing them back toward the Taliban," said Saleh Shah Qureshi, a senator from South Waziristan. "People are going back to Waziristan."

Bilal Mehsud, 24, is not sure where to turn. His father's cement business, Madina Traders in Peshawar, was shuttered last week by a South Waziristan official and tribal police. He lives in Saudi Arabia but is home on vacation. Now police have issued arrest warrants for him and his father, he said, adding, "I'm not sure what crime we have committed."

Noor Khan Mehsud, who along with other tribesmen formed a volunteer committee to help displaced Mehsud families in Dera Ismail Khan, said local authorities have been slow to register the refugees.

"There is no government support," he said. "Officials have closed doors for us, and we are considered militants. Where should we go?"

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.