Human rights in Iran, France, Germany and the United Kingdom move, but Italy is silent
Three European countries – Great Britain, Germany and France – have announced that they have decided to summon the local Iranian ambassador to officially protest against the treatment of political prisoners in Iran. These countries, coordinating with each other, protested against the representative of Tehran after the recent cases of dramatic human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic.
London, Berlin and Paris did not intend to protest only against the recent execution of wrestler Navid Afkari, or against Tehran's decision to return human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to prison, despite his dramatic health conditions, but also against the imprisonment of some of their citizens with Iranian citizenship. Very often these are academics, who arrived in Iran by invitation or to see family members, to whom Tehran offers to become their spy and who, in cases of refusal, decide to arrest for the purpose of extorting money or the release of arrested Iranian spies. in the West. This is the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an NGO activist and an Iranian-English citizen, arrested in 2016 and still detained on charges of conspiring against national security. Or Kylie More-Gilbert, an academic with Australian and English citizenship, in prison in Iran since 2018, after arriving in the Islamic Republic for a university conference. Gilbert is now in the Qarchak Women's Prison, known for its poor sanitation and violence. Or the case of anthropologist Fariba Adelkhahm, in possession of both French and Iranian citizenship, arrested in 2019, also with the excuse of national security.
The Iranian Parliament, for its part, reacted to the convocation of the Iranian ambassadors by condemning the interference of European countries in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic and expressing support for the abuses of the Iranian judiciary. A condemnation of the decision of France, Germany and Great Britain also came from Ebrahim Raisi, head of the Iranian judiciary – responsible for the massacres of hundreds of political opponents in 1988 – among the eligible candidates to replace Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
And what does Italy do? That says? Apparently nothing. Yet Rome would have things to say to Tehran, at least according to the official positions of Italian foreign policy, expressed in recent days at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. How can we forget, in fact, that Minister Di Maio took part in a recent UN meeting on the death penalty, recalling Italy's commitment to a moratorium? And who holds the sad record of death sentences, in relation to the number of the population? Iran… Yet the Italian government has remained silent, even in the face of the recent execution of the Afkari wrestler (despite the condemnation of the whole EU).
How can we forget that on 23 September the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marina Sereni, declared that Italy was in the front row in fighting LGBTI discrimination? And which country still arrests its citizens for their sexual orientation? Iran, of course … And yet, even on this, not a word from Rome …
Imagine the probable justification, Rome works "behind the scenes", perhaps with the dialogues in Syracuse, launched by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Emma Bonino, between Iranian and Italian jurists. Dialogues that, from 2013 to today, have produced nothing. Worse, they did not even contribute to the release of Ahmadreza Djalali, a medical researcher arrested in Iran in 2016, also for not agreeing to become an agent of the MOIS (Iranian intelligence agency). Ahmadreza was sentenced to death and, even if he is not an Italian citizen, his story directly concerns our country. In fact, Djalali worked for years at the University of Eastern Piedmont, from where the first appeal for his release began. An appeal that was received by some Italian senators and by NGOs like Hands Off Cain , but which was in fact ignored by Italian diplomacy.
In the meantime, while in Syracuse there is discussion about nothing, Djalali in prison has lost over 30 kilos and continues to risk ending up on the gallows every day …
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/diritti-umani-in-iran-si-muovono-francia-germania-e-regno-unito-ma-litalia-tace/ on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 03:41:00 +0000.