U.N. expert: Iranian democracy progresses but BC-UN-Iran-Rights

Maurice Copithorne, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' special investigator on Iran, said Tuesday in a report to the General Assembly that the period from January to mid-August has been "tumultuous," and human rights have been a dominant feature in most issues. "The most dramatic development was the accelerating attack on the press, which ... led to the suppression of the entire reformist press and the imprisonment of many journalists," he said.

Hard-liners have shut down 25 pro-reform publications and jailed dozens of reformist writers and political activists since April in an apparent backlash against their Feb. 18 defeat in legislative elections. This month, a new daily was launched, promising to try to revive hope in the popular reform movement. Reformists backed by President Mohammad Khatami want increased social and political freedoms and a loosening of the strict Islamic rules that govern the day-to-day lives of Iranians. The hard-liners believe in strict adherence to the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. As for democratic progress, Copithorne said February's parliamentary elections were "another important step on the road to accountable democratic governance" despite certain flaws. He also cited the steps the parliament, or Majlis, has taken to re-establish its own human rights committee and press ahead with several legislative initiatives to improve the human rights situation. In his report, Copithorne said the economic plight of the poor and marginalized worsened this year and Iranians took to the streets to protest against unemployment, inflation and inadequate municipal services. They also protested against the treatment of students and detainees, and in support of freedom of the press, he said. Paramilitary vigilantes often had a role in suppressing these demonstrations, he said. The promised reform of the judiciary has not come, prisons are vastly overcrowded, and some 130 people were executed between January and the end of July, said Copithorne, a Canadian lawyer who has been barred from visiting Iran since 1996.

"Evidence of the use of torture by law enforcement agencies, usually in illegal detention centers, is becoming a matter of public record," he said, urging the government to uphold its own constitutional ban on torture. "The murders and disappearances of intellectuals and dissident politicians seem no nearer to being solved, which has given credibility to the widely held view that an open inquiry or trial would lead to persons in high places," he said. He called for prosecutions in open court "without concern as to where the evidence may lead." Copithorne's report said the status of women remained largely unchanged and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities remained largely neglected. Iran continues to make progress toward democracy, he said, but the Guardian Council, a hard-line body which oversees elections, "is an obstacle" to making the government more accountable to the people. Eventually its "arbitrary, untransparent and perhaps even capricious conduct ... must be addressed," he said. Massoud Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group, called on the General Assembly to strongly condemn the government's "flagrant and systematic violations of human rights" and refer its record to the Security Council for binding legal action.

(AP)