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Human rights violation in Iran

I was in Iran, during the rule of the Shah. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a Muslim, but gradually lost support with the Shi'ite clergy of Iran, primarily due to his policy of Westernization and recognition of Israel. He was supported by America, but the confrontation between the clerics, the Shah, and the Tudeh Party came to a clash, outside my hotel room window, as the oppression of dissent by Iran's intelligence agency, SAVAK mowed down the protestors, calling for more religious control over the government. SAVAK had virtually unlimited powers of arrest and detention. It operated its own detention centers. SAVAK routinely subjected detainees to physical torture.

Iran had as many as 2200 political prisoners in 1978 (when I was there). The Shah had been supported by the United Sates government for thirty-seven years, but by 1979, the political unrest had transformed into a revolution which forced the Shah to leave Iran. Soon, the revolutionary forces transformed the government into an Islamic republic. The new regime quickly found that to hold their control over the people, they would need to use the tactics of the Shah, by opressing dissident opinions. Fardust, the Director of SAVAK for the Shah, after the revolution became director of SAVAMA, the post-revolution incarnation of the original SAVAK organization, which continued the violation of human rights. Many of the staff of SAVAK were eventually executed.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in February 1979, following the departure of the Shah. The civil rights abuses did not stop, only focused on new targets of abuse. Women's rights were abolished. I watched as the women donned veils, chanting while demonstrating for the return of religious fundmentalist rule of the people, knowing that it would mean they would lose all rights as humans, which the Shah had given them, for many years.

The number of political prisoners, now, would probably equal or exceed the prisoners during the reign of the Shah; it is difficult to get reliable reports. The country has gone through thousands of years of powerful and cruel leaders, who hold control of the people with a cruel and forceful hand. We shudder to think of the abuses of human rights that exist in Iran.

Since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, respect for human rights has possibly deteriorated even further, according to some reports. Some claim that the government uses torture, inhuman treatment, and solitary confinement

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