Iran: Save the life of Farzad Kamangar (updated INFO & E action)

[Omaha Steve]

From Labour Start just now:

Meanwhile, it turns out that Farzad was not hanged as we feared. That's
the good news. But he is still under sentence of death.

We've been asked by the Education International to continue with the
campaign.

We've modified the text slightly but it is essentially the same campaign
as before.

If you have not already sent a message, please do go here:

http://www.labourstart.org/farzad

The Education International has its own online campaign - feel free to
participate in it as well:

http://www.ei-ie.org/form/20080818_en.php

Finally, individual messages can be sent by email to President
Ahmadinejad: [e-mail]




http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=453



Please join with the thousands of trade unionists and human rights defenders around the world who are mobilising in defence of Farzad Kamangar, an Iranian Kurdish teacher and trade unionist who is at risk of execution.

Education International received information from reliable sources that on 26 November Kamangar was taken from his cell 121 in ward 209 of Tehran's Evin prison in preparation for execution by hanging. However, the latest information is that he is still alive and was able to meet with his lawyer on 27 November for the first time in over two months. His situation remains precarious nonetheless.

Kamangar, aged 33, was sentenced to death by the Iranian Revolutionary Court on 25 February 2008 after a trial which took place in secret, lasted only minutes, and failed to meet Iranian and international standards of fairness. His lawyer, Kahlil Bahramian, said: "Nothing in Kamangar's judicial files and records demonstrates any links to the charges brought against him." Indeed, Kamangar was initially cleared of all charges during the investigation process.

Education International, the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Transport Workers Federation, Amnesty International and LabourStart are appealing to the Iranian authorities to commute the death sentence and ensure his case is reviewed fairly.
You can help! Type in your name and email address, then click on 'Send Message' on the bottom of this page.

Take action at the link above.

Dear President Ahmadinejad,

I am deeply concerned about the fate of teacher trade unionist Farzad Kamangar, who is incarcerated in Evin Prison and facing the death penalty after a trial that did not meet Iranian or international standards of fairness. I call upon you to immediately commute his death sentence and ensure that his case is reviewed fairly.

Sincerely,

[leveymg]

1. The guy was convicted of possession of explosives and belonging to the PKK/MEK/PEJAK

The PKK and allied Kurdish separatist groups have been blowing people up in northern Iran. These groups are allegedly acting as part of the Bush-Cheney Administration's covert programs to destabilize Iran. Regardless of the fairness of his trial, and the merits of the Kurdish nationalist cause, this is essential context not mentioned in your post.

This guy was most certainly not sentenced to death because he's a union activist or a teacher.

Here's the most complete account I could find in a short search. Note this is from a Kurdish nationalist website: http://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2008/5/irankurdistan381.htm

Iran confirms death sentence for Kurdish teacher 28.5.2008


May 28, 2008

Tehran, — Iran has sentenced to death a Kurdish teacher for membership in a "terrorist" group and possession of explosives, the judiciary spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

"Farzad Kamangar is accused of membership in a terrorist group and possession and carrying explosives. He was found guilty of 'Moharebeh' (being an enemy of god) and sentenced to death," Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

He added that Kamangar along with two other unnamed people were also sentenced to a 10-year jail term for the possession of explosives.

"The defendants have lodged an appeal and the case is being reviewed at the supreme court," he said.

New York-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) had said in February that Kamangar had been sentenced to death for links with the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),www.ekurd.net which has fought a deadly insurgency against Turkey.

HRW called for the death sentence to be revoked and also alleged that Kamangar was tortured and subjected to an unfair trial.

Tuesday's announcement was the first time Iran has confirmed the death sentence.

According to rights groups, Kamangar, a teacher in the town of Kamyaran in Kurdistan province, had been arrested in July 2006.

Iran has been battling separatist Iranian rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which believed to be linked to the PKK, in its western Kurdish-populated areas over the last years. Since 2004 PJAK took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdistan province northwestern of Iran (Iranian Kurdistan, Eastern Kurdistan). Half the members of PJAK are women.

In April a local court in Kurdistan province upheld a death sentence for Kurdish activist, Hiva Botimar, convicted of having links with the PKK after the Supreme Court quashed the original hanging verdict.

In December, Iran charged two Kurdish women rights activists with taking part in "terrorist" actions and belonging to PJAK.

Since 1984 the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. A large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK rebels.

The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds' identity in its constitution and of their language as a native language along with Turkish in the country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and constitution against Kurds, ranting them full political freedoms.

Turkey and Iran refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a distinct minority.

Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP | Agencies

Iranian Kurdistan

** Iranian Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistana Îranê or Kurdistana Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) or Rojhilatê Kurdistan (East of Kurdistan)) is an unofficial name for the parts of Iran inhabited by Kurds and has borders with Iraq and Turkey. It includes the greater parts of West Azerbaijan province, Kurdistan Province, Kermanshah Province, and Ilam Province.

Kurds form the majority of the population of this region with an estimated population of 4 million. The region is the eastern part of the greater cultural-geographical area called Kurdistan.

More about Iranian Kurdistan

PJAK
The present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According to the Washington Times, half the members of PEJAK are women, many of them still in their teens, and one of the female members of the leadership council is Gulistan Dugan, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. This is due primarily to the fact that PEJAK is strongly supportive of women's rights. PEJAK believes that women must have a strong role in government and must be on an equal level with men in leadership positions.

More about PEJAK- Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan

Top

Kurd Net does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news information on this page

Here's more on covert US assistance to PKK/MEK/PEJAK: http://www.opednews.com/articles/U-S--Funding-Terror-Attack-by-Sherwood-Ross-080704-817.html

The recent surge of terrorist violence in Iran likely is being funded in part by the Bush administration with the support of Congress.

According to a report in the July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. reportedly has been funding the Iranian dissident terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or M.E.K.; the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK; and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.



“Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere,” retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner is quoted by Hersh as stating. “There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Gardiner has taught strategy at the National War College and is monitoring the violence in Iran.

The bloodshed in Iran likely has been underwritten by the U.S. Congress which last year acceded to a request from Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,” Hersh writes, “designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.” Bush asked for $400 million for the work.

“The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Ara and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations,” Hersh added, noting that “Clandestine operations against Iran are not new” and U.S. Special Operations Forces “have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.”

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, Hersh noted, and the Iranian government conceded an explosion in the southern city of Shiraz had been a terrorist act. That blast killed a dozen people and injured more than 200. Hersh said it could not be learned if there was any specific U.S. involvement in that incident.

However, the M.E.K., which has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, in recent years “has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States,” Hersh writes, and some of the newly authorized covert fund money may well flow into their coffers. A Pentagon consultant who was not named told Hersh, “The (Bush) Administration is desperate for results.”

As for the Kurdish PJAK, reportedly getting U.S. covert funding, Hersh quotes Gardiner as noting there has been a marked increase in the number of their armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. PJAK fighters last May attacked Revolutionary Guards and in June attacked Iranian border guards.

A former senior intelligence official indicated to Hersh that Vice President Cheney’s office “set up priorities for categories of targets (in Iran) and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”

The official added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates.”

The official was also quoted as saying there had been a meeting in Cheney’s office and “The subject was how to create a casus belli (an event to justify a declaration of war) between Tehran and Washington.”

Hersh also wrote that Admiral William Fallon, who until recently headed the U.S. Central Command with oversight for Iraq and Afghanistan, “resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran.”

Retired Marine General John Sheehan, formerly commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, told Hersh that when Fallon “tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

Hersh quoted a Pentagon consultant as stating, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”

In sum, while the Bush regime claims the Iranians are behind attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, (an assertion fraught with what the New York Times delicately called “significant uncertainties,”) there is no longer any question Bush is doing just that inside Iran; that Cheney is looking for a cause to start a war; and that the White House will fire any flag officer that dares to stand in its way. #

[Omaha Steve]

2. I've already taken action

"New York-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) had said in February that Kamangar had been sentenced to death for links with the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),www.ekurd.net which has fought a deadly insurgency against Turkey.

HRW called for the death sentence to be revoked and also alleged that Kamangar was tortured and subjected to an unfair trial."


End result I agreed with HRW by my action.

[leveymg]

3. I've done a lot of work with HRW, AI, etc. - they oppose death penalty, secret trials and torture

I agree with them, also, on that.

Those distinguished human rights groups do not, however, support terrorism carried out by the PKK, MEK and PEJAK organizations. You need to clarify your position and provide context to such postings. Otherwise, you're providing propaganda support for terrorists.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Education International (EI) info

It is being carried as a labor/teacher story. Different sources with different info.

http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/2844

News online

Iranian teacher unionist alive but at risk

27 November 2008
Farzad Kamangar *
view larger imageview larger image *
Farzad Kamangar: his situation remain precarious *

An Iranian Kurdish teacher and trade unionist who was yesterday taken from a prison in Iran in preparation for execution has been reported to be alive but still at risk of execution.

Education International (EI) received information from reliable sources that Farzad Kamangar was yesterday taken from his cell in Tehran’s Evin prison in preparation for execution by hanging. However, the latest information is that he is still alive and was able to meet with his lawyer yesterday. His situation remains precarious nonetheless.

“Teachers everywhere are shocked by the flagrant disregard for human and trade union rights, as well as a total lack of fair process,” said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen. “The death penalty is irreversible and no judicial system should risk condemning an innocent person.”

[leveymg]

5. That's precisely the problem with this story. It makes it appear that this guy is being

presecuted because he's a trade unionist.

That's simply not the case. AI does not list him as a prisoner of conscience.

Here's the AI section on Iranian trade unionists: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10989

Iran: International action for trade unionists

Amnesty is deeply concerned about the plight of trade unionists in Iran, the persecution of independent trade unionists and non-compliance with international labour conventions. In particular Amnesty International worldwide is committed to long-term action on behalf of two trade unionists who have faced repeated incarceration and victimisation for the exercise of their legitimate trade union rights. Mansour Ossanlu is leader of the Tehran Bus Workers' Union, and Mahmoud Salehi was leader of a bakers' union in Saqez. Amnesty consider trade unionist Ossanlu and Mahmoud Salehi to be prisoners of conscience, held solely for the legitimate exercise of their human rights, and we call for them to be released and for all charges to be dropped.

FK was convicted of possession of explosives and conspiring with an internationally-condemned terrorist group. That fact gives an entirely different meaning to this case, regardless of all the other issues, such as lack of due process in terrorism trials, etc.

Without adequate context, reporting is just propaganda. The most prominently listed reports available on line about this case omitted essential facts, IMHO.

[Omaha Steve]

6. Hang him after a fair trial?

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=918&theme=rights&country=iran

His lawyer, Kahlil Bahramian, said: “Nothing in Kamangar’s judicial files and records demonstrates any links to the charges brought against him.” Indeed, Kamangar was initially cleared of all charges during the investigation process.


I'd rather take action than stand by and sort things out. Once he is killed, proving he was innocent just wouldn't seem the same.


http://northerniraq.info/blog/?p=305

Farzad Kamangar is borned in 1975. He was a teacher during 12 years in Kamiaran, a village of Eastern Kurdistan. He is married and has children. He belonged to the Teachers’ Union of Kurdistan and to other activist associations. He wrote for the review Royan, the review of Education department of Kamiyaran and for newsapers of local Human Rights associations.

He has been arrested on August 19th 2006, by the secret services of Sine. During 4 months after his arrest, his family had no news and authorities denied to be responsible of his disappearance.

Farzad Kamangar had been in fact transfered in the 9th Prison of Evin in Tehran, a non-official center of detention of the VEVAK, the Iranian services. In a letter he secretly send out of his prison, he told how he was isolated and tortured, beaten at his first interrogatory just because he is Kurd. He should stayed also on a chair, bound during 24 hours, without food nor possibility to go to the lavatory. Then he was imprisonned in a small cell, without fresh air. He could not get in touch with his family or his lawyer. He faced also psychological pressures, for example threatenings against his relatives. Once, he attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself in stairs, but failed. His health was so bad that he had to be cured in a prison hospital. His lawyer tells that when he saw Farzand in their first meeting, his body was shaken, his hands were seriously burnt by boiled water. Beside, he suffers of kidney infection, and tracks of blood in his urine. ‎

Between 2006 and 2007, he was several times transfered in Kermanshan or Sine to be interrogated and severely tortured. In Kermanshan, his cell, where he was detained in February and March 2007 measured 1m x 1m x 0.6m. He was also sexually abused in Evin, a common pratice to psychologically break prisonner’s mind.

His mother and his borther were allowed to see him only seven months after his arrest. When they meet him, Iranian agents stayed all the tim with them and forbid they speak in Kurdish. Farzad Kamangar, at this time, did not know what were the charges against him.

Farzad made several hunger strikes, with other prisonners, to protest againt their conditions of detention. The last month, he was in the prison of Gohardacht, when prisonners revolted. After a raid of safety services, he has been taken and led in a isolated place, with Farhad Vakili and Ali Heydaran.

On February 25th, the 130 Branch of the Revolutionnary Court condemned Farzad Kamangar to the capital punishment, for “endangering national security”. He was charged also to belong to PJAK, though he pled non-guilty.

Human Rights Watch denounces the trial, the sentence and the tortures.

[leveymg]

7. Only a handful of countries still maintain the death penalty.

We all know that the U.S. and Iran are two of them.

In the future when advocating you need to be mindful of providing a reasonably complete and realistic account of the facts. Give the reader credit for being able to make up his/her own mind about the merits. You don't want to be accused of misleading people.