Emadeddin Baghi’s Arrest

One of Iran’s leading human rights activists, Emadeddin Baghi, was arrested on Sunday after a court summons. His lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, reported that a previous 2003 one-year suspended sentence was changed into imprisonment, making it possible for the government to deny bail. Baghi also faces a 3-year sentence for action against national security and propaganda against the system. Additionally, there are apparently new charges that have been filed, which include publication of “secret government documents of information gathered from prisoners of security prisons.”

Baghi had been expecting his arrest for a while as the drumbeat of charges against him had intensified in the past few months. But his actual arrest may be a reflection of the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s administration is moved by short-term expediency and paranoia. In the past few months, more prisoners arrested for their thoughts and writings have actually been released than arrested. So Baghi’s arrest, along with the previous arrest of Hadi Qabel, a cleric and head of the Qom Branch of the reformist Islamic Iran’s Participation Party, may be the harbinger of a shift and future arrests to come.

Emad Baghi is a soft-spoken, patient, but persistent man. He was arrested several years ago and spent 2 ½ years in prison for a variety of cooked up charges that essentially revolved around the Iranian government’s distaste for his critical and investigative writings. But he came out of prison determined and with a mission. The result of this determination was the establishment of the Association for Defending Rights of Prisoners in Iran, a human rights organization dedicated to improving the condition of prisons as well as protecting the rights of all prisoners (not merely political ones). Also of deep concern to Baghi was the number of and justification for executions in Iran.

Identifying himself as a human rights activist and not a political player, Baghi has been critical of external attempts to politicize the human rights issue in Iran and turn it into an instrument to be utilized in the US-Iran conflict. Instead, he has consciously engaged various government organs, particularly the Judiciary, to push for prisoners’ rights as well as prevent executions.

His position has been simple: human rights violations are essentially government violations and can only be stopped by the government. Hence, engaging with the government, pointing out violations of Iran’s own constitution, laying out a human rights-based interpretation of Islamic principles and practices, and pushing for new laws that assure the implementation of human rights are the way to go. His take, he once told me sitting in his Tehran office, is that no matter who is or will be in power, “Emad Baghi will be doing the same thing”: pointing out human rights violations, demanding the implementation the already assured human rights guarantees in the Iranian constitution, and pushing for new laws that improve on deficient laws.

Baghi’s patient and persistent approach has meant that more than anyone else in Iran he has been cognizant of violations usually missed by others. He has not only attempted to keep track of every single person imprisoned for political activities but also prison conditions and practice of torture in Iran's provinces, the exact number of people on the death row, the arbitrary manner and justifications for the execution of prisoners with criminal record and so on. Relying on the volunteer work of a cadre of Iran’s most amazing human rights lawyers, the Association for Defending Rights of Prsioners in Iran has engaged with authorities not only on a case by case basis but intellectually, laying out, for instance, the problematic way sentences such as stoning have been meted out in the name of Islam.

Baghi has also been cognizant of traditions and societal practices that have intensified the legal quandaries of the Islamic justice system. On the widespread practice of capital punishment, for instance, Baghi has discussed the extent to which the law of retribution (qessas) is further fueled by the desire to take revenge by the kin of the injured party. He has called for laws that moderate this urge for individual revenge but has also encouraged the media to take on the task of talking about the cultural pitfalls of this retribution-based approach to justice. Baghi has even not shied away from publicly chastising reformist organizations for their silence about the recent executions of a number of people identified by the government as “thugs and hoodlums.”

The arrest of Baghi is obviously sad and outrageous for what it is. But it also suggests a shift of approach by Ahmadinejad’s paranoid government from the harassment of well-known human rights activists to their arrest. In a just publicized private letter written to Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Shahroudi, Iran’s head of the Judiciary, Baghi lays out the variety of hidden tactics the government has used, ranging from physical intimidation to harassment of his family, economic pressures, forced unemployment, passport confiscation, ransacking of his office and so on, to limit his activities. Baghi is very clear that years of listening and documenting human rights violations suggest that these are rather common tactics. But Baghi’s letter is also a testimony to the strength of the human rights movement in Iran. The Baghis of Iran will neither leave nor give up what they consider to be their mission, no matter how hard the government tries.

Ahmadinejad’s administration has made a decision that Baghi’s imprisonment is probably the only way to silence him for now. But knowing Baghi, this very short term expedient approach will neither weaken his resolve nor the resolve of many others who respect his path.