Statement: Human Rights Activists of Iran re: Regime`s Recent Attacks

Orginal Article: http://bit.ly/brqlf2 Translated by @mehrza, @sbelg, @jomhourani

Wednesday March 17, 2010

 

Please Note - Upcoming News Conference:

Due to the extensive range of the accusations, and the crucial necessity of public awareness in this matter, in order to uncover the details and truths of the fictitious scheme of the Iranian government, the Association of Human Rights Activist in Iran is planning to hold a press conference on Monday March 22, 2010, which will be open to the public (for more information please follow our new website http://hra-iran.org/). During this conference HRAI will present its evidences and documents in response to the unfounded allegations by the Iranian Government.

 

The Nefarious Scheming of the Iranian Government: An Analytical and Comprehensive Statement by the Human Rights Activists of Iran Regarding the Regime's Recent Attacks

The Iranian regime has been condemned by the United Nations on 28 separate occasions as a violator of human rights and, as such, has always faced a serious challenge with regards to human rights standards. These violations became permanent as a result of lack of attention and will by the international community. However, with the start of the popular protests during recent events and increasing attention by the international community, the human rights issue opened a front that - along with the nuclear challenge - has put serious pressure on Iranian government.

In order to find a way out of this new crisis the Iranian government has initiated a range of unprecedented new attacks against Association of Human Rights Activists of Iran and other groups such as Advar organization, the Council for Protection of Education Rights, the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, One Million Signatures Campaign, the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization, Office of Tahkim-e Vahdat (consolidation of unity), the Islamic associations of students in various universities, Defenders of Human Rights Center, Professional Association of Journalists and many other community groups and organizations, all of which have been subjected to these systematic attacks. 

Below is a brief analysis of the roots and the motivations behind the above mentioned attacks. The following reasons explain the grounds on which the destructive attacks and accusations of the Iranian government against the human rights defenders and associated cyber activists have developed.

 

1. Elaborated extensively in a former interview with the spokesperson of the association (of the Human Rights Activists) published under the title of "Analysis of the Militarized Atmosphere of the Country", investigation of the structural changes in the security organizations of the country offer the following analysis: After the election and following the dominance of the Intelligence Agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corporation on the security establishments of the country, the security system has come to the conclusion that given the texture and popular basis of the protests, the social movements as well as the civil and human rights activists can constitute greater damage to the system than that potentially caused by any revolutionary political counterpart. This is because under the closed and thin political atmosphere of Iran, no political activism can escape the non-productive sterile life cycle. Whereas the social activists and non-governmental organizations, due to their deep roots in the various layers of the society and their lack of interest in the power games, are able to educate and organize various layers of the society towards the realization of their demands through the current civil rights movement. This argument has led to the systematic detention of non-political activists of various fields, such as those active in women's rights and students' rights, professional unions as well as artists and intellectuals;

2. With the revelation of its weaknesses, the security establishment's legendary reputation has become sullied.

The military and intelligence forces' reputation was tarnished due to their inability to put an end to recent protests. The state-run media's scope of influence was negligible because of the public's mistrust. The distribution of numerous films and photographs by independent and free media that exposed how the Basij, Intelligence, and Security forces were caught off-guard has put the ineffectiveness of these forces out in the open. Therefore, distorting reality, lying, engaging in incorrect narratives, and exaggerating the news - like the capture of Rigi or dismantling armed groups - combined with propaganda, became a means to make up for lost reputation;

3. The Serious Weaknesses of the Iranian Security Organs in the Cyberfield Arenas

In spite of all of the Iranian government's ambitions to control and block all of the news sources and communication networks, the internet world remains as the most significant vital communication and news resource of the Iranian dissidence. The failure in this respect has led to the questioning and re-evaluation of the technical capabilities of the security forces of the Iranian government in the cyberfield areas. The spreading rumor of inaccurate claims of the Revolutionary Guards' Cyber Team regarding its infiltration and destruction of the websites such as Iranian pornographic sites, or the failure of the so called "Darkoob" (Woodpecker) project, increasingly shed doubts on technical power of the revolutionary guard's cyber attack teams. However, the repetition of the same empty claims by the Iranian government regarding the cyber attacks and the technological battle against the Human Rights Activists' website and ultimately controlling and blocking its communication networks resulted in the complete revelation of the truth about the real extent of the security organizations' power in this field;

4. Worries Over Easing of US Sanctions Over Web Services

The United States' lifting of the ban on exports of web services and certain softwares in order to help free the circulation of information in Iran has been the cause of growing worries for Iran's intelligence forces. In order to gain future control of the Web, the regime has tried to create mistrust in anti-filtering software and, additionally, is setting the ground for subsequent legal action against users and distributors of such software;

5. Empowering and Advancement of the Human Rights Front, The Growing Significance of the Challenges Facing Human Rights

In the era of communication and power of public opinion, the awareness of the global community about the human rights violations against the Iranian people, has given rise to the global community's growing interest and support to the victims of these violations, and thereby pressure on the Iranian government to recognize and respect the human rights. This in turn togther with widespread efforts of human rights defenders has strengthened the latter groups' bonds with the Iranian people. Iran's attempts to remain as part of the human rights community of the united nation, under the influence and pressure made by the awareness of the global community about the reality of the human rights situation in Iran, in part has been the fruit of the human rights activists' hard work;

6. Distraction of the Public Attention from the Protests on Chaharshanbe Souri, The Persian Fire Festival Ritual

Due to the importance of this day because of its typical characteristics for the dissident movement in Iran and due to the Iranian government's concern in this regard, an unprecedented effort using physical and psychological plans took place by the government. One of these plans was creation of a sensational distraction with regards to the news and communication networks that would distract the public attention away from Chaharshanbe Souri;

Why the Association of Human Rights Activists of Iran Was Targeted: 

The human rights defenders involvement in transparent and peaceful activities that are independent from any ideological aspiration and political patisanship, makes them to be considered as one of the most vulnerable layers of the society in an intensive police state such as Iran. By the same token, the Association of Human Rights Activists, as a newly developing and well known group with a decent reputation and at least 4 years experience in the overt actions, but with mostly unknown members, became an easy target for the police state.

The international activities of the members of this association, their multiple participation in the United Nations assemblies as witnesses or reporters, networking with the various crdible international human rights organizations, and presentation of the most recent reports and analyses of the human rights violations in Iran, and similar activities were among other aspects of this association, a damage to which would be considered as a great reward to the security apparatus of the police state.

Other examples of possible aspirations behind scapegoating this association are the following:

• Given the above mentioned accounts, the Iranian government is more seriously challenged in the area of human rights in the international arenas, which have been strategically used by this association to direct the developing outcomes of the challenge towards an improvement in the human rights conditions in Iran;
• The weakening of government's traditional support base in the area of human rights, including the foreign supporters who, by trying to distract the international community's attention from the human rights issues towards their favored directions, allow the government to escape the crisis with least damage, and the determination of the HRAI in keeping the focus on Iranian government's human rights violations;
• On one hand, the HRAI's restless efforts along with all of the human rights defenders to prevent Iran's membership in the Human Rights Council of United Nations; on the other hand, the determination of Iran to become a member to overcome its current human rights crisis; 
• The fearless and official announcement of the organization's strategy that defines increased pressure on the regime and enhancing its accountabilty as the only effective way of fighting against the human rights violations in Iran;
• The HRAI's criticism of the international society's non-binding statements and positions with regards to the human rights violations in Iran;
• The HRAI demands for more serious measures that would target the interests of the human rights violators of Iran;
• HRAI's refusal to give in to significant amounts of pressure from the security apparatus of the country, which was applied to force this association to cancel its participation at the Geneva meeting and to abolish all of its international activities, to the extent that it left no choice for the spokesperson of the association but to refer to the ultimatums in his speech at the meeting with the following lines: "Before ending my remarks, I see the necessity to mention that our organization has been under tremendous pressure from the security agencies of the government to cancel the plans to participate in this meeting. However, our organization, in spite of the harsh consequences that could potentially be faced by its members and their families, decided to participate in this meeting and plea to the international society and its human rights activists to help in support of the victims of human rights violations in Iran.";

The Launch of the Scheme's Implementation

Considering the social circumstances, as well as the assessment of their own strategic choices for implementation of their scenario, the security agencies organized their activities.

Preliminary Arrests

In its statements after March 2nd 2010, the HRA disclosed the arrests of human rights activists who were mostly former members (whose collaborations in some cases dated back to 3 years ago) and were not current members of the HRA.

Almost absolute majority of these individuals who had transparent civil backgrounds were not members of the HRA at the time of their arrests and in some cases were not involved in any activity whatsoever. HRA was unable to identify many of the names anoounced by the state media as its members and this in itself is clear proof of the scope of the scheme.

Hostage Taking and Invasion of Privacy

On March 7, 2010, HRANA news agency issued a report titled as "Arresting the Sister Because of the Brother's Actions". In this report the detention of sister of Keyvan Rafii (the former general secretary of the organization), who was unaware of the truth of the events kept hidden from the public attention, was reported and accurately characterized as an act of hostage taking. Preceding to their actions the security forces had issued non-specific ultimatums to the HRA officials. On the night of their concerted attacks they confiscated the personal computers of Keyvan Rafii's sister as well as the PCs of the other HRA members' families. 

Ethics and Propaganda Maneuvers

The security organizations were aware of the potential outbreak of public attention and thereby increased publicity of the HRA name, which could have risen in the aftermath of any attempts by the security forces against this organization. Therefore, in order to accomplish their objectives without allowing advantageous outcomes for HRA, they accompanied their invasion of privacies of its victims with an outrageous disregard for the fundamental legal, humanistic and ethical principles. As such, they used a range of techniques such as forgery of the images and documents, deliberate misinterpretation of the facts, and application of sound and image effects to their recordings of their detainees to damage the reputation of the HRA in their propaganda war against this organization. 

The absolute majority of the information which has been unethically broadcast on television shows in recent days, is the forged and deceptively narrated private information of the individuals, to be forcefuly publicized as evidence of moral corruption, foreign-dependence and espionage affiliation of the subjects.

The producers of the above mentioned programs have made a conscious effort to portrait their so called revelations as a solid indication of the power of their intelligence apparatus and their dominance in control of the crisis. However, unless forged, substantial amount of this information has never been a secret to the public eye, and is as close as a simple search through the internet search engines or visiting the personal websites of the investigated individuals. Furthermore, the characteristically private information disclosed in these programs were obtained by extracting information from the personal computers of the detainees in the aftermath of their detention and confiscation of their computers.

It is worth mention that Article 22 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, honors, lives, properties, occupations, residences and legal rights of the citizens are protected under law, unless otherwise specified by the law. This is the same law that the governmental entities abide to comply with, yet have time and time again broken by publishing the tarnished images of the citizens, who in some cases didn't even have any background in political activism.

IRGC's Cyber Team Scheme

Investigations carried out by HRA's technical team show that the disruption of its websites was not caused by any hacking or techincal work equiped with an expertise in Cyber space, but instead, was the result of physical performance of security and intelligence forces in debriefing and interrogation of the detained technical staff of the company who provided IT support to HRA.

In veiw of the fact that the HRA is a domestic group, all of its service and technical support providers were also based inside the country. By arresting and torturing one of the technical staff members of an IT support team of a service provider and subsequently extracting all of the HRA account information from his computer, the security forces were able to obtain the passwords for organization's websites. They by using the acquired passwords, they brought down 6 webtsites which accomodate collectively 29 web addresses that belonged to the organization's 2 accounts.

The domains became inaccessible to the clients or in some cases were forwarded to the Gerdab website, as the agents logged on to the adimstration menu and changed the domain NS (name server).

This was what the state run media tried to attribute to the efficiencies of the IRGC's cyber team, while practically no hacking in scientific terms, and absolutely no interaction that could be qualified as cyber war had actually taken place.

Propaganda Aimed at Distraction of the Public from the annual Fire Festival:

Approaching the last Wednesday of this Persian year (1388), the main part of this scenario was played, including a wide range of propaganda highlighting headlines such as “Defeat of American Cyber Army“ and “Massive Destruction of a Spy Network” and so on. The list of the destroyed HRA websites, was presented to the people of Iran as a New Year’s present. The latter hit the headlines of many newspapers. 

A video related to this was repeatedly broadcast through the “National” Media and several media and press conferences, an acknowledgement and recognition statement was issued by 200 members of the parliament, and a bulletin by Tehran Public Prosecutor was out in the shortest time and in conjunction with all other news. Dozens of topics with opposing contents were released by the Government media on this matter. 

As mentioned earlier, distraction of public attention from the end of the (Persian) year protests, which is part of the plan by security forces to end public's protest, was one of the main objectives of this scenario.

Creating Security Concerns for Activists Abroad:

Showing maps with the marked location of their residence, showing them pictures that they had sent back to their families, with no further explanation, were all purportrated to demonstrate the strength of the security forces of the Iranian government in pursue and monitoring of the active dissidents outside the country. 

Spreading of undocumented claims such as pursuit of individuals residing abroad by  Internpol, by trying to convince the audience that the information is valid and the actions are already set in motion.

All of the above mentioned measures have been taken only to create an insecure atmosphere for the social activists abroad and to induce the belief that the Security Body of the Iranian Government is capable of tracking and observing anyone in any place of the world.

Documents:

The Security apparatus, by using advertisements that seem to be evidence-based, has accused the Organization of a wide range of crimes, yet has never to this date presented any document or proof of any of its allegations. The Human Rights Activists Organization, which is a group solidly committed to Human Rights with a positive and trusted identity, in a previous statement has and always will deny any affiliation with, or financial assistance from, any other group or organization including any political or human rights party. This Organization has never had any other activities apart from consideration of human rights. 

Current Situation:

Since November of 2009 the Organization, by keeping a close eye on the suspicious movements of the security organs of the Iranian government and the analysis of the texture and circumstances of their activities, HRAI has come to the conclusion that the scheme of confrontation and elimination of different social activist groups, is on the agenda of the security organizations of the government. Thus HRA has considered to take significant measures in order to protect the members and avoid possible harms to our organization in the current police state of the country.

That is why in an attempt to regain control of the situation and to avoid loss of information, the security organs started a series of hasty and blind-minded  detentions  of the various individuals including both former HRAI colleagues and irrelevant individuals, who were arbitrarily identified as affiliates of the HRAI.

The Human Rights Activists of Iran believes that the scheming of the security apparatus of the Iranian Government not only doesn't affect the determination of its members nor count as an obstacle in the path of continuing activities of this group. Nevertheless, in aticipation of transforming threats into opportunities, HRAI will continue to strengthen its foundations and capabilities without compromising its human rights standards.

News Conference:

Due to the extensive range of the accusations, and the crucial necessity of public awareness in this matter, in order to uncover the details and truths of the fictitious scheme of the Iranian government, the Association of Human Rights Activist in Iran, is planning to hold a press conference on Monday March 22, 2010, which will be open to public (for more information please follow our new website). During this conference HRAI will present its evidences and documents in response to the unfounded allegations by the Iranian Government.

Secretariat of Human Rights Activists in Iran

March 18, 2010

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