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Let's Talk Human Rights

INS Capstone: Advocacy for imprisoned scholars in Iran

By Elizabeth Kolb, Katherine Mescher, Joseph Michael, Mackenzie Lawson, Maria Zaki, Zachary Harmant, Layla Saqibuddin, and Michael Lodes

Introduction

For our senior International Studies capstone project, our class worked collectively in support of  the non-governmental organization, Scholars At Risk, to develop advocacy for the release of two imprisoned scholars in Iran. (https://www.scholarsatrisk.org) Scholars at Risk (SAR) is an U.S. based international network of academic institutions - including the University of Dayton - organized to support and defend the principles of academic freedom and the human rights of scholars around the world. Academic freedom lies at the core of higher education institutions. The concept of academic freedom protects the freedom to think critically, question, and share ideas of scholars for the purpose of ensuring an environment of open inquiry, education and evidence-based knowledge generation. When governments target academics for their scholarship or speech, this can amount to a human rights violation.

In the case of Iran specifically, academic and other freedoms are repressed by the Islamic Republic, a regime that controls all facets of the country. Iranian academics and activists are being silenced through arrest, torture, imprisonment and other oppressive tactics, such as morality police, who work to enforce religious policy enforcing Islamic dress codes. Iran has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights which guarantees, among other things, the freedom of opinion and expression and freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment.  

Through worldwide attention to protests and at the World Cup, a civil resistance movement in Iran is calling for changes in the country’s governance. While acts of protest against the dress code for women in Iran have been occurring for many months, civil unrest caught global attention after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16th, 2022. Amini was arrested for not wearing proper head coverings and died in custody shortly after her arrest in Tehran by the morality police. Our scholars have also been directly impacted by the recent fire in Evin Prison, where they are being held, which occurred on October 15th, 2022. Both scholars survived the fire. The mounting pressure for changes in the governance in Iran could bode positively for our scholars in terms of potential release, and freedom to resume their work and recover from the trauma they have suffered while imprisoned.

Our scholars

We were tasked to create advocacy campaigns to urge the release of two scholars in Iran: Nilofar Bayani and Ahmadreza Djalali. Ms. Bayani is a wildlife conservationist and Dr. Djalali is a disaster medicine doctor. Both scholars have been imprisoned for espionage or conspiracy with the U.S. 

Iranian wildlife conservationist, Niloufar Bayani, was arrested by the government on January 25, 2018 while she was working for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. In October of the same year, Bayani and three of her colleagues, who were also arrested, were accused of espionage and "sowing corruption on earth," which carries the possibility of the death penalty. She was found guilty of the crimes by means of a confession, though Bayani expressed in letters that her confession was coerced through violence and threats. Although she was initially sentenced to death, in November 2019, advocacy from the international community calling her sentencing a human rights violation resulted in a reduction of  her sentence to ten years in prison. While avoiding capital punishment was an important victory for Bayani, freedom from her unjust imprisonment is a battle that is yet to be won.

Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali is an Iranian-Swedish doctor of disaster medicine who was arrested in Iran in April, 2016. Dr. Djalali believes that he may have been targeted by the Iranian government because he had earlier refused to use his connections in European academic institutions to spy on Iran's behalf. In January 2017, Dr. Djalali was brought before the Revolutionary Court in Tehran and accused of spying for the Israeli government. He was subsequently sentenced to death for the crime of “spreading corruption on earth.” His conviction was based on several “confessions” obtained through torture while he was in solitary confinement. In February 2018, Dr.  Djalali’s lawyers learned that the Supreme Court summarily affirmed his sentence, without allowing them to submit a defense, and that his death sentence could be carried out at any time. Since his arrest in 2016, Dr. Djalali’s health has deteriorated greatly. Following repeated hunger strikes, he lost 53 lbs and experienced a number of health problems, including showing signs of leukemia. In July 2019, Dr. Djalali was transferred to a secret detention facility, concealing his location from his family and lawyers. In this facility, he was placed under extreme pressure to confess to new crimes. In November 2020,  Dr. Djalali called his wife Vida Mehrannia with the message that he had to say goodbye; he had been placed in isolation and informed that he would soon be executed. To date, this sentence has yet to be carried out. 

What we did and learned

For many of us, this experience was the first time we created an advocacy campaign. This was a somewhat daunting task at first, as we recognized that our scholars' cases are incredibly significant and important, not only to scholars and advocates around the world, but also especially to their families. We weren’t sure where to start with advocacy, because the message about these cases should be heard around the world. So we adopted the philosophy that you can’t change the world if you don’t start in your backyard, and we did just that. We worked to advocate for these scholars on our own campus through tabling sessions, and designing and posting fliers around campus. (https://linktr.ee/bayaniadvocacy) We found substantial joy in  conversing with other students about Iran’s current events, women's rights and freedoms, and academic freedom. We then shifted our goal to reach a wider audience with this information, turning to social media to make more public noise about our scholars! Our groups posted live links to petitions from SAR which demand the release of our scholars from Iranian prison.

We found that our advocacy work strongly related to what we had learned throughout our undergraduate years in International Studies and was a meaningful project for applying the knowledge we’ve gained. Before this capstone experience, however, we did not know much about the current human rights crisis in Iran. One particular aspect of our work that opened our eyes was a first-hand account from an Iranian who owns a business located in Oakwood, Ohio. Hearing from an individual who has directly experienced and witnessed the injustices in Iran was incredibly eye-opening and impactful. We learned the difference between reading textbooks to understand a human rights crisis and speaking with citizens of the world who can describe personally and earnestly a personal view of the specific crisis. 

Through our advocacy for Niloufar Bayani and Ahmadreza Djalali, we grew our cultural awareness of global issues. We feel that through our advocacy we were able to educate the University of Dayton community on the events happening in Iran and the specific cases of our scholars.

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Since 2019, the Human Rights Center has partnered with the International Studies Program on its Senior Capstone to undertake impactful student projects that benefit its partner organizations.

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