"COMO LOS MUERTOS EN LOS ATAÚDES" es el título de este escalofriante informe de Human Rights Watch sobre la situación en las cárceles de Irán y el tratamiento de los disidentes y presos políticos. De la nota de prensa de presentación:

The Iranian government has intensified its campaign of torture, arbitrary arrests, and detentions against political critics, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Iran’s outgoing reformist parliament in May passed legislation to prohibit torture, but without effective implementation, the law remains an empty gesture.
The 73-page report, “Like the Dead in Their Coffins: Torture, Detention, and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran,” provides the first comprehensive account of the treatment of political detainees in Tehran’s Evin Prison and in secret prisons around the capital since the government launched its current crackdown in 2000. Human Rights Watch has documented systematic abuses against political detainees, including arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture to extract confessions, prolonged solitary confinement, and physical and psychological abuse.

“Claims that reforms in Iran have put an end to torture are simply false,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “More than ever, journalists, intellectuals and activists are afraid to voice opinions critical of the government.”

[...] The report documents the systematic use of prolonged solitary confinement as a tool to break the will of dissidents, and as a means to extract forced confessions. Individuals interviewed for the report, including a number of writers and journalists, told Human Rights Watch about brutal interrogations in which they were blindfolded, physically threatened, and forced to recant their political views. Former detainees also described basement solitary cells where they were left for weeks at a time without any human contact, and threats by judges that if they did not confess, they would be held in solitary confinement indefinitely.

Student activists told Human Rights Watch about physical torture experienced at the hands of plainclothes security and intelligence agents. The report documents cases of beatings, long confinement in contorted positions, kicking detainees with military boots, hanging detainees by the arms and legs, and threats of execution if individuals refused to confess.

The report also describes in detail the plainclothes intelligence agencies that work for the judiciary and are directly responsible for detaining and torturing those who criticize the government. These agencies often operate outside of, or parallel to, the established administrative structure of government and report directly to Iran’s religious leadership. The members of these “parallel forces,” whom former detainees describe as foot soldiers in the campaign against dissent, have not been held accountable for their acts.

Human Rights Watch documented the participation of judges in interrogation rooms—often in secret prisons—overseeing abusive and coercive interrogations, interceding with detainees and urging them to sign false confessions, and even issuing threats of their own. A number of judicial authorities, especially Chief Prosecutor Said Mortazavi, have blatantly abandoned their duty to fairly administer justice and instead are known for ordering the torture of political detainees.

[...] The report called on the European Union to increase pressure on Iran to take strong steps to end torture and ill-treatment in detention and restore freedom of expression. The ongoing EU-Iran human rights dialogue will have its next meeting in Tehran on June 14 and 15. The dialogue, entering its third year, has failed to achieve any tangible results. In fact, the human rights situation in Iran has markedly deteriorated since the inception of the dialogue.

Las negritas son mías; y es que, si se hace falta expertos en diálogo en la UE para que convenzan a los dirigentes iraníes de la necesidad de preservar un modicum de respeto a los derechos humanos, ¿qué mejor que enviar a nuestros especialistas patrios en diálogo para que apliquen el Método de la Sonrisa (® ZP) con los ayatolás?