Imprisoned labor leader calls for human rights probe
Published: Wednesday, June 11, 2008
12:37GMT—8:37PM/EST
RIGHTS – IRAN
Washington, 10 June (IranVNC)—Mansour Osanlu, head of Iran’s transport workers’ trade union, has written from jail an open letter, describing problems facing prisoners and calling for the investigation of the status of human rights in Iran by domestic and international civil organizations.
Osanlu, whose arrest last July during a labor strike met with widespread protest from international human rights groups and labor organizations, is currently serving a five-year prison sentence on charges of “acting against national security.”
In his letter, written on 5 June and published yesterday, Osanlu called on international organizations to investigate the human rights abuses of Iranians “and especially workers and prisoners”, to draw attention to their situation and to defend their rights.
“In prison, prisoners are completely vulnerable and separated from the world. Prison authorities carry out every kind of action – legal and illegal – against them…” he wrote.
“One of the problems facing prisoners is that the letters that they write to various authorities are ignored,” Osanlu added.
“Trials for union members are not announced, and are not carried out in the presence of a jury, journalists or the public,” he wrote. “The trials are carried out behind closed doors, in rooms resembling the Intelligence Ministry’s interrogation rooms in cell 209 of [Tehran’s] Evin Prison.”
He also wrote that since the day he was arrested when plainclothes officers hit him and insulted him, prison officials have refused his requests to be sent to a state physician to diagnose the injuries he incurred as a result of torture.
Sources: Dastranj News website
© IranVNC 2008. All rights reserved.
(Original article written in Persian.)