A Letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Kurdish National Congress of North America

P.O. Box 90823, Nashville, TN 37209

USA

www.kncna.org

António Guterres

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Case Postale 2500

CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt  

Switzerland

February 18, 2009

To the Honorable Commissioner Guterres,

We are writing to urgently request safety through resettlement with refugee status for a human rights activist who is currently a refugee from Iran, Ms. Negin Shaykh Al-Aslami.  Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami was arrested and held by the Ettelaat (Iranian intelligence services) on October 5, 2008 in section 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran.  Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami, age 34, is a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign against laws that discriminate against women.  She also has served as President of the Azarmehr Cultural Association of Women.  She is actively engaged with promoting the principles of gender equality and the empowerment of women in Iran.  Her particular emphasis has been to recruit greater involvement of marginalized women and to eliminate gender gaps in health care and job opportunities in Iran. It is believed that she was detained in order to prevent her from participating in or planning activities in conjunction with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. A further complication for Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami is that her health is precarious and she has had recent heart surgery. She was released on November 23, 2008 with a bail of 35,000 Euros due to her deteriorating health, with the stipulation that she would be tried once her health improved. Knowing that she was not going to receive a fair trial and would consequently be persecuted, she left Iran to avoid certain long imprisonment.  

Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami is an academic and journalist whose goal has been to publish articles on women’s rights and to promote understanding of gender inequality issues.  Her arrest is part of a larger campaign of arrests against human rights activists lobbying on behalf of women’s rights that has taken place in Iran in recent months (as outlined by Amnesty International’s February report on human rights abuses).

By using the soubriquet of “anti-Islam” against Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami and other advocates of democracy and accusing them of “endangering national security” without providing reliable evidence of such claims, the Iranian regime has made itself both judge and jury.  Their judgment has led them to persecute innocent people including the public stoning of Iranian women.

Ms. Shaykh Al-Aslami is currently outside of Iran.  She clearly represents a case of a refugee whose human rights have been violated under the UN provisions outlined in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998, in particular with its Article 1, 5 and 12.

We urge the Commission on Refugees to work on her behalf to secure her refugee status in a nation that will permit her to emigrate so she may live in safety and free from imprisonment. 

Sincerely yours,

Kirmanj Gundi

President