Heart-breaking news: The Arab-Iranian poet, peace campaigner, human rights advocate, Arab cultural defender and political prisoner, Hashem Shaabani, has been executed in Iran on trumped up charges of “waging war on God” and threatening national security. Shaabani was executed in an unidentified prison in late January, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre reports. His hanging was reportedly approved by the so-called “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. He is the latest of more than 30 people executed in Iran in recent weeks. He had been sentenced to death in July 2012 by the Ahvaz Islamic Revolutionary Court for muharibih (“waging war on God”), sowing corruption on earth, propaganda against the Islamic Republic and acting against national security, it adds. Shaabani, a member of the Arabic-speaking Ahwazi ethnic minority, was the founder of an organisation promoting Arabic culture and literature in Iran known as the Dialogue Institute and was popular for his Arabic and Persian poems, Al Jazeera reports. It adds the 32-year-old often spoke out against the mistreatment of ethnic Arabs in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, including economic impoverishment, racial discrimination and the suppression of Arab culture. He was first arrested in 2011 and a year later he appeared on Iran’s state-owned Press TV, where following months of torture he was reportedly forced to confess to “separatist terrorism” and receiving assistance from Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. In a letter published by Ahwaz News Agency last year, Shaabani pleaded for the intervention of human rights organisations and insisted he had “never participated in any armed activity, whatever the motives.” He added: “I started my journey wielding my pen against the tyranny that is trying to enslave and imprison minds and thoughts; colonising people’s minds before colonising their lands and destroying people’s thoughts before destroying their region.” He insisted he could not have remained silent against “hideous crimes against Ahwazis perpetrated by the Iranian authorities, particularly arbitrary and unjust executions.” The father-of-one stated: “I have tried to defend the legitimate right that every people in this world should have which is the right to live freely with full civil rights. With all these miseries and tragedies, I have never used a weapon to fight these atrocious crimes except the pen.” Shaabani had a Masters degree in Political Science, taught Arabic literature in high schools and organised “peace festivals” which were banned by the government. He published his poetry online under the nickname Abo Ala Al-Ofoghi. Radio Free Europe says Shaabani was hanged after his sentence was approved by supposed moderate President Hassan Rohani. It also cites Freedom House as claiming he was subjected to severe torture and interrogation during the three years he spent in prison. • This post is a slightly edited version of an article by Sara C Nelson which was published by the Huffington Post UK on 10 February 2014: huff.to/1fZrVpU Left photo: Hashem Shaabani
Posted on: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:01:10 +0000
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