Western Human Rights vs Terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Dr. Amir Sharifi | Exclusive to iKurd.net

A new understanding of international law is needed as dismay and disillusionment with European philosophy of law in practice pervades Kurdish and Iranian diaspora after once again Europe re-enacts its dealings with the terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran.

The question of human rights came to the fore again as Belgium released a convicted terrorist Assodollah Assadi in exchange for a Belgian humanitarian worker, Oliver Vandcasteele who had been imprisoned in Iran for more than a year.

Assadi, a third consular in Vienna, had been caught red handed by European intelligence services, for providing explosives and a detonator to two other terrorists to bomb Iranian dissidents. More recently the regime in Iran in revenge, had condemned the Belgian humanitarian relief worker to twice as many years and 74 lashes for alleged charges such as “espionage”, charges that Belgian government had found to be “fabricated” and had demanded the release of the aid worker to no avail until a deal was concluded with the Islamic Republic.

While the release of the Belgian calls for jubilation, human rights organizations and entities are in lamentation when it comes to the release of the notorious terrorist, Assadi. Amnesty International bemoans an “Orwellian” tendency in European states not to treat terrorism a “trampling of fundamental freedoms”.

What is underneath of all this is the reformation of a historical appeasement between Europe and US with a terrorist state which in violations of international conventions has murdered a great many young women and men and kept thousands of people in prisons and their families and friends as hostages.

This very regime kidnapped Habib Chaab, a dual citizen who as an ethnic Arab had been living in exile in Sweden for a decade, was abducted in 2020 and then in 2023 executed.

The crimes committed against those inside and outside the country acknowledged previously by European States, now encounter open contradictions as Europeans such as Belgium after a temporary lull in the uprising for justice and fundamental rights in Iran, are switched into politically legitimating terrorism and denying clashes between human rights in Iran and European anti-terrorism laws in international law.

The fact of the matter is that from now on Kurdish and Iranian diaspora would not be safe as European states and the U.S find it their legitimate right to redefine terrorism in re-entering negotiations with the despotic regime in Iran where once again the activists, journalists, and critics, and a more active diasporic community would be the immediate target and facing even more retributions, surveillance and the unlawful actions such as kidnapping, assassinations for which the Islamic Republic of Iran has a notorious history particularly in Europe where European states are again more inclined to follow a transactional notion, a commodified human right in the pursuit of their own interests as in the past they turned a blind eye to try and tackle terrorism despite their claims not to undermine protection of human rights .

These violations of human rights and international law will reduce human rights to bartering with terrorism as if it was a legitimate system of diplomatic relations in paradoxical legal positions for which the theocratic regime spreads fear mongering and violence both inside and outside the country.

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou ,the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) secretary general, along with Abullah Ghderi Azar and Fadhil Rassoul, were assassinated in Vienna in July 1989, but the Austrian government set the perpetrators free to return to Iran, revealing the legal contradictions of its law and politics, letting Islamic Republic of Iran use terrorism as a political tool to advance its own ends.

Then came Mykonos assassinations when on Sept 1992, the successor to Ghassemlou as KDPI general secretary, Sharafkandi along with three of his companions were brutally assassinated, such assassinations have not been limited to Kurds. Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under monarchy, was butchered in Paris as was Hussien Mazi, the general secretary of “Arab Front for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz”.

Iranian Kurdish KDPI leader Sadegh Sharafkandi. He was assassinated on September 17, 1992, at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, Germany. Photo: archive

The impact of terrorism on human rights and its dangers in Europe and Iran in the case of Belgium is telling as the Belgian government has invoked the Belgian constitution to revoke its previous foreign policy. This is no longer a political allegory.

These developments legitimize terrorism that would have been condemned otherwise. The release of the notorious terrorist- who had only served 5 years of his twenty-year convictions- casts light on the transactional nature of human rights and international law.

The case shows how international law is the locus for the convergence and divergence of internal, external, and transnational politics and policies with respect to human rights.

The current release of a convicted terrorist is a testing ground the failures of international human rights guarantees at its worst. For instance, the world knows that the Islamic Republic does not recognize human rights as it defies international bodies and courts; its maxims and jurisprudence are used for covert and overt securitization and militarization of life ; its raisons d’être is contrary to the most fundamental human rights to its citizenry, but the question is if European complicity with the Islamic Republic has a better justification for ratifying a terrorist state in violation of the European conventions of Human Rights between individual and communal rights and their response to state terrorism in their respective countries .

An Iranian policeman from the morality police speaks with a woman siting in a police car after she was arrested because of her “inappropriate” Islamic clothes in Tehran, Iran, July, 23, 2007. Photo: AFP

Human rights is more relevant than ever. Islamic Republic of Iran has arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and tortured many; it has massacred thousands indiscriminately; it has militarized and murdered Kurds both in Iran and Iraq, and sent countless people to the gallows and has renewed imposing mandatory Hejab on women through digital surveillance and intimidations. Human rights advocates continue to promote human rights as an equal fundamental global right.

European States have capabilities and possibilities to exercise political power and agency in enforcing human right everywhere not just as a moral imperative but as a matter of global legal and political equity. They need to entirely denounce terrorism as the scourge of humanity bent on shattering any conventions. The alternative can be seen as the convergence of human rights with the convergence of interests that redefines human rights neither as a commodity nor as the propriety of a singular community.

In other words, it is the protest movements along with the steadfastness of democracy that could challenge autocracies by creating the possibility for human rights to separate lawfulness of human rights as national security from the barbarity of terrorism, conquering and dividing our world. Only such a dynamic and transformative democracy can save our world from its invasion.

Dr Amir Sharifi, a lecturer at California State University, Department of Linguistics, Long Beach.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.