WUNRN
Online Resources on Women in Prison
& Their Children:
Direct Link to Report - Quaker UN
Office:
WOMEN IN PRISON & CHILDREN OF
IMPRISONED MOTHERS
______________________________________________________________________
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture
After five years as the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says one of the most surprising and distressing of his experiences has been the realization of the appalling conditions endured by the majority of the world’s prisoners and detainees. “In many countries,” he says, “I was simply shocked by the way human beings are treated in detention. As soon as they are behind bars, detainees lose most of their human rights and often are simply forgotten by the outside world.”
With only a few months to go before his mandate expires, Nowak has produced a global study for the Human Rights Council detailing his experiences and major concerns and one of the most troubling, he says, is the condition of prisoners, those who have been sentenced and those yet to be charged and tried.
The detainees described in the report are from the most disadvantaged corners of society – the poor, minorities, drug users or aliens and right at the bottom of the prison hierarchy itself, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities and diseases, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-gender persons. These people, Nowak says, suffer double or triple discrimination.
Police lock-ups in many places are particularly bad. The Special Rapporteur describes cells that are dirty, crowded and without adequate light and fresh air: cells with no beds, mattresses or blankets, no toilets apart from a hole or bucket, no toilet paper, water or food. Many of the detainees are kept in these conditions, he says, for many days, weeks or months, and in some cases, even years......
Full Text: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/ConditionsInDetention.aspx
_____________________________________________________________
Al Jazeera - Rare Video Footage
Inside Iraq Women's
Prison - 2007
______________________________________________________________________
Film Inside Kasamatsu Gifu Japanese Women's Prison
- Revealing But Not Translated -
_______________________________________________________________________
Women News Network
March 3, 2010
ELAHE AMANI – Women News Network – WNN
Today on a daily basis, personal memoirs of
ongoing encounters of government crackdown and resistance in
In the process of finding a new
transitional global identity,
Younger, as well as older, women human
rights defenders, are now finding themselves victim to increasing intelligence
policies of non-disclosure, intimidation and repression.
The IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) state
detention policies act as only a surrogate solution to many of the social
problems now growing inside the country. Human rights groups and international
rescue teams watch as the list of detainees grows longer, as women have become
targets in a shifting Iranian system of legal sanctions.
“According to Iranian officials,” said
Amnesty International in a February 10, 2010 release, “over 40 people have died
in demonstrations since the election, which were violently repressed by the
security forces. Amnesty International said it believes the number to be at
least 80 and possibly many more. More than 5,000 people have been arrested,
many of whom were tortured or otherwise ill-treated.”
A clear crisis in the prison system inside
“Reportedly prisons have become over capacity and fail to
provide adequate conditions for prisoners.”
Iranian news agency, Payvand, February 19, 2010
As sports stadiums closed the doors to
women attending sports events; as family courtrooms denied the rights of women
to custody in divorce; as “proper” women’s dress became part of a hidden
discourse of Iranian social criticism calling dress code enforcement officers
“Chastity Guards” and “Morality Police;” women working in the field of speaking
publicly on the issues of gender equality have been placed in ever increasing
danger.
“The women’s rights movement has borne the
brunt of this repression, in particular since the launch of the ‘One Million
Signatures’ Campaign, in August 2006. This campaign seeks to provide education
on women’s rights at the grassroots level and to obtain a repeal of
discriminatory laws against women. To this end, the Campaign collects signatures
that it plans to submit to the Parliament,” said the International Federation
for Human Rights in an August 2007 appeal to the IRI.
The IRI is “in full compliance with the
relevant international commitments it has taken on in a genuine and long-term
approach to safeguard human rights,” said Secretary General of Iran’s High
Council for Human Rights, Mohammad Larijani, at a recent United Nations review
of human rights violations at the February 2010 UN Human Rights Council session
in Geneva.
If a woman collects signatures on a
petition to change discriminatory laws in
Almost exactly one year ago, Hana Abdi, a
psychology student from
Teaching human rights and legal rights
education to women in Kurdistan, Hana Abdi had gathered, before her arrest,
signatures in a nationwide effort to remove discrimination against women in
After two months in the Central Prison of
Sanandaj, Abdi was sentenced to five years of exile to a prison in the town of
Abdi’s sentence of exile was pressed
forward after she communicated with the outside world about conditions during
her imprisonment.
“Based on the testimony of Abdi’s family,
she was tortured while in solitary confinement,” said an October 2008 report by
the International Campaign for Human Rights in
“No judicial system can consider as valid a confession
obtained as a result of harsh interrogations or under torture.”
Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, UN Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment
Attempts by IRI government agents to
censure speech that outlines human rights causes and discussions inside the country,
and globally via the internet, has caused the website for the Campaign for One
Million Signatures (also known as Change for Equality) to be filtered from
appearing online 23 times.
Using ongoing policies to work through
peaceful means and assembly the Change for Equality Campaign was recently
referenced by intelligence officials as a threat to “National Security.”
Recently, on January 2, 2010, months after
a May 7, 2009 – 12 day incarceration, the 10th Branch of the
“Corruption traps millions in poverty,”
said Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle. “Despite a decade of
progress in establishing anti-corruption laws and regulations, today’s results
indicate that much remains to be done before we see meaningful improvements in
the lives of the world’s poorest citizens.”
Although Iranian women currently hold seats
in parliament, they do not enjoy the same political rights as men. Women are
barred from serving as judges and are routinely excluded from running for
office. Women also face systematic discrimination in legal and social matters.
A woman cannot obtain a passport without permission of a male relative or her
husband, and women do not enjoy equal rights under Sharia law statutes
governing divorce, inheritance and child custody. A woman’s testimony in court
is given only half the weight of a man’s.
The public call by human rights
organizations and world government bodies for the freedom of prisoners of conscience
in
Even as limited news reaches the public
about the incarceration and imprisonment of women in
On January 13, 2010, after days of
incarceration at the
“Sixteen (of the) Mothers who were taken to Evin prison,
though released, have an open judicial file against them and can be prosecuted
in the future.”
WLUML – Women Living Under Muslim Laws
Existing as a clear future warning to women
who have been incarcerated, open files on other women rights defenders are also
being kept by the office of the IRI judiciary.
The Mothers, who have demanded
accountability from the IRI state to investigate the death of their loved ones,
have been treated harshly and unfairly. In the process they have been harassed,
beaten, arrested and detained, denied medical attention and the right to legal
defense.
Five Mourning Mothers are still under
detention, and have been there for almost one month. They are Ms. Omobeyne
Ebrahimi, Ms. Elham Ahsani, Ms. Fatemeh Rastegari, Ms. Laila Seifalahi and Ms.
Jila Karam Zadeh Makvandi. One of the Mothers, Ms. Zinayee, has not been heard
from since January 8.
Despite these conditions the Mourning
Mothers are continuing their petitions for transparency.
The 2009 World Press Freedom Index for the
IRI ranks near the bottom. At a ranking of 172
While women experience unjustified
detention in Evin, and other prisons in
Conditions in prisons located in numerous
regions in
“The official capacity of prisons in
While Section 3, Article 20 (“The Rights of
People”) of the IRI Constitution states, “All citizens of the country, both men
and women, equally enjoy the protection of the law and enjoy all human,
political, economic, social, and cultural rights, in conformity with Islamic
criteria,” Iran’s official constitutional commitment on issues of human rights
has appeared flawed and on the years, yet to be proven.
The concept of women’s imprisonment
transcends prison walls.
Trauma and cruelty inflicted on women
political prisoners, and all other prisoners, inside the notorious prison walls
at Evin, reflect how
But as the Iranian narrative of nail and
hammer represses and violates the rights of women, women work harder to demand
their rights, to ask for their fair share of Iran’s public space, to attain
higher education, to be a more active agent of change in their life, in the
lives of their children and the improvement of Iran’s larger society.
To bring focus to the situation of women
prisoners of conscience in detention in
Of particular concern is the safety and
wellbeing of those detainees about whose whereabouts no information is
available.
The Campaign is carried out in honor of
many imprisoned women’s rights activists, such as Mansoureh Shojaee, Samiyeh
Rashidi, Mahin Fahimi, Zohreh Tonkaboni, Parisa Kakaee, Aliyeh Eqdamdoust,
Bahareh Hedayat, Mahdiyeh Golroo, Shabnam Madadzad, Maryam Zia, Parvaneh Rad,
and tens of others who are in jail “only because of their quest for equal
rights and democracy,” says the Campaign.
“According to prison officials, there are
2,575 men and 375 women in Evin jail,” said the BBC News in a June 2006 report.
It is certain that these numbers are have grown as crowded conditions rise
since the June 2009 IRI elections.
_____________________________________________________________
Video - Website Link and Scroll Down to Film: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Women%27s+Prisons&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=467c3568f2eec009
Director of the
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.