By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor.
While it might seem to many a prima facie case where a dissident, Kurdish Journalist will risk their safety if deported to a country known for its ghastly mistreatment of members of the press, a Swedish Migration Court ruled that Journalist Kamran Mirzaian will be instead deported to Iran, citing no proof that he will suffer threats to himself or his freedom.
Iran is an internationally recognized pariah with regard to its oppression of journalists and is ranked the 11th worst of 180 countries according to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. Journalists subject facing capital crimes in Iran include Briton Salman Rushdie, the seven-year imprisonment of an economics journalist critical of the government’s financial policies, and horrific murders of journalists arrested for “crimes” involving ordinary journalism
In a three month period from November, 1998 and February 1999, Iran witnessed the killing of five journalists. According to Association of Progressive Communications, “secular opposition leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parvaneh, were stabbed to death in their Tehran apartment. Within weeks, three leading journalists-writers outspoken in their demands for greater freedom of expression in Iran – Majid Sharif, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Pouyandeh – were also found murdered.” The government claimed that the murders were committed by “rogue elements” within the security forces and responded with nothing more than show trials and secret proceedings.
In 2003, Photo Journalist Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian dual citizen, was tortured, raped and murdered while under arrest following her photography work at demonstration in Tehran.
2008 saw the execution of Yaghoub Mehrnahad under the auspices of “Supporting Terrorism” in reporting dissident groups.
The nation is widely known to execute persons accused simply of “insulting the prophet” or for modesty crimes.
Mr. Mirzaian arrived in Sweden in 2014 after having worked for several years in Iran. He has been politically active with Free Life Party of Kurdistan. Kurds are an oppressed ethnic minority in Iran and have for decades suffered reprisals and accusations of sedition and subversion.
““I want to be able to write articles and and do my work in my own language, but in Iran that would not be possible, because as a Kurd I don’t have any rights.” says Kamran Mirzaian.
Mirizain volunteers for NewrozTV, a Kurdish Language network channel featuring various life and cultural topics and is broadcast throughout the world. It is, though, banned in Iran.
The Swedish Migration Court did not consider factors such as that Mirizain could confirm his identity and dismisses his voluntary work at NewrozTV and his political advocacy have been extensive enough to attract the attention and ire of Iranian Authorities. As a result, the court does not find that an imminent need for protection and asylum exists. Despite Mirizain’s appeal of the lower court order, wherein he submitted additional documentations proving his political activities in Iran and elsewhere, he was informed yesterday that the Migration Court would not reopen his case despite new evidence.
Mirzain Commented:
“I came here with the idea and the hope that Sweden is a democratic country that stands up for people fleeing from dictatorship and oppression. When I heard about deportation, every hope that I had, dropped that moment. It makes me very disappointed and sad.
I don’t understand why the Migration Court makes such unfair decisions when they have all the evidences in front of them. I have shown what situation I live in, and still they decided to deport me to Iran, the regime where I awaiting a death sentence.
I can not return. A few weeks ago 20 of my comrades hanged by Iranian regime. I have received many threats, both via the Internet and telephone that I will be tortured if I will return to Iran again.
There seems to be a duality between Mr. Mirzain’s case and the plight of those Syrian Refugees who received in large part blanked offers of residency to escape the unrest in their home country. Reportedly, Sweden took in the most refugees per capita than any other European nation. But in his case, Mr. Mirzain finds that the Swedish government cannot accept just one additional person who already has established ties and assimilation within their nation.
One has to wonder what is motivating the court to deny asylum.
An Online Petition formed to bring attention to Mr. Mirzain’s fate asks for reconsideration by the Swedish government.
By Darren Smith
Source: e-Kurd News
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
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. It could just as well be that Sweden would drop the arrest on suspicion as soon as they had Assange physically on Swedish soil and instead grant the US request for extradition.
Here’s one of the nice liberal and Clinton supporter on Assange: “In August, a video reemerged of liberal commentator Bob Beckel who suggested in a TV appearance that Assange be murdered, proclaiming that someone should “shoot the son of a bitch!”
Assange will not be speaking from the balcony at the embassy this Tuesday due to security concerns. That’s our govt. So many killers running the show. They really don’t care about all their killing. Not one bit. It’s difficult to believe our nation has come to this.
Correction of my last post:
To more accurately comport with RA’s blanket condemnation of Muslims, I should have written, “…the thoroughgoing evil of all Muslims.”
@Ralph Adamo, October 1, 2016 at 4:25 pm
“KR – I have distilled the ‘drivers of human political behavior,’ as you bombastically put it, to its core essence. Many things in life are very simple once you truly understand them. Like the world is spherical, not a flat surface. When you get over your jejune modes of ‘thinking’ in the decade to come, you will begin to grasp the simple truths that I’ve spoken of.”
Speaking of simple-minded truths, such as the purported existence of “ultrasubcretins” and the thoroughgoing evil of Muslims, was the CIA run by Muslims or Islamophiles when it was operating its rendition and torture program?
“A former CIA officer says Portugal’s top court rejected her final appeal and she will be extradited to Italy to serve a prison sentence for her alleged role in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003 under a U.S. extraordinary renditions program.
“Sabrina de Sousa told the Associated Press by email Wednesday that she was waiting to be told when she would be taken to Italy, where she was convicted in absentia in 2009 and faces a four-year sentence.”
“De Sousa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India, told the AP she had ‘no idea’ when she might be sent to Italy. In an interview with Newsweek in 2012, De Sousa expressed bitterness over her legal situation, which kept her under virtual house arrest in the U.S.
” ‘The people responsible (for Abu Omar’s kidnapping) are sitting on corporate boards and living comfortable lives, traveling,’ she said of the senior CIA officials who planned the abduction. She said at the time she missed her mother and other relatives who live in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India.” [My emphasis]
Are you asserting that “leftists, liberals, and other ultrasubcretins” designed, organized, and operated the CIA’s kidnapping and torture program, which involved the complicity of so many governments of predominantly Muslim countries?
Were the two psychologists Muslims and/or ultrasubcretins whom the CIA paid $80 million to design and help implement its torture program?
By the way, and to tie a couple of things together, where in your cognitive matrix of simple truths do you place the observation of one wag that the CIA paid $80 mil for information regarding torture techniques that any Egyptian cop would have given them for 100 bucks?
@issacbasonkavich, October 1, 2016 at 4:11 pm
“No, Iran is retarded and mentally deficient. From a collective sociological perspective as a country Iran is backward, not evolving at a normal rate or retarded, and ruled by perverts and pedophiles or mentally deficient. Perhaps this is being somewhat blunt but step back and imagine the country as one person.”
Please.
If we’re to do that, why not, logically, step back and imagine the members of all countries, i.e., the human race as one person?
Or why not at least tax all Americans with being responsible for all the atrocities and war crimes of its federal government in the 21st century? Is America barbaric and criminal, or is it the case that some of its leaders and a sub-set of their minority of followers have perpetrated acts of barbarism and criminality?
Conflating in a derogatory way the inhabitants of a country with its authoritarian rulers, whether when speaking of Iran or of the US, is to think like those who are quite comfortable with mass civilian casualties from their wars of aggression.
No proof? Don’t they read the news?
Please, let’s offer this man asylum. Immediately.
I quite agree that the US should take this courageous journalist in. We need more folks like him here and he would be an excellent addition to our body politic.