The government’s poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses, the State Department said on Iran in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2005.
The report cited, significant restriction of the right of citizens to change their government, summary executions (including of minors), disappearances, torture and severe punishments such as amputations and flogging, violence by vigilante groups with ties to the government, poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and detention (including prolonged solitary confinement), lack of judicial independence, lack of fair public trials (including lack of due process and access to counsel), political prisoners and detainees, excessive government violence in Kurdish areas, severe restrictions on civil liberties (speech, press, assembly, association, movement, and privacy), severe restrictions on freedom of religion, official corruption, lack of government transparency, violence and legal and societal discrimination against women, ethnic and religious minorities, and homosexuals, trafficking in persons, incitement to anti-Semitism, severe restriction of workers’ rights (including freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively), and child labour as examples of Irans violations of human rights.
There were reports of political killings. The government was responsible for numerous killings during the year, including executions following trials that lacked due process. Exiles and human rights monitors alleged that many of those supposedly executed for criminal offences, such as narcotics trafficking, actually were political dissidents.
It also reiterated a widely-held view that there was vote rigging in Irans elections in the summer of 2005 which brought hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Presidency. Ahmadinejad won the presidency in June in an election widely viewed as neither free nor fair, the report said.
