A woman wearing a headscarf walks on the streets of Tehran, the capital of Iran.
UN human rights experts today demanded the immediate release of rapper and songwriter Toomaj Salehi and urged Iranian authorities to quash his death sentence.
Salehi was initially sentenced to six years in prison for his role in the 2022 Amini protest wave, but was released after Iran's Supreme Court ruled the original sentence was flawed. However, he was detained again on November 30, 2023, for expressing dissatisfaction with the Iranian government and making a video revealing that he was tortured and held in solitary confinement for 252 days after his arrest in October 2022. Two weeks after the video was posted, he was arrested again and imprisoned in Dasged prison in Isfahan. He was charged with "propaganda against the state" and was recently sentenced to death.
Criticism of government policies should be protected
"Criticism of government policies, including through artistic expression, is protected by the right to freedom of expression and the right to participate in cultural life," several human rights experts, including the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, said in a statement. This act should not be criminalized. In any society, art forms must be allowed to criticize, provoke thought, and challenge the bottom line. ”
The experts said reports they had received showed that arrests and detentions of Iranian artists, activists and journalists on charges of "publishing fake news" or "propaganda against the state" were becoming more common.
The human rights expert expressed concern about the criminalization of lawful artistic expression activities through the imposition of a series of dubious charges, arguing that "executions following an unfair trial constitute an arbitrary deprivation of life." ”
Call for the abolition of the death penalty
They called on Iran to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty. They stressed that, under international law, the death penalty could only be applied to crimes that met the threshold of "most serious crimes", i.e. cases involving intentional homicide, and that a verdict was taken after following the legal procedures that provide all possible guarantees to ensure a fair trial.
Since Salish's arrest in 2022, human rights experts have been mentioning his case to the Iranian authorities on different occasions.
In addition to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, the joint statement was made by the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and several members of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Special rapporteurs, independent experts and working groups are part of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, is the general name of the independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, dealing with country-specific situations or thematic issues around the world. Special procedures experts work on a voluntary basis. They are not United Nations staff members and do not receive a salary at the United Nations. They are independent from any government or organization and serve the United Nations in their individual capacity.
