NGOs Monitoring Iran Prisons For Things To Accuse Israel Of Doing

It’s a model that has served human rights groups for quite some time.

Evin Prison, February 21 – Activists at some of the world’s leading human rights advocacy organizations have been paying close attention to the atrocities and abuses taking place inside the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prison system, recording crimes so they can later accuse Israel of perpetrating such against Palestinians.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other groups dedicated to highlighting such violations have sent teams of operatives to Iran in recent months to observe and report on the way political prisoners and others incarcerated for acts of conscience are mistreated during captivity. The teams monitor the torture, psychological and physical abuse, and the routine denial of basic human rights taking place under the mullahs’ regime, then compose and submit recommendations on how those activities can be included in rhetoric to denounce Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees.

A spokesman for Human Rights Watch noted that under normal circumstances, gaining access to Iran’s prisons and obtaining reliable information about the goings-on within would be impossible. “We have an arrangement with Tehran,” explained Mehbi Alqilya, who oversees the organization’s activities in the Middle East. “Our operations aren’t free, or even cheap, and our revenue has to come from somewhere. Fortunately, there is no shortage of countries willing to underwrite our reports as long as we highlight Israeli abuses, real or imagined, and make only token mention of things happening elsewhere.”

Alqilya declined to specify how long the arrangement has been in effect. “Let’s just say it’s a model that has served human rights groups for quite some time.”

His colleague at Human Rights Watch concurred. “We had a similar thing going with Saudi Arabia,” revealed Ken Roth, the organization’s director. “It could be awkward, taking money from oppressive, brutal regimes to ignore the full extent of their rights violations in order to maintain an obsessive focus on Israel, but no one in the mainstream press ever asks about it, so we’re quite comfortable having it out in the open now. Our operatives in Iran have sent us some of the most intriguing ideas of atrocities to accuse Israel of committing, and I just can’t wait to see our next report. It’s quite exciting.”

Among the possible novel additions to the accusations against Israel are the deaths of inmates labeled “suicide” by authorities, a prospect about which Roth voiced curiosity. “I’m itching to see how our personnel engineer that one,” he gushed. “Very few Palestinians die in Israeli custody, so I’m dying to know how they’ll integrate that charge. Will they simply ignore the fact that the people aren’t dying and just publish the accusations anyway, because no media ever call us out on it? Or will they find some creative way of distorting the data to support the charge? The tension is killing me, so to speak.”

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