Iran International
A prominent doctor warned Thursday that new legislation designed to boost population growth in Iran would increase sexually transmitted disease by restricting access to condoms.
"[This law] will not only lead to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases but also a hike in HIV positive cases," said Dr Masoud Mardani, a member of the National HIV/Aids committee and professor at Shahid Beheshti medical university.
The legislation, passed by parliament in March and approved by the constitutional watchdog Guardian Council last week, outlaws tubectomy, vasectomy, and the free dispensation of contraceptives other than where pregnancy would threaten a woman's health. The health ministry has instructed family health clinics to advise women over-35 to wait only a year before again becoming pregnant and under-35s to wait six months.
The legislation reflects concern at declining population growth in Iran. The annual population growth rate, according to government figures, has dropped to 1.23 percent from 4.21 percent in 1984 five years after the 1979 Revolution, a decline due both to better family planning and growth in women’s education. Iran’s annual growth is now below Saudi Arabia at 1.6 percent, Israel at 1.8 percent, Pakistan at 2 percent and Iraq at 2.3 precent.
To encourage population growth, the law obliges the government to offer incentives, including a 7.5-fold increase in child-benefit payments to government employees, interest-free loans, and the free allocation of 150-200 square meters of land to urban families with more than three children.
The reformist Etemad newspaper on Thursday called the new law "populistic" in using financial incentives. "It will bear consequences and damages that have been ignored," the newspaper said. Etemad linked the issue to the ‘populism’ of reducing fuel subsidies – which disproportionately benefit the better-off – in favor of cash hand-outs to the less well off.
Tara Sepehri Far, Beirut-based researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, attacked the new law for undermining “the rights, dignity, and health of half of the country’s population, denying them access to essential reproductive health care and information.” Sepehri Far said that trying to increase population growth through “restricting the right to health and privacy” was "a delusional understanding of policymaking."
In 2014 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced that Iran should aim to increase the population – which is now around 85 million – to 150 million by 2050.
While the new law does not include a ban on pre-natal screening, doctors have been advised not to encourage it. The legislation has not taken up plans drawn up by the parliament's Special Committee for Population and Family to ban screening for Downs Syndrome, Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, which have been compulsory and generally free in public clinics since 2001.
The Iran Atrocities Tribunal convened in London Wednesday with testimonies from family members who sent recorded messages or testified via video on the alleged killing of their relative in protests in November 2019.
Regina Paulose, a member of the tribunal's counsel and an attorney who focuses on genocide and crimes against humanity, told Iran International that there was no “question of impunity” for Iran’s leaders. "The people's tribunal makes it known that… the leaders have to be accountable," she said.
While ‘atrocity’ is not a legal term, the tribunal follows the model of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which was held 2009 to 2014 to review alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians following the notion of ‘people’s tribunals’ advocated by British philosopher Bertrand Russell.
"When a similar tribunal was held for Palestine, [Iran's] Press TV was probably the only media outlet in the world that broadcast it live," journalist Mehdi Mahdavi-Azad said. "When such tribunals are concerning itself, they boycott them and make no mention at all.”
Mahboubeh Ramezanifard, mother of Pejman Gholipour, told the tribunal in a recorded message that she had kept her son’s “bloody clothes to show the world as evidence that my child was murdered.” Ramezanifard said her son’s jacket had “holes on both sides because he was shot with a live bullet."
In the afternoon session, United States-based opposition activist Masih Alinejad testified from her “own findings” that the Iranian authorities had made the families of those killed in the protests bury the corpses in remote places. Alinejad said this was “psychological torture.”
Alinejad also said “authorities” had threatened families not to talk to foreign media and has asked two for the cost of the bullet used to kill them. "The families believe there is no justice in Iran,” she said. “You can take your complaint against murderers to the murderers themselves.”
"We want this tribunal to hear the truth from witnesses," Shadi Sadr, a director of Justice for Iran, one of the tribunal organizers, told Iran International Wednesday.
Speaking via video to the tribunal, Nahid Shirbisheh said her son Pouya had been shot in the head while protesting peacefully alongside his mother in Karaj. She said hers was the first family to openly tell the world about “the atrocities of the Islamic Republic.”
"We didn't fear the consequences,” she said. “As a result, we have constantly been threatened and detained. Pouya's father is still in prison, in solitary confinement for seeking justice.”
The tribunal will in the next few days also hear the testimony of three Iranian police officers, a judicial official, and two doctors who tended to the wounded at their offices or homes to avoid arrest. These witnesses have travelled to London secretly.