New York’s based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that the increasing arrests of Iranian-American scholars is no less than igniting more hostility between Tehran and Washington.
Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American sociologist is reported to be held as a hostage since May 11. Some sources said that he is currently being detained in a notorious prison in Tehran. In addition to Tajbakhsh, at least three other Iranian-Americans have been held as hostages.
"The Iranian government is holding Iranian-Americans as pawns in its crackdown on local Iranian civil society," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. Whitson added that, “Iranian intelligence agents were trying to force these detainees to make false confessions to incriminate the broader community of Iranian activists and scholars."
This is an incommunicado detention, according to Human Rights Watch, as these detainees are vulnerable to make non-credible statements while they are in absence of their lawyers.
The 45-year-old Tajbakhsh is former professor and researcher at a university in New York. His career history as a consultant for several Iranian government agencies and other international organizations like the World Bank might have been seen by Tehran as a political reason of holding him.
Other detainee, Haleh Esfandiari is being held since May 8. The 67-year-old director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington came to Tehran in December to visit her mother, and has now been not only prevented from leaving Iran but also subject to political interrogations.
The ministry has also seized Esfandiari’s passport as a preventive means of having her leave the country. A Human Rights Watch official said, “The Iranian authorities on May 15 charged Esfandiari of having motivation against national security.” Human Rights Watch remarked the tension between Iran-U.S. has led to a communal predicament in Iran itself. Dozens of Iranian activists and college students have also been detained during the past months.
In the mean time, the Soros Foundation has called for the release of the detained hostages. The government of Iran, on the other hand, has accused the foundation of issuing propaganda against the Islamic Republic by promoting democracy and human rights as an insidious move to isolate Iran. Based on the release made available to Ground Report by Iranian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, the United States government has exaggerated the situation of how Iran is handling its hostages. Wednesday’s release said that the American troops on January 11, 2007 invaded the Consulate General of the Iranian Republic of Islam in the city of Arbil, Iraq. “Five Iranian diplomats were kidnapped and brought to an unknown place and a number of people in the building were humiliated.”
For that reason, Iranian government had thrown its protest to the United States through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tehran as the mediator. Ever since the Islamic Revolution erupted in 1979, Washington has cut its diplomatic ties with Tehran.
The prolonged of the two countries’ enmity was re-emerged in 2002 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared Iran as well as North Korea, as parts of ‘axis of evil.’ And the pressure seems to reach its boiling point as Washington accusing Tehran of both developing nuclear weapons and assisting Iraqi rebels.