Establishing a ‘Rights Regime’ in Iran: Thinking Communications, Politics and Gender Together

One of the greatest tragedies of the 35 years since the Iranian Revolution is that its human rights record is as bad, if not worse, than that of the last Pahlavi shah, despite the fact that the lack of political rights and freedoms were amongst the key motivating factors for the popular movement that produced revolutionary change in 1979. Since June 2009, a new movement for political and communicative rights has been quashed quite brutally, with many men and women enduring arrests, kangaroo trials, executions and flights into exile. In early 2011, it was estimated that executions were occurring at a rate of four per day; over 80 people have been executed in the first three months of 2014, under the ‘moderate’ President Rouhani.