Two Iranian-Americans, a father and his son, were sentenced last month to 10 years in an Iran prison. Another son, Babak Namazi, is working to free them, and talks to Steve Inskeep about the ordeal.
Baquer Namazi, a long-time servant of UNICEF, now aged 80 and in frail health, is currently imprisoned in Evin Prison, Tehran. Both he and his son Siamak are citizens of both Iran and the US. In mid-October 2016, they were given ten-year sentences for unspecified actions hostile to their country of origin. There is nothing in Baquer Namazi’s life or career that offers any conceivable grounds for this sentence.
Born in Baghdad in 1935 to Iranian parents, Baquer’s father, Professor Mohsen Namazi, had a distinguished academic career. Following India’s Independence in 1947, he took up a post as Professor of Arab and Persian Studies at Kolkata (then Calcutta) University. In his teens, therefore, Baquer was brought up overseas, studying at St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and later studied in the US for an MA at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.
Baquer’s early career was in government service in Iran. In 1967, he represented Iran at a UNICEF Regional Seminar on Children and Youth in National Planning in Bangkok. Shortly afterwards, he was invited to join UNICEF as their Regional Planning Officer for East Asia and Pakistan, advocating with Ministries of Planning the importance of investing in services for children as a contribution to national development.
In 1971, Baquer was invited to join his own country’s Planning and Budget Organization in a senior position, and subsequently became its Deputy Director. For several years, he served the government of the Shah in various capacities, at one stage as Governor of Khuzestan Province. However, in the course of the long agitation against the Shah’s regime, he resigned from his post and returned to Tehran. He continued to live there with his family for some years after the 1979 Revolution.
In 1984, Baquer Namazi – who left Iran in the early 1980s – again joined UNICEF, this time in New York headquarters, as a Policy and Planning Advisor. Among other assignments, he worked on a policy paper concerning the protection of children in armed conflict. This brought him into contact with efforts then underway in Europe to draft a UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. His recognition that such an instrument would have immense value as an advocacy tool for UNICEF’s programmes helped bring UNICEF into the process which later led to the passage of the Convention and its almost universal ratification – including in 1994 by the Government of Iran.
In 1986, Baquer Namazi was appointed UNICEF Representative in Somalia. This was first of three head-of-mission jobs he undertook in countries in Africa, with a special concern for child victims of armed conflict and other ‘difficult circumstances’. He was also deeply concerned for marginalized children and families, particularly those of nomadic groups who tend to be excluded from regular health and education services. In 1987 he became Country Representative for Kenya.
In 1991, Baquer became UNICEF’s Representative in Egypt, a position he retired from in 1997. During this assignment he again focused on issues of marginalization and regions where child poverty was extreme. During one mission in Upper Egypt, the team he was leading was ambushed by a terrorist group, and he was lucky to escape with his life – others did not. He was willing to jeopardise his life on behalf of children, but no-one imagined that this would include, at the age of 80, imprisonment and trial for engaging, as a humanitarian, in actions supposedly inimical to Iran’s national interest.
Since his retirement from UNICEF, Baquer has lived with his wife in Tehran. He has been active in humanitarian work, playing an influential role in shaping the programme of the Hamyaran NGO Resource Centre established in 1998. This non-profit, independent institute runs a programme designed to boost the capacity of Iranian NGOs by training, advocacy and use of participatory techniques. The goals of reducing poverty, vulnerability and deprivation that have been at the heart of Baquer’s career have continued to inform his life in retirement.
Baquer Namazi’s career has been dominated by a humanitarian impulse, and he has made a contribution appreciated by hundreds of colleagues and programme partners, touching the lives of thousands of people throughout the world.
Forty nine years ago, as a young recruit in UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund), I met in Bangkok, a young Iranian civil servant. We were together in a regional seminar focussed on bringing the needs of children into national development plans. From the beginning I was struck with BaquerNamazi’s commitment to the needs of the poor and particularly to children living in poverty.
Over the intervening five decades while I served with UNICEF across Asia (including Indonesia in the early 1970s), Baqueralso served UNICEF in Asia, rejoined his government’s service and then following the revolution in his country, re-joined UNICEF. He served with distinction, but more importantly with great heart, in UNICEF Headquarters, and as head of UNICEF missions in Somalia, Kenya and Egypt. Baqueradvocated policies and crafted programmes to serve some of the most disadvantaged children and families in the world. He was also a champion within UNICEF and across Africa for enhancing the rights of children. When he and his party were attacked by terrorists in upper Egypt with loss of life, he comforted families and surviving staff with great compassion and helped them re-dedicate themselves to the mission of UNICEF .
Even in retirement from UNICEF since 1996, Baquer continued advocating for support to children caught up in situations of armed conflict. Baquer throughout his life has been a great humanitarian … a great American humanitarian, as he acquired U.S. citizenship in the 1980s.
The fact that Baquer at the age of 80 and in fragile health is now in prison in Iran, tears at my heart. All of us who have known and worked with him over decades know that he has not a political bone in his body … only a soul truly caring for the least advantaged around the world.
I hope and pray that sometime in the closing days of your great administration you may be able to speak out for freedom for Baquer, and perhaps ask Mr. Trump to do all he can to bring about freedom for BaquerNamazi.
I am a Senior Citizen and a longtime admirer and supporter of yours, now appealing as strongly as I know how, for your personal attention to the plight of Baquer Namazi, an American citizen languishing in a Tehran jail.
Arrested and imprisoned last February, my ex-UNICEF colleague and friend, Baquer, has just been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. As he is 80 years old and physically frail, that judgment in fact becomes a life sentence. An older person myself at 84, I can only imagine how my friend must feel. His health is far worse than mine and the psychological stress on him surely crushing. Yet he has maintained his defiant posture in steadfastly rejecting the unconscionable accusations against him.
Baquer and I worked together in the 1980s and 1990s in Eastern and Southern Africa, he as UNICEF Representative to Kenya, the land of your forebears, and I as Regional Director also in Nairobi. Each day offered a new opportunity to bring more hopeful futures to Kenyan and other African children and women. Yet, despite his long-time humanitarian efforts, Baquer, of dual American-Iranian citizenship, was condemned (quoting Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafai Dolatabadi) for “espionage and collusion with an enemy state [the United States].” Baquer’s work with UNICEF an American plot? No way!
For eight months, hundreds of UNICEF retiree colleagues of Baquer’s worldwide, many of us American citizens, have been writing to Congressional representatives, Ambassadors, and media contacts to publicize Baquer’s situation in hopes these would lead to his release. We know that the State Department has made valiant efforts on behalf of Baquer and other dual nationals similarly detained. UNICEF has issued three public statements of concern in his behalf, and influence has been brought to bear in many other parts of the United Nations and international human rights systems. A small group of us even appealed directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to grant clemency to our colleague on humanitarian grounds. So far, those responsible for the incarceration of this blameless and dedicated American have not budged from their hardline stance.
I am now turning to you, my President, in the hope that you will personally find the words and arguments which we have not been able to discover, to reach out to your Iranian counterpart at the highest level and set in motion the freeing of Baquer Namazi. Our fervent wish is that, during this final phase of your administration, you will personally take up his case and demonstrate once again both your profound sense of humanity, and your capacity to reach out across otherwise unbridgeable divides.
In justice and compassion, I ask you from the bottom of my heart to do whatever you can to free our fellow countryman, Baquer Namazi.
I have been thinking a lot about both freedom and prison lately, and the meaning of both extremes. Why? - because I, along with nearly a hundred other former UN and UNICEF colleagues, have been working for months now to gain the freedom of a friend and former colleague in prison in Iran.
Baquer Namazi, now 80 years old, was arrested on February 22, 2016 and has been held since then in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. His elder son, Siamak, was arrested last October and is held in the same prison. Both father and son were on trial last week in Tehran in a 'closed' court with no public mention of the trial, the charges, or the verdicts. Both are dual nationals, in their cases, Iranians with American citizenship. They are among perhaps 9 other dual nationals held today on spurious charges - 4 Americans and 5 British. All are apparently kept as bargaining chips in Iran's less than diplomatic negotiations with western countries. In short, they are hostages.
Having myself reached the young age of 70, I shudder to imagine what imprisonment at age 80 means for anyone.
I cannot speak to the cases of the other hostages, but I can certainly speak to the life and career of Baquer Namazi. I first met Baquer in Somalia in October 1987 when I was the incoming head of the UNICEF mission there, and he was the outgoing. He had recently been transferred to Nairobi as head of UNICEF´s office and program for Kenya. Baquer later moved on to Egypt as UNICEF’s Representative there. It was in Egypt that Baquer and another UNICEF official were wounded and narrowly escaped death in a rebel attack while they were visiting schools and health centers in an under-served part of the country. The UNICEF photographer traveling with them died in the attack.
I remember Baquer particularly for his devotion to improving health and education services for nomadic children. Then as now the government was struggling just to provide a few meager services to urban families. Yet Somalia is a country of nomads and the condition of nomadic families was and still is far worse than that of their counterparts in the towns. Few services reach beyond urban limits. Yet, every Somali honors his nomad roots, and so Baquer’s harping on the need to serve the most needy struck a sympathetic cord. New efforts were made and projects put in place. Every minister and public official I met recalled Baquer’s quiet determination that government should serve those beyond the city and towns.
Baquer kept that same determination in his other postings, Nairobi, Cairo, and in New York where he played a key role in the adoption of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child - a bold statement both of rights and obligations eventually subscribed to by almost all countries of the world, including Iran.
After his retirement from the UN, Baquer went on to work as a consultant for the Population Council and the World Bank. While working for the latter he authored an important study on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Iran.
Back home in Iran, Baquer founded and led an NGO devoted to improving the situation of destitute women and children. He succeeded in convincing the Iranian government to allow Afghan refugee children free schooling, something denied them for many years. In his global network of contacts and friends, Baquer resurrected the idea of ‘Children as Zones of Peace’ by which he meant that both the international community and warring parties in conflict zones like Syria, Iraq and South Sudan among other points had an obligation to protect and continue essential health and education services whenever and wherever possible.
While Baquer did argue for better services for women and children, he was never a vocal critic of his government. In fact, in the US both he and his imprisoned son, Siamak, were known as advocates of rapprochement, beginning with a relaxation of western sanctions on food and medicines for Iran. This advocacy made them targets of right-wing Iranian expat groups in the US who opposed the nuclear deal and any rapprochement between Iran and the West.
Yet, Iranian opposition to the nuclear deal and rapprochement was not just among right wing elements of the Iranian expatriate community, but also in Iran itself. The Iranian government is deeply split between on the one hand those like President Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Zarif, and on the other the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the Judiciary, the Intelligence Service and the Revolutionary Guard. One irony is that the Supreme Leader himself signed off on the nuclear agreement, but ever since has railed against it as submission to the Great Satan. His faction of the government seems anxious to throw every obstacle possible in front of improved relations with western countries.
Indeed, it was the Revolutionary Guard which arrested both Namazis and the Judiciary which is trying their cases. The ‘other faction’ made up of those close to the President and the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s diplomats, seem anxious to free the Namazis, or at least have them ‘off their plates’. Arresting dual nationals, including aid workers, foreign businessmen and journalists, is not a good signal that Iran is open for business again.
I need to point out here that Iranian law does not recognize ‘dual nationality’. Once an Iranian, always an Iranian under these laws. Moreover, in the present day ‘dual nationals’ are seen by more conservative Iranians as a ‘third column’ of people who bring western ideas and money back home with an intent to undermine the Revolution and revert the country to the western decadence that existed under the Shah. According to one Iranian news service, “The conservatives say dual nationality is one of the major canals for foreigners to infiltrate the Islamic Republic.”
Of course, imprisonment of the Namazis and other dual nationals is not due to their holding of dual nationality, but because their second nationality happens to be US, UK, French or until a recent release, Canadian. All are held because they are well known in their second countries where they will be viewed sympathetically. In fact, there are thousands of other dual national Iranians who ‘go home’ each year to visit relatives, do business, or just want to see the old country. Many of these hold the same western nationalities as those detained, yet are not arrested.
So why detain these nine or ten? Precisely because they provide useful bargaining chips in the next phase of Iran’s tortured return to the world stage. Five earlier hostages were released in January. This release came about in parallel to the larger nuclear deal and the agreement to unfreeze Iranian assets. It must have been clear to conservatives that if Western nations were willing to give up so much, albeit in Iran’s own frozen funds, there was a golden opportunity available in arresting more hostages. It was also likely an opportunity to embarrass their political opponents at home, those anxious to show the world a new face of Iran.
On the world stage the detention of a few dual nationals by one country may not seem all that important. After all, we are in the midst of seemingly endless civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, multiple terrorist groups, growing rejection of refugees, rising nationalism and racism. Against this backdrop, how much does the detention of 10 or even 20 individuals count?
Baquer Namazi is an 80 year old US/Iranian citizen who has spent a lifetime in the service of humanitarian causes and especially as a defender of children’s rights. He was detained when he landed in Iran in February and has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Baquer is unwell and this sentence is likely to mean that he will die in prison, unless the authorities feel able to exercise some compassion. The charges are not entirely clear as the trial was carried out in private. However, a video released by the Iranian authorities refers to a charge of “cooperating with the hostile American government.” It appears that Baquer’s wonderful humanitarian work for the UN, and particularly for UNICEF, is cited as indicative of this charge. Many of Baquer’s friends in the humanitarian world are doing all they can to appeal for his release. I have not met Baquer myself as he retired before I began my own career with UNICEF. But I know his honourable and committed reputation and I know and trust the many colleagues who are working for his release. I don’t want to see this elderly man, after a life devoted to a better, more humane world, die in prison. If he is going to be freed, it is vital that his story is told. So here (with thanks to the colleagues who worked with him) is Baquer’s story, and a powerful statement from his son, which deserves to be read as widely as possible. If you read this blog, please share it through any channels available to you.
Baquer Namazi was born in Baghdad to Iranian parents. His father, Professor Mohsen Namazi, was a religious leader of the Shia community in India after independence and the head of the Department of Arabic and Persian Studies at Calcutta University, teaching, among other subjects, Islamic studies for graduate students. Baquer studied in Kolkata (then Calcutta). He later received a Masters degree in economics from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
In 1967 Baquer represented Iran at a UNICEF seminar in Bangkok and made such an impression that he soon became UNICEF’s first Regional Planning Officer for the East Asia and Pakistan Region. He was a powerful advocate for children with the Governments of the region, arguing that investment in children was vital to the future success of their countries. He returned to Iran in 1971 but re-joined UNICEF in 1984 as a Policy and Planning Advisor in New York. Based on his work in Iran, he brought to UNICEF a special concern for the needs of poor, nomadic people who are so often left behind.
Baquer representing UNICEF in happier days
In the mid-1980s, as work began on the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Baquer saw the importance of building a global consensus for children and played a key role in UNICEF’s advocacy for the Convention which was finally adopted in 1989. It was of great satisfaction to him that his own country ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994, just four years after it was adopted by the UN. For his work in promoting the Convention within UNICEF, Namazi was awarded a Medal of UNICEF, by the late Executive Director, Jim Grant. The Convention has made a dramatic difference for children all over the world and has contributed to saving and improving the lives of many millions of children. Baquer Namazi can take a significant part of the credit for that great global achievement, but even as he worked to promote the Convention, he continued to devote himself to leading practical support on the ground for some of the world’s most disadvantaged children.
In 1986, as Somalia slid towards civil war, with children facing dreadful violence and suffering, UNICEF needed someone to lead the response. This was dangerous and demanding and there were few qualified volunteers, but Baquer Namazi stepped forward and offered to take the job because of his devotion to the cause of the most at risk children. He repeatedly travelled to rural and nomadic areas to learn first-hand about the problems and challenges of families and children. One former colleague recalled: “Once we travelled west to the bush and slept under the stars and ate camel stew and spaghetti with the nomad chiefs around a fire, to learn more from them about education and health practices for children.”
Later, as UNICEF Representative in Kenya, Baquer continued his campaign for greater attention to the rights of the children of nomadic peoples and for the protection of children in armed conflict and from abuse and neglect. He played a major in securing the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child across Africa, now including every country of the continent.
As UNICEF Representative in Egypt, Baquer also worked with religious institutions to find the roots for child rights in Islam. But he loved to be in the field with communities, families and children. During one such trip, his mission was ambushed by a terrorist group. One team member lost his life, as well as the entire security escort, while Baquer and another team member were injured. But this experience only encouraged him to follow his cause with even more passion and determination to serve “the most vulnerable”. He also redoubled his efforts for measures to protect children at risk of violence.
Baquer Namazi became a respected and much admired father figure to many of his colleagues and counterparts, a very caring person with a high sense of morality and commitment to the cause and mandate of UNICEF – serving the critical needs of children and advancing the rights of children and women.
He retired in 1995 to glowing tributes to his integrity, humility, fairness and deep spirituality, his respect for others, and his openness, impartiality, empathy and compassion particularly for the least fortunate. Baquer Namazi is a devoted, exceptional and principled humanitarian. It was always clear that retirement would not halt his work for children. In his retirement, he has initiated a global dialogue on the importance of protecting children at risk from armed conflict. Almost single-handedly he has resurrected the concept of “Children as Zones of Peace”, which began in Central America in the 1980s. Hundreds in international agencies, in research and academia, and non-government groups around the world have been brought into the dialogue.
After his retirement Baquer and his wife settled in Dubai. A few years ago, however, they decided that the situation in Iran would allow them to go home to Tehran. Their two sons, Siamak and Babak, were both at university in the US.
Baquer started an NGO in Tehran working on issues of poverty among girls and women while Siamak worked with companies interested in new business opportunities arising from the greater opening up of Iran. Later, Siamak was working elsewhere in the Gulf. Last summer, however, he returned to Tehran to attend a funeral and to see his parents. When he went to the airport to leave, the authorities seized his passport. Over the coming months he was called back several times for questioning. In October 2015 Siamak was arrested.
His parents, of course, were frantic and kept asking permission at least to visit him. All requests were denied. Siamak began a hunger strike in prison. When news of this reached his parents, they finally broke the silence they had maintained since his arrest. They began encouraging relatives and friends outside Iran to publicize Siamak’s situation.
Baquer and Siamak Namazi
In February this year, after months of trying to get permission to visit Siamak, Baquer went to Dubai to visit his younger son, Babak and his family. While there, Baquer received a phone call from the authorities telling him that permission to visit Siamak had finally been granted and he should return at once. Baquer did so, and was arrested on arrival at the airport. Finally in mid-October both Siamak and Baquer were sentenced to 10 years each.
Baquer has a heart condition and has lost a lot of weight while in prison. I and his former colleagues, and all those who know him, are shocked and saddened by what has happened and are hoping that some sense of compassion, as well as respect for Baquer’s life of humanitarian endeavour, may yet lead to his early release so that his health can be looked after and he does not have to end such a magnificent life in the worst of places. Baquer has spent a life of commitment and sacrifice seeking freedom for others – freedom from want, freedom for danger, freedom from sickness and suffering. For him to end his life without such freedom would be tragic. Others have been released under similar circumstances. There is hope. Perhaps Baquer’s unique story will yet bring a humanitarian response from those who have the authority to release him.
But I can’t express the seriousness of the case of Baquer Namazi half as well as his own family, so here are the moving words of his younger son Babak Namazi on hearing of the sentences handed to his brother and his father.
“It is with utter shock and dismay that we have learned of the news of the unjust sentencing of my 80 year old father Baquer Namazi and my brother Siamak Namazi both Iranian Americans to 10 years in prison each. In the case of my father this is tantamount to a life sentence. This follows one court session of a few hours for each of them. The details of the charges are unknown to us as of yet.
My father served with distinction as UNICEF’s representative in the most dangerous parts of the world and then in Iran dedicated his life and efforts to poverty alleviation and helping disaster victims. Siamak’s only crime has been to speak out against negative effects of sanctions and how sanctions prevented Iranian people’s ability to obtain medicine. It is beyond comprehension that the court and those holding our loved ones have criminalized the humanitarian efforts of my father and brother.
In the past days, a video of my brother Siamak Namazi has been posted by those holding him. It pains us immensely to see such videos which go against all principles of justice, Islamic reverence and what we would consider basic human decency. The same can be said about the articles full of fabrications and baseless accusations being posted on various websites for the past year depicting my father and brother as saboteurs and infiltrators. A one sided attack on my innocent brother and father who cannot defend themselves goes on with impunity, no accountability and against all standards of decency.
Going against the wishes of my mother, I have a duty to break our family’s silence. My father has been handed practically a death sentence and it will be a criminal act by me, his only able son, not to fight for my father’s life and freedom as well as that of my brother.
We are all extremely concerned for both their well-being and specially my father’s who at this frail age of 80 and his heart condition which, along with other ailments, threaten his life. At his age and in his condition it is highly doubtful that my father will survive any time in prison let alone a 10 year unjust prison sentence.
On behalf of my family, I call upon the authorities to immediately release Baquer Namazi, an innocent and fragile 80 year old man, and not to further jeopardize his health and wellbeing. I similarly call for the immediate release of Siamak Namazi.
I reach out to all those who care, to help save my father’s life and to free both father and son to return to the open arms of their family”.
Let us tell the story of Baquer Namazi as widely and well as possible and appeal to anyone who has the possibility to help to do so urgently. Let this brave humanitarian spend his final years in peace with his loving wife and family.
Working for children used to be above the political dividMaggie Black
For Other News
Oxford, 29 October 2016
During the 40-year stand-off between the US and USSR superpowers, every outbreak of hostilities on the globe was sharpened by the Cold War division. Yet it still remained possible to uphold the principle that humanitarian effort on behalf of children occupied a status above the political divide.
During the 1980s, in conflicted countries from El Salvador to Afghanistan, Lebanon to Mozambique, this principle was reinforced by calls from UNICEF to declare ‘Children as a Zone of Peace’. Cease-fires were negotiated to pause fighting long enough to allow essential health programmes to be carried out.
What an irony it is, therefore, that one of the architects of this approach, Baquer Namazi, an 80-year-old US-Iranian citizen who served UNICEF in senior positions during those years, should now be detained in a Tehran prison for having participated in such initiatives. It appears that Namazi’s affiliation with UNICEF and similar international bodies engaged in programmes to spread education, health and social protection services among disadvantaged families in Africa and elsewhere, is being presented by certain Iranian authorities as evidence of sinister proclivity towards the US and hostility towards his country of birth. How can that possibly be the case? Whatever the differences between the US and Iran, both have always been strong supporters of UNICEF.
This grotesque misrepresentation of the humanitarian mission marks a new low in efforts to discredit the reputation of dedicated individuals – and the organizations for which they work – as conniving puppets of political interest groups. All governmental authorities have an interest in maintaining those reputations and the impartiality of individuals and organizations working for the relief of human distress. Not to do so is ultimately to jeopardise innocent lives everywhere, including those under a country’s own jurisdiction, who may desperately need those services at some time in the unpredictable future. Sadly, in some contested environments to ignore or undermine a blue UN or Red Cross/Red Crescent insignia has become almost commonplace. For increasing numbers of professionals in humanitarian work, political and social disorder has increased their exposure to personal danger. Baquer Namazi, a UNICEF Representative who served in difficult duty stations such as Somalia, himself experienced this kind of incident. In Egypt, when leading an aid team that came under armed assault, he barely escaped with his life. Little can he have dreamt that his survival and continued pursuit of a caring career long into pensioned retirement would, years later, land him in prison.
On October 5 2016, Baquer Namazi underwent trial in Tehran. His son, Siamak, also in detention in the same prison, had already been tried a few weeks earlier. On October 18, both were sentenced to 10 years in jail. If the arrests were incomprehensible, the sentences are even more so. For Baquer, ten years amounts to a sentence of death, as his second son Babak Namazi has publically declared.
Originally, it was Siamak Namazi who was arrested and imprisoned, in October 2015 when visiting family in Tehran. Siamak, also a US-Iranian national, was known as a campaigner in the US against the harshness of US sanctions against Iran, promoting foreign investment and international cooperation as beneficial for his country of birth. He did not need to do this, he could have taken up an occupation without any association to Iran, so his actions laid him open to suspicion in certain minds. By some Iranian hardliners, he was accused of being an ‘American infiltrator’; by some diaspora oppositionists, he was accused of being ‘a regime sympathizer’. For a businessman, it is hard to stay above the political divide in highly charged circumstances even if the accusations are entirely without foundation.
Surely the issue is different when a person has no business interests, is elderly, retired, and whose career has been committed to social well-being and relief of human – especially child – distress. So when Baquer Namazi went to Tehran to try and see his imprisoned son in February 2016, no-one could have imagined that his impeccable humanitarian credentials, which should surely have identified him as politically non-aligned, would be used to justify his own incarceration. For the last nine months, there have been two Namazis sequestered in Evin prison for reasons that are inexplicable to most observers.
The outcry from both Siamak’s friends and associates, and from UNICEF friends and colleagues of Baquer, has been continuous and public. UNICEF itself has made three public statements, the most recent in response to the news of the ten-year sentence imposed on Baquer. The statement issued on 18 October concluded: “Baquer is 80 years old and the entire UNICEF family are deeply concerned for his health and well-being. Baquer has been a humanitarian all his life. We appeal for his release on humanitarian grounds.”
The US State Department echoed this appeal. “We join recent calls by international organizations and UN human rights experts for the immediate release of all US citizens unjustly detained in Iran, including Siamak and Baquer Namazi, so that they can return to their families.”
In March 2016, a month after Baquer was arrested, an electronic book was published to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the death of James P Grant, the dynamic and visionary Executive Director of UNICEF under whom Baquer Namazi served at the time of the ‘Children as Zones of Peace’ initiative. Baquer was one of the contributors to this book, recalling his recollections of the period when these ideas were surfacing.
In 1986, he wrote, “I was given the task of writing up the UNICEF Board paper on children in situations of armed conflict. During a series of meetings in a number of European countries to consult with many champions of children, I was roped into a meeting of European NGOs promoting the cause of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).” The Convention, which was still in draft form at that time, later became in 1989, the most widely ratified UN Human Rights Convention in history – including by the Government of Iran.
With exceptional foresight, Baquer Namazi appreciated at that early stage that this Convention had the potential to act as an advocacy platform for children in situations of conflict and other difficult circumstances, and that UNICEF needed to become more closely involved. At his suggestion, a panel within UNICEF headquarters was set up to discuss the links between the various ‘Rights of the Child’ to UNICEF programmes. “We brought children from war zones to a consultative meeting and policy-makers were able to listen to these pained voices. Every leading expert on child-related issues, especially health and education, was consulted. As a result, UNICEF’s position on the Convention was formally outlined for the first time in the 1986 Board paper on Children in Armed Conflict.”
Is it really possible, 30 years on, that this kind of commitment to the cause of children can form the basis of accusations of criminal intent, and are used justify the imposition of a ten-year jail sentence on an elderly UNICEF retiree? Children of the world, you may well weep at the damage being done by such actions to today’s humanitarian order.
