European Foundation for Democracy

While Iran supports the Shiite movement in Bahrain in the name of human rights, the U.S. Navy is carrying out joint maneuvers with the Bahraini Marines.

On Tuesday 20th September 2011, EFD Senior Fellow Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh contributed to a conference organised by the Hannah Arendt Institute at the University of Dresden. His contribution concerned "legitimation, co-option and repression in Iran." For further information, please consult the programme below:

Populus interviewed 1,003 adults in Great Britain, by telephone, between 15^th and 17^th April 2011.  Results have been weighted to be representative of the adult population in Great Britain.  Populus is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.  For more information see www.populus.co.uk.

In Iran, many young people are denied the right to study, be they Muslim or Bahai. If they campaign for human rights and right to education, they are expelled from the university. The Bahai, as a matter of principle, are forbidden the right to study.

The Iranian Pseudo-Parliament's scientific division has rejected human rights and Western democracies. The Islamic understanding of human rights, they say, assumes that Islamic law, defined by God, defines human rights. For this reason, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10th December 1948 has been rejected.

"Freedom is a battle," declared the Tunisian film maker Nadia El Fani in 2002. In the same interview she said that "Tunisians have a strong sense of humour and a love of freedom." Anyone familiar with Tunisia and its people can only confirm these statements. Unfortunately, the Jasmin revolution, positive in many ways, has brought Islamic extremism back home either through the Muslim Brotherhood or, in its most extreme form, the Salafist ideology.

In 1979, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, around 6 million Afghans fled to Iran. Most of these refugees worked as cheap labour in Iranian towns or in the countryside. Most of them, however, still today do not have any official status in Iranian society.