By Maggie Black*
Two years ago, on 22 February 2016, retired UNICEF official Baquer Namazi was arrested when he returned home to Tehran. He had been told that permission had been given for him to visit his son Siamak, held incommunicado in Tehran’s Evin prison since October 2015. No such visit took place. Instead, Baquer himself began a two-year prison spell quite separately from his son, in the same notorious institution.
Father and son were both subsequently tried in a shadowy court proceeding, in which no specific charges were laid, and both were sentenced to ten years’ incarceration. Their alleged crime is to have performed unspecified actions inimical to the Iranian state, on behalf of a foreign power, not named but clearly understood to be the United States. This appears to stem from having taken up US in addition to Iranian citizenship in the 1980s. In Baquer’s case, his entire career has been spent at the service of the social well-being of vulnerable groups, especially children.
In December, Baquer Namazi celebrated his 81st birthday in prison. This was some weeks after he had been hospitalized for the insertion of an emergency pacemaker to stabilize his unquiet heart. The impact of solitary confinement on his physical, psychological and emotional health has been devastating. Since the beginning of 2018, Baquer Namazi has been rushed to hospital three more times, most recently on 11 February, when his fluctuating heart beat and rock bottom blood pressure gave serious cause for alarm.
In the previous week, the authorities own medical panel examined Namazi and recommended that he be allowed to remain at home for three months to recuperate from successive medical crises. His own physician had already stated that the decline in his health is entirely due to the harsh prison conditions and their toll on an elderly man with a heart problem.
Instead, on 6 February, Baquer Namazi was ordered back to prison. In a message to friends and UNICEF colleagues, he stated that he prayed ‘for the great humanitarian causes for which we have all dedicated our lives’ and accepted that sacrifices were needed for those causes to succeed, and he was prepared to be a victim. He concluded his statement by voicing regret that he ‘could not continue to serve our common cause of peace for children,’ especially in the Middle East. His unflinching lack of self-regard was humbling.
The next day he was again rushed to the prison infirmary. His son Babak Namazi has said publically: ‘I don’t know what needs to happen for the Iranian authorities to heed the advice of their own medical examiner panel and allow my father to stay out of prison. I beg the authorities to let him stay at home on parole on humanitarian grounds. It is obvious that if they do not, he could die at any time.’ At the time of writing (19 Feb) Baquer has been at home for a few days. But he could be again recalled to prison at any moment.
In an effort to draw attention to Baquer’s plight, hundreds of his ex-UNICEF colleagues, now retired to their home countries, alongside other UN pensioners and staff association are commemorating the anniversary of his arrest by campaigning on his behalf. Under the slogan #2years2many, they are calling on the Iran authorities to #freebaquernow.
Over the 48 hours of 22 February, beginning in the Pacific and ending on the US West Coast, a stream of silver-haired activist photos will flood into a dedicated Facebook site, pleading for the release of a frail, elderly, dignified, heart-worn and blameless individual. Last year at this time, nearly 300 people were to be seen holding up banners and placards on the site ‘Free Baquer Namazi’. This year, hundreds more are expected to join in.
Except for periods serving his government in pre-Revolutionary Iran, Baquer Namazi’s entire career as a Planning and Policy specialist was on UNICEF’s staff, in Asia, US and in Africa. In the 1980s, when he joined UNICEF Headquarters in New York, he worked on policies connected to the forthcoming passage at the UN of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), especially the reduction of violence against children and their protection in time of war. His later served as UNICEF Representative to Somalia, Kenya and Egypt. In each of these positions, in addition to children at risk of violence, he also championed the plight of nomadic children and other marginalized groups. On one occasion, his UNICEF convoy was ambushed in a remote area, and a staff member lost his life. Baquer’s care for his staff and their families was one of the hallmarks of his leadership.
Namazi’s record as a humanitarian worker is impeccable. Following his retirement from UNICEF, he worked to help develop NGOs in Iran serving the cause of children and peace in the Middle East. How, when and where in his professional life inside and outside Iran he would have had the opportunity, even if he had the motive, to engage in subversive activity on behalf of a foreign power is difficult to comprehend. When international civil servants take up a post with a United Nations organization, they are obliged to make a written, signed, and witnessed statement solemnly promising to exercise their duties in loyalty only to the United Nations, and ‘not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the performance of my duties from any Government or other source external to the Organization.’ Any breach of this strict code of non-political behaviour during the years Baquer Namazi worked for UNICEF would have prompted instant dismissal.
It is not only the injustice, but the cruelty, of the fate meted out to Baquer Namazi that has inspired a world-wide response to his plight by UNICEF retirees and other UN staff. So far, the efforts of senior UN diplomats, including the UN Secretary-General and the Executive Director of UNICEF, have failed to bring about his release. But his friends and colleagues in the international system will not cease their efforts to touch the heart of Iranian officialdom until Baquer is safely home.
For further information contact maggie@maggieblack.com and/or mcdermott.tom@gmail.com
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*Maggie Black is a writer and editor specialising in international development issues .She has specialised in water and sanitation, and in the protection of vulnerable children, especially girls. Article provided to Other News by the autor
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