IRAN: Student activist arrested

Ali Gholizadeh, an activist and member of the Daftar Tahkim-e Vahdat student organisation, has been arrested and detained in Mashad, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported on 5 November.

According to his mother, the intelligence forces came to Gholizadeh's father's home and he was taken in for questioning.

Gholizadeh has since been detained without judicial warrant and his family has been given no information about his detention location. Concerns about his condition in detention have been raised because of his poor health following a car accident in the week before his arrest.

Gholidazeh is a reformist and was actively involved in the campaign for Karroubi in the 2009 presidential elections.

He previously spent time in the Intelligence Office Detention Centre after being arrested in August 2008 by the Mashad Intelligence Office.

Because of his political activity, in 2009 Gholidazeh was deprived of continuing graduate studies in mechanical engineering at the Shahroud University of Technology, Rahana reported.

INDIA: US academic denied entry to India

Immigration authorities in New Delhi have denied a US professor permission to enter India, the Kashmir Observer reported on 4 November.

Professor Richard Shapiro is chair of the department of anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, where he is an associate professor.

NEAR understands that on 1 November, Shapiro was travelling to Kashmir with his wife Angana Chatterji, also a professor of anthropology at CIIS and co-convener of the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK).

Chatterji was granted entry to India while Shapiro was denied entry.

Reports indicated that this decision had no legal basis, since he was in possession of a valid passport and visa.

Pervez Imroz, head of the Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, affirmed in a statement that Shapiro was careful not to violate the conditions of his tourist visa while travelling and interacting with local human rights defenders.

As Shapiro's work does not focus on South Asia or India, it appears that the decision to restrict his right to travel was an attempt to target and intimidate his wife and the work of the IPTK.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which India has ratified, protects freedom of expression, the right to travel and scientific exchange.

The Kashmir Observer reports that academics and journalists have previously been prevented from entering India, and Kashmiri scholars, activists and journalists banned from travelling abroad.

CHINA: Two legal scholars prevented from travelling

Two legal scholars invited to attend an international law conference in London have been prevented from leaving China, The New York Times reported on 9 November.

Mo Shaoping, an outspoken advocate of legal reform, and He Weifang, a prominent legal scholar at Peking University, were denied the right to travel based on vague accusations that their departure might endanger national security.

According to Mo and He, the move was in fact motivated by the government's fears that they might attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in honour of imprisoned dissident and former university lecturer Liu Xiaobo on 10 December in Oslo.

Both scholars' names appeared on Liu's wife's guest list among other 143 Chinese academics, activists and celebrities invited to the ceremony. However, Mo said he had no intention of travelling to Oslo.

Over recent weeks the Chinese government has attempted to restrict Chinese citizens from attending the award ceremony. Academics, writers, lawyers and other personalities have faced surveillance, intimidation and detention.

The authorities also recently launched a national campaign to discredit the award and Liu's reputation in the eyes of the population.

According to Michael C Davis, a law professor and human rights expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Chinese campaign to boycott the ceremony was likely to fail since it increased attention on Liu's situation.

JORDAN: Workshop on academic freedom

The Amman Center for Human Rights Studies (ACHRS), the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR) and the Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) held a working meeting on Academic Freedom in the Arab World in Amman in Jordan on 5-6 November.

This followed on from a series of workshops held by NEAR and SAR, together with partners worldwide, to raise awareness of academic freedom and related values, including access, accountability and transparency, academic freedom and quality, autonomy and good governance, and social responsibility.

Since 2006, seven regional workshops have taken place worldwide. Full information on the workshops project is available at: www.academicfreedom.info.

The Jordan meeting brought together academics from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen to explore possible joint proposals for research and advocacy projects to increase understanding and respect for academic freedom and the protection of academics in the Arab world.

The workshop also represented the second meeting of the Arab Society for Academic Freedom, formed at a prior NEAR workshop in Jordan in 2008.

Participants agreed on a joint work plan to develop three activities: a dedicated website through which to monitor and raise awareness of specific violations; an annual report on academic freedom in the Arab world through which to document the climate of academic freedom and relevant changes to sub-national or national legislation; and to further develop the research capabilities of the group for focused research projects.

RUSSIA: Scholars held in pretrial detention since March

Two professors at Baltic State Technical University in St Petersburg have been detained since March 2010 without trial or formal charges issued against them, Scholars at Risk reported on 26 October.

According to international reports, Professor Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Professor Yevgeny Afanasyev were arrested on 16 March. They stand accused of spying and passing state secrets to Chinese citizens, although the chairman of their academic department has claimed publicly that the lectures they gave did not contain state secrets.

The accusations are based on a cooperative relationship between Baltic State Technical University and Harbin Engineering University in China, through which both professors gave lectures at the Chinese university.

Bobyshev and Afanasyev have been detained without charge since March at Moscow's Lefortovo maximum security prison.

In September 2010, their pre-trial detention was extended by four months by Lefortovsky district court to allow the Federal Security Service to prepare their case.

Indefinite pre-trial detention without formal charges contravenes international standards of due process, fair trial and detention procedures, as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Russia is a signatory.

* Roisin Joyce is Deputy Director of the Network for Education and Academic Rights, a non-profit organisation that facilitates the rapid global transfer of accurate information in response to breaches of academic freedom and human rights in education.