What is Human Rights Watchs position on the response of the Iranian government to the opposition protests?
It’s a situation of grotesque human rights abuse. It’s only grown worse in this year. Obviously we believe that Iran should cease detaining people, beating people, torturing people, executing people, trumping up trials against them etc. The question is what to do about it, because the government is rather stubborn, and rather impervious to external pressure. The thing we are concerned about is that the nuclear issue continues to dominate the international diplomatic agenda, and its important that as Obama tries to engage with Iran, if he does continue to do that in 2010, that he not lose sight of the human rights dimension and do a deal on nukes that entails less criticism of Iran on human rights grounds. We don’t want the human rights agenda to be lost in nuclear talks. Do you feel that this is what has happened with human rights issues in China, which is an important trading partner with Western countries? The Uighurs were the big story from 2009, but international criticism of the C
