In a statement dated June 5, Amnesty International announced: “Iran’s presidential election on 12 June will take place against a backdrop of discrimination, worsening repression of dissent and violent unrest.”
The statement partly reads: In the run-up to its tenth presidential election from which women candidates have been barred, the country has witnessed the arbitrary arrest and harassment of activists and members of minority communities, censorship, armed attacks and suicide bombings.

In the pre-election period, Amnesty International has also received reports suggesting increased waves of arbitrary arrests and harassment targeting in particular members of Iran’s religious and ethnic minority communities, including Baha’is and converts from Islam, students, trade unionists and women’s rights activists.

The statement also refers to Azerbaijani activists who held rallies against former President Mohammad Khatami who had belittled Iranian Azerbaijanis, the arrest of a number of Kurdish people during Khamenei’s trip to Kurdistan, arrest and torture of a number of students in February 2009, arrest of demonstrators in Tabriz Park and suppression of the people in Sistan and Baluchestan.