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| Sina Yousefi, Human Rights Lawyer |
According to human rights lawyer Sina Yousefi, who spoke to Voice of America, lawyers defending the population who have applied to the court regarding environmental issues, air pollution, and wages in Iranian Azerbaijan are subject to systematic pressure from security agencies.
In the interview, Yousefi also revealed that, together with a group of lawyers and a non-governmental organization, they had filed a lawsuit against the bodies responsible for the drying of Lake Urmia in previous years. He said, “They asked us for the property document of Lake Urmia, and they did not accept us as interested parties.”
According to Yousefi, “There are many issues related to environmental damage and destruction. There is the issue of Lake Urmia, the issue of air pollution due to factories being near cities, what happened in the Sungun mine, other mines, the environmental damage caused by the Anderyan gold mine… Unfortunately, there are so many such issues. In every case, there is an aspect of environmental illegality.”
The human rights lawyer emphasized that economic activities causing or destroying the environment are prohibited under Iranian law. However, in the interview, he also pointed to examples where political and security agencies interfere in legal processes in this field.
“Regarding the issue of Lake Urmia, the Human Rights Commission of the East Azerbaijan Bar Association had applied to the court. Of course, as members of the commission, we, as citizens living in Azerbaijan and affected by the environmental issue, namely the drying of the lake, got involved in this matter. With the help of a non-governmental organization, we applied to the Administrative Justice Court, initially complaining to the president's office and relevant agencies in the provinces about the failure to provide the lake's water rights,” the human rights lawyer stated.
According to Yousefi, the administrative court rejected their complaint because it did not see them as interested parties in the matter of Lake Urmia:
“The court ultimately rejected the complaint with an illogical justification; they said, 'Bring the property document of the lake!' In other words, they said that we are not interested parties… However, it is the people who are suffering from the drying of Lake Urmia. They wrote that the complaint was rejected because the complainants were not considered interested parties and did not provide the property document. This should be written in history: they asked the people living in Azerbaijan and affected by the drying of Lake Urmia for the property document of the lake.”
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Sina Yusufi: Urmiyə gölünün vəziyyəti ilə bağlı məhkəməyə getdik, bizdən gölün mülkiyyət sənədini istədilər