EU sanctions on Iran clash with EU anti-discrimination rules
TERESA KÜCHLER
18.09.2009 @ 09:27 CET
EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - A group of Dutch-Iranian students have filed a case against the Dutch government for its harsh interpretation of EU sanctions aimed at preventing Iranian students in Europe from acquiring information on nuclear and missile technologies, saying the measures are discriminatory and racist and will not stop Tehran from creating an atomic bomb.
EU countries wants to stop Tehran from acquiring enough nuclear technology knowledge to create its own atomic bomb (Photo: Institute for Transuranium Elements)
In a bid to strengthen previously approved UN measures against Iran, EU governments in January 2007 agreed to "take measures to prevent Iranian nationals from studying proliferation sensitive subjects within the EU."
The purpose of the regulation is to stop Tehran from acquiring enough nuclear knowledge to create its own atomic bomb.
How to implement the EU sanction into national law is up to each member state. Concrete legislative measures have so far been rare across the union, with most countries settling for visa restrictions for students from Iran.
The Dutch government, however, has enacted legislation barring Iranian nationals, including those holding dual citizenship in the Netherlands and Iran, from access to courses and facilities related to nuclear technology.
Universities and nuclear institutions face criminal sanctions if they accept Iranians to excluded master studies or their nuclear institutes.
"These measures are in clear violation of international human rights and anti-discriminatory treaties, as well being utterly racist," Dutch lawyer Jelle Klaas, who has filed a case against his government on behalf of an Dutch-Iranian student's activist group, told this website.
The group "Stop Verdachtmaking van Iraniërs!"- stop suspecting Iranians - demands that the government scraps the implementation of the EU regulation, and that the judge declares discriminatory bans directed at a single nationality.
The group has also collected over 4000 signatures including prominent personalities such as US academic Noam Chomsky.
Mr Klaas said that the measure is not only stigmatising for Iranians in the Netherlands- over 80 percent of the 30,000 strong Iranian community in the Netherlands have Dutch passports, and many are born and raised in the country - but that it is also a pointless regulation in terms of preventing nuclear information from reaching Iran.
"What prevents students from other communities like the Dutch or, say, Pakistani, from passing on the information?"
"If the secrets are not secret enough and risk being spread, then the sites should look into their security procedures and start checking everyone, and not just Iranians," Mr Klaas concluded.
Mr Behnam Taebi, an Iranian-born Dutch PHD student specialising in the ethics of nuclear energy, and one of the leaders of "Stop Verdachtmaking van Iraniërs!, told Euobserver it is "common knowledge" that most members of the Iranian communities abroad are against the regime in Tehran, and that these regulations actually target "the enemy of the enemy".
"The Netherlands is trying to fix an image problem they suffer from since the seventies," the researcher, who no longer has access to several sites where he previously conducted crucial research for his thesis, explained.
The Netherlands played a pivotal role in one of the 20th century's biggest nuclear spying operations. Pakistani nuclear physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan obtained an advanced degree at the Delft technical university, and worked at the Physical Dynamic Research laboratory from 1972 until 1975.
Mr Khan disappeared in 1975, only to reappear in 1976 as the leader of the Pakistani nuclear weapons research programme. In 2004, Pakistan announced that Mr Khan had sold nuclear information to Libya, Iran and North Korea, together with a Dutch business partner.
Swedish universities split
In Sweden, a country with a large Iranian community, many of which fled the Islamic coup in 1978, confusion spread through both academic and governmental corridors when Swedish radio this summer put the spotlight on Iranian students being banned from certain educational programmes, following a warning from the country's security service.
The security police, along with two other authorities – the Inspectorate of Strategic Product and the Radiation Safety Administration – sent letters to seven Swedish universities alerting them to how their institutions could be affected by the restrictions on Iranians wishing to study in Sweden.
The letter pointed to concerns about specific masters and PhD programmes at the schools.
But it is still up to each institution to decide which subject areas will be covered by the restrictions, according to the security police spokesperson, Patrik Peter. "Our letter was just a letter of information, not a demand," he said.
Other authorities have said universities should be aware of the country's anti-discrimination laws.
"Whoever resides in Sweden is covered by Swedish anti-discrimination law, regardless of where he or she comes from," an official at the country's anti-discrimination Ombudsman's office told Euobserver.
A legal expert at the education ministry said that setting up bans based on nationality would be "clearly discriminatory".
So far, two out of the seven universities contacted by the security police have refused to ban Iranians from applying to their programmes.
"We do not register applicants' nationality at all. Everybody who has the necessary academic merits is given a chance to study," a spokesperson for the Royal Technical University in Stockholm said in a statement.
Just Google it
Members of the scientific community in Sweden told reporters that the information referred to as "sensitive" in the master programmes concerned, is available on the internet and in Iranian universities.
"There is nothing 'dangerous' at all in any of the courses pointed out by the authorities," said professor Christophe Demeziere at Chalmers Technical University in Gotenborg, one of the schools which has decided to not accept Iranian students to study certain topics, told Swedish radio.
"They actually have nuclear technology courses in Iran too. So this restriction is frankly quite stupid," he added.
A European Commission spokeswoman said that the agreement between member states on sanctions against Iran was a strictly political act, and that legislation or other follow-up measures are up to member states themselves, not Brussels.
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