A/HRC/19/82 I. Introduction 1. The present report is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 66/175, in which the Assembly requested the Secretary-General to report to the Assembly at its sixtyseventh session and to submit an interim report to the Human Rights Council at its nineteenth session. It reflects the patterns and trends in the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran and provides information on the progress made in the implementation of the resolution. The report also draws upon observations made by treaty monitoring bodies, the special procedures of the Council and international nongovernmental organizations It refers to information from official State media, owing to the difficulty of collecting independent data on human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 2. Since the previous report of the Secretary-General (A/66/361), human rights violations have continued, particularly in the case of journalists, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists and Government opponents. Concerns about torture, amputations, flogging, the increasingly frequent application of the death penalty (including in public and in cases of political prisoners and juvenile offenders), arbitrary detention and unfair trials continue to be raised by United Nations human rights mechanisms. Freedom of expression and assembly remained curtailed; opposition leaders have remained confined under house arrest since February 2011. Discrimination against minority groups persisted, in some cases amounting to persecution. 3. There were some positive developments, however, including the engagement by the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Human Rights Committee, in October 2011, and the visit of a working-level mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in December 2011, to prepare for a visit by the High Commissioner. Also, a new Islamic Penal Code, adopted by Parliament in January 2012, omits the penalty of stoning and reduces the range of offences for which the death penalty may be applied against juveniles. II. Thematic issues A. Torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including flogging and amputations 4. The recurrence of allegations of torture in detention facilities remains an area of grave concern to United Nations human rights mechanisms. The special procedures mandate holders of the Human Rights Council and the United Nations treaty bodies continue to express concern over reports of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment taking place in detention facilities. During the review of the third periodic report of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in October 2011,1 the Human Rights Committee expressed deep concern about reports of the widespread use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in detention facilities, particularly of those accused of national security-related crimes. The Committee also expressed concern about the continued imposition of corporal punishment by judicial and administrative authorities, in particular amputations and flogging for a range of crimes, including theft, moharebeh (enmity against God) and certain sexual acts. In response, the Iranian authorities stressed that the 1 CCPR/C/IRN/3. 3