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Mohammad Reza Alipour, Deputy Tehran Police Commander said that the police intend to organize nongovernmental organizations in a “centralized” way, a signal to activists that creating new impediments and a police atmosphere over Iran ’s civil society seems to be entering a new stage. In introduction ceremonies for his new position as second in command in Tehran ’s Police Force on April 24, 2010, Alipour said: “The police’s concern is that there is insufficient supervision over citizen organizations and in some of them there is administrative chaos…There is no oversight for issuing licenses for these organizations.”
Over the past years, Iranian civil society organizations have raised concern over interference of police and intelligence forces as an important impediment to their operations. The Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence is one of the organizations that has expressed opinions about the establishment of many NGO’s and in many cases some NGO’s have been denied licenses due to the Ministry of Intelligence’s opinions despite the fact that their members did not have any judicial records. Considering the police and security nature of the Iranian law enforcement organization and a lack of suitable structures for organizing he activities of NGO’s, the issue of transfer of their oversight responsibilities from the Ministry of Interior or other administrative offices to a security-police organization heralds further limitations for the... >>>