为了保护伊朗濒临灭绝的花豹和猎豹，卡沃斯·赛义德·埃玛米（Kavous Seyed Emami）以自己的生命进行了抗争。

2018年 1月24日，64岁的社会学教授，波斯野生动物传统基金（Wildlife Heritage Foundation）主任卡沃斯·赛义德·埃玛米被伊朗当局以所谓的“间谍罪”逮捕并受到审讯。

17天后，他在伊朗臭名昭著的伊温监狱（Evin prison）离奇身亡。

与波斯野生动物传统基金有关系的其他8人也被逮捕，现仍然在伊温监狱受刑。

人权观察（Middle East and North Africa）中东与北非事务主任莎拉・莉亚・惠特森（Sarah Leah Whitson）说，伊朗当局仍然未提供一丝一毫的证据对关押这些环境保护主义人士提出任何解释。

赛义德·埃马米拥有双重国籍，另持有加拿大护照。他与其他人努力提醒人们注意伊朗的环境问题及亚洲猎豹（Asiatic cheetah）和波斯豹等濒临灭绝的动物，结果遭到逮捕。现在伊朗境内的亚洲猎豹已少于50头。

他儿子迈赫兰·赛义德·埃玛米（Mehran Seyed Emami）在父亲去世后一个月告诉美联社（Associated Press），“他不仅热爱伊朗，而且热爱伊朗的野生动物，热爱伊朗人民。”

为什么监禁野生动物专家?

环境保护主义者往往成为伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队（Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps）打击的对象，因为人们发起为动物保护土地的运动常常与革命卫队的赚钱生意和破坏环境的行动相抵触，例如在受保护的土地上建造大坝或导弹发射基地的规划等。

为了进行研究工作，波斯野生动物传统基金经常需要与外国专家进行联络，并安装追踪稀有野生猫科动物的摄像机。这些活动对世界其他地方的野生动物基金来说都是很正常的事，但伊朗检察人员以此为借口起诉赛义德·埃玛米和他的同事从事间谍活动，通过摄像机“搜集秘密情报”并传送给外国政府。

他们在伊朗的伊斯兰革命法庭（Islamic Revolutionary Court）受到审判后被判处徒刑。伊斯兰革命法庭是一个法外机构，专事对所谓涉及国家安全的问题提出指控。该法庭秘密运行 ，经常向有关的家庭成员隐瞒消息，对被告刑讯逼供，甚至不允许他们请律师。

仅在2018年， 革命卫队逮捕了至少50名伊朗环境保护主义人士，因为革命卫队采取的政策试图转移人们对用水问题和其他土地使用问题的视线，这些人士则对有关政策提出了质疑。他们动员人们参加示威活动的能力，特别发动农民的能力使革命卫队感到疑虑。

惠特森说，“有关当局本来应该对这些活动人士表示赞赏，因为他们提出了伊朗恶劣的环境问题，但是这个国家的安全机构强悍无理，力图抓住一切机会惩罚独立的公民倡议。”

Imprisoned for trying to protect Iran’s endangered leopards

Fighting for the protection of Iran’s endangered leopards and cheetahs cost Kavous Seyed Emami his life.

Iranian authorities arrested and interrogated the 64-year-old professor of sociology and director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation for “espionage” on January 24, 2018.

He died 17 days later under suspicious circumstances in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison.

Eight others affiliated with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation were likewise arrested and remain imprisoned in Evin.

“The Iranian authorities still haven’t provided a shred of evidence to justify locking up these environmentalists,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Seyed Emami, a dual citizen with a Canadian passport, and the others were arrested while trying to raise public awareness about Iran’s environment and endangered species such as the Asiatic cheetah (now fewer than 50 left in Iran) and the Persian leopard.

“He was a lover of not just Iran but its wildlife, its people,” his son Mehran Seyed Emami told the Associated Press a month after his father’s death.

Why jail wildlife experts?

Environmentalists are frequent targets of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps because campaigns to protect land for animals often run counter to the Guard Corps’ money-making and environmentally destructive operations, such as building dams or planning missile sites on protected land.

As part of their research, the staff at Persian Wildlife Heritage frequently had contact with foreign experts and set up cameras to track the rare wild cats. Those two actions — normal for any other wildlife foundation around the world — were pretense for an Iranian prosecutor to charge Seyed Emami and his colleagues with espionage for “gathering classified information” on the cameras and passing it along to foreign governments.

They were tried and sentenced in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court, an extrajudicial branch dedicated to alleged national security charges. It operates in secret and frequently withholds information from family members, forces “confessions” from defendants and even denies them a lawyer.

The Guard Corps has arrested at least 50 Iranian environmental activists in 2018 alone for questioning the Corps’ policies to divert water and other land use issues. The activists’ ability to mobilize protesters — especially farmers — aroused the Guard Corps’ suspicions.

“The authorities should be praising these activists for addressing Iran’s dire environmental problems, but the country’s hard-line security institutions rarely miss an opportunity to punish independent civic initiative,” Whitson said.