To the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations,
Amnesty International, Pen, Reporters without borders and other human rights organisations
From the first days after the Feb uprising of 1979,
Iran's Islamic regime has killed thousands of Iranian dissidents inside and
outside the borders of
The country. One of the most abhorrent of these mass
killings took place in the late summer of 1988, in prisons throughout Iran. At the
end of the Iran-Iraq war, political prisoners were murdered in cold blood under
the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini, many were burnt in mass graves.
In 1998, serial political murders took the lives of political
activists Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari, journalists Majid Sharif,
Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh shook Iran.
Subsequently the lawyer defending the families of eth
victims of serial murders was arrested accused of exposing state secrets and
condemned to prison and
Flogging. He has been held in prison for over a year.
This year the families of the victims of mass murders
in Iranian prisons issued a plea to the International Human rights organisations
making the following demands:
1- The full list, time of execution and burial place
of our beloved should be announced
2- To stop using the burial place of these prisoners
for new burials of Bahaiis and others considered as 'non believers ' by the Islamic
regime. New burial ground should be found for those deceased.
3- To allow us leaving flowers, stones marking the
name of our beloved.
In addition to these minimum demands of the families
of those executed ,w e should add that in Iran, arrest, prison, torture,
stoning to death , expulsion form work , repression against workers protesting
for their right to work, closure of newspapers , arrest of journalists and
students is common. The murder of photo journalist Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian Canadian,
is an example of recent political murders. Despite the demands of the Canadian regime
and her son, Stephen Kazemi, the authorities have presented no response.
This and other crimes must be judged by an
International court, where the people of Iran can seek justice.
WE signatories to this letter , support the call by the
families of those execute din the summer of 1988 and call on Human Rights Organisations
to do all they can to obtain the unconditional release of all political
prisoners in Iran as well as a response to the calls by these families.
Committee in Defence of Freedom
and the struggles of Iranian people
Gutenberg
Sweden
September 2003 Mehr1382