Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.
To Excellency Mr. Gutters, the Secretary-General of the United Nations,
The nation of Iran almost 112 years ago after bitter long struggles of June 5th, 1906, became the beneficiary of the constitutional government, when the Shah of the time, Mozafar al-Din Shah Qajar finally agreed to signed the new Iranian constitution. However, only two weeks later, Muzaffar al-Din Shah died. After the death of Muzaffar al-Din Shah, four other kings ruled Iran, and only during the time of the feebleness of these kings, the Iranian nation was able to taste any real freedom, because as soon the central government became powerful under the king of the country, the government would quickly become a dictatorship.
It is also noteworthy that all four kings were sent to exile either by their rival or by the Western Allies in Iran. Due to the suppression of parties and intellectuals and the absence of legitimate government, democratic freedoms such as true freedom of speech were never established in Iran. The monarchical system finally came to an end in 1979, by the overthrow of the last king of Iran with the Iranian revolution, which was unfortunately led by Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerics who supported Khomeini.
Before Khomeini arrived in Iran, he expressed a very popular and peaceful speech, but he did not propose any plan (he simply said, “We want government like the French government and clerics will not be in power, and the Marxists will be free, and …). The people of Iran trusted the words of this 76-year-old Ayatollah. Immediately after Khomeini’s revolution, along with the Iranian army Khomeini created an ideological army called the Revolutionary Guards, which was in fact a powerful force under his control. As the Revolutionary Guards power grew, so did Mr. Khomeini distance from the promises he made in France! This fact was clearly stated in response to the question posed by the Italian correspondent, Mrs. Orianna Falanchey, who stated to Khomeini, “before the revolution you used different words and promises and now you are in power you are saying something else.” To which Khomeini blatantly replied, “I played a trick!”
In order to seize full power and suppress the democratic and justice movement, who indecently had suffered the highest number of deaths and imprisonments under the Shah’s regime, the new regime ordered the invasion and seizure of the US Embassy and kept the staff of the Embassy hostage for 444 days. With this weapon, they began to suppress Iranian ethnic groups, including Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Arabs of Khuzestan and Turkmen, and a nationwide invasion of democratic organizations and parties, including the Communists and the People’s Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, in all the cities of Iran.
Khomeini, in order to be able to consolidate his power and advance his fundamentalist strategy in the region, started to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq, and set a trap for Iraq, which entrapped Iraq in hostile war for 8 years. This war which began in September of 1980 was called a blessing by Mr. Khomeini!
The first Iranian president, Mr. Bani Sadr, was arrested in June 1981 due to differences of opinion with Khomeini, which was in effect a coup carried out by the Revolutionary Guards. In June 1981, the PMOI organized a series of demonstrations in defence of the revolution which were peaceful and conducted by hundreds of thousands of people in Tehran. These protest were immediately condemned by Khomeini, in a speech on a radio broadcast, who then ordered the massacre of demonstrators and by the forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij forces, which began shooting and arresting protesters and supporters of the opposition organizations and Political groups held in custody in prisons. These types of murders have continued, until today, just as the repression has continued.
Your Excellency, Mr Khomeini blessed Iran-Iraq war and said that if it lasts twenty years, it should continue! And did not uphold any of UN resolutions and did not accept any mediators in this war such as Ms. Gandhi, Yasser Arafat and Zia-ul-Haq.
But after eight years, this war which he called a blessing, which resulted in nearly only two million Iranian dead and disabled, billions dollars of damages, which emptied the nations’ provisions of wheat, food, ammunition depots, and oil, was only ended when Khomeini agreed to accept UN resolution 598, which was actually issued a year earlier, by announcing that for him to agree to this resolution, was like he was drinking poison. To compensate for this defeat or setback, in the summer of 1988, more than thirty innocent political prisoners held throughout the country were massacred in less than two months! So that all forms of political opposition could be eradicated in Iran!
I have in fact already written a letter to you on this point requesting the prosecution of those responsible for these massacres.
Khomeini’s less than a year after the adoption of UN 598 resolution, died. In response, Mr. Khamenei came to power on June 4, 1989, and according to the recent released film of his election, Mr. Khamenei was introduced to the Assembly of Experts only as a provisional leader. And in accordance with his own stated law and practice, he was to hold a referendum on the new interim leader’s constitution! Yet Khamenei still here. His interim leadership has lasted twenty-nine years!
It should be noted that Mr. Khamenei, like Mr. Khomeini, has continued to suppress the legitimate freedoms of the people, through imprisonment, execution and assassinations, and killing of intellectuals and heads of political parties, both inside and outside the country, which began during Mr. Khomeini’s time!
Unfortunately, under the leadership of Mr. Khamenei, the killing of intellectuals, heads of parties and total opposition to the regime has unashamedly dramatically increased!
For example, the assassination of Dr. Jahani’s leader Dr. Kazem Sami and the Minister of Public Health of the Provisional Government of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Mr. Dariush Forouhar and his wife, Ms. Parvaneh Eskandari, the interim government minister and leader of the Iranian People’s Party, and Mohammad Mokhtari, Ja’far Kuyandeh and Majid Sharif, and Pirooz Davani and the Mr Barazandeh … Mr Jamelghi was either abducted at home or outside of his home and after his murder, they left his corpse in a place, while bodies of victims such as Dhani, have never found!
These assassinations have also continued abroad, including, for example, Assassination of Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar and Dr. Kazem Rajavi, Dr. Ghasemlou, Mohammad Hossein Naghdi, Dr. Sharfkandi and his followers, Mrs Zahra Raja Bay and Fereydoon Farrokhzad and dozens of other examples.
Because Iran was not a weapon producer, the regime was prepared to buy weapons from countries such as Russia which sold worthless and outdated weapons to Iran at a very high price, and for this reason Khamenei’s government began to smuggle billions of dollars through countries like North Korea and Pakistan.
Furthermore, Khamenei purchased parts of the uranium plant, to build an atomic bomb under the mountains and tunnels of the country. This action resulted in international sanctions against Iran by the international community, including the United Nations. Eventually, Mr. Khamenei was finally was forced to cease his Atomic ambitions in order partially eliminate these sanctions.
All these evil ambitions have cost hundreds of billions of dollars to the Iranian people, all of which could have been spent on thousands of schools and hospitals and factories to give the nation a little bit of prosperity.
With another wicked scheme that began during Khomeini’s time, namely interference in the affairs of other countries, which, of course, has been the practice of all the dictatorial governments throughout history, has been utilised extensively to create external crisis outside of Iranian borders and while the world’s attention is focused on these crisis, Khamenei’s government was able to continue its internal campaign to suppress Iranian people as much as possible and destroy any form of opposition.
We can see examples of these cases in Syria and Yemen and Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iranian military has intervened or has in some way interfered in those countries, which has led to the flare of the civil war, and planting of bitter hatred in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Mr. Khamenei’s government has not even hesitated to imprison teachers! Teachers such as Ismail Abdi and Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, Asadi, and civil engineer and … and the honorary attorneys of teachers like Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani.
The ruling clergy have made this world hell while creating a Paradise for itself. It has created for the people of Iran, poverty and hell, in order to produce a paradise for itself.
This regime sends people to the Imams to heal their illnesses, meanwhile when they themselves get sick even with a small amount of illness, they fly to the West for the best treatments. They take billions of dollars away from the workers and child labours, street children who sleep in cardboard boxes, while they give their own children who live in Europe and America the best education possible at western universities!
They are even willing to cut-off thieves’ hands and feet with a guillotine and say that we are executing the religion of Islam! In fact only few days a young man’s hand was amputated in my own home city of Mashhad, on the charge that he stole a few sheep!
Mr. Secretary-General in Iran under Mr. Khamenei’s rule, Election are not free at all.
That is, Mr. Khamenei choses the members of the Guardian Council, which then only allow Khamenei’s supporters to be nominated for presidency or to stand for parliamentary elections or for assembly of leading experts. In other words, in Iran everyone can vote, but they can only vote for those who can be nominated by the leader.
Mr. Khamenei’s government is even afraid to hold the election of Iran’s Cultural Workers!
If I consider myself a representative of Iranian teachers, it’s only because they gathered in front of the parliament on July, 2015, in order to release my imprisoned colleagues. They not only did not allow me to gather, but arrested about 400 people, 132 of which were arrested by the Security Police Department of Tehran’s Minister of Interior. And when the police called my name, all the teachers who came across Iran celebrated my name. Therefore, it is only for this reason that I am representing the free trade unions throughout my country and the voice of the free teachers of my country, Iran.
Your Excellency, during the reign of Mr. Khamenei, Iran’s people have had many uprisings in various cities, including in 2009 and 2010, so as to achieve freedom. Unfortunately, all these movements were suppressed.
By holding the protests that started on 28th Dec 2017, the Iranian nation began a rally that swept across the country.
In this uprising, the Iranian nation completely comprehended the agenda of two factions that currently form the governing regime, namely: the fundamentalist and reformist groups. The Iranian people understand they only thing these two factions are interested in is their own survival. Therefore, in the recent protest, it rejected both factions and, in fact, rejected the whole religious system. For this reason, in these peaceful demonstrations the people demanded a radical change throughout the country.
Mr. Secretary-General, regarding the above mentioned items, in the uprising of December 2107, the Iranian nation, with the full knowledge of the whole system known as the Islamic Republic and with the slogan “Death to the dictator,” longs for freedom, and expects and seeks your support as the UN Secretary-General for this populist movement for freedom and pleads that you:
- Ask the Iranian government to unconditionally release all detainees.
- Investigate of the truth behind the deaths in the recent protest. As at least 35 people have lost their lives in the recent peaceful demonstration, and about ten people have been killed under torture by government guards. We plead that you send a delegation as a part of fact-finding mission to visit Evin Prison, Raja’i Shahr, and others. We hope this delegation will visit prisons in other cities and talk to political prisoners and prisoners of dual citizenship such as Professor Ahmad Reza Jalali, Nazanin Zaghari and Dr. Namazai, who have been victims of continuous torture in prisons.
- Request that the United Nations Human Rights Council sets up an Extraordinary Meeting in order to investigate sudden deaths in the Iranian prison systems caused by coercion of prisoners through the use of deadly pills which are reported in disclosures of Mrs. Nasrin Sotoudeh’s lawyer and Mahmoud Sadeghi, MP”
- Support the Iranian people now that they once again have decided to reach for freedom and democracy through peaceful gatherings and protests. Just as they did in 1979, when the Iranian people won peaceful demonstrations against the Shah’s regime.
There is no doubt the regime will not stop its subversive tactics and its attempt to suppress the Iranian people. In fact there are documents that point to the agents of the government being behind the burning of shops, homes and factories, which we saw during the recent protest, all in order to supress the protest under the guise of security and prevention of violence.
This is exactly the tactics followed by Bashar al-Assad, as part of his alliance with Khamenei, in Syria.
We call on the United Nations and all human rights organizations to condemn this ugly act by the rulers of Iran and demand the punishment for repressive institutions of Iranian regime.
Transcript:
European Commission of Amnesty International
Human Rights Headquarters of the European Parliament
Amnesty International
Iran, Mashhad, Monday, January 22nd, 2018
Hashim Khastar the representative of Iranian teachers
