6. July. 2003
Honorable Secretary General of the United
Nations,*
Your Excellency
Mr. Kofi Anan,
We are the representatives of the Islamic
Student Associations of many universities from all over Iran,
elected by our fellow students from our respective universities to an umbrella
organization known as the Daftare Tahkime
Vahdat, "Office for Strengthening the Unity"
(DTV).
Since this organization at this time - after
all the traumatic collisions exerted by the regime upon all organizations - is
the only one still remaining that has the chance of pursuing and expressing the
concerns of Iranian students, today while declaring loss of all hope in the
reform of the current government by the reformists, we are writing this letter
to Your Excellency, in order not only to report the instances of violation of
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the regime of Iran, but furthermore to
ask the United Nations Organization to address our grievances.
Your Excellency, Mr. Anan, we are bringing
our complaints to you today, because a political apartheid [E] has broken the
back of the Iranian nation; because it has taken away from us the right to
govern ourselves; because it has reduced our existence to the lowly limits of
merely satisfying the most rudimentary needs; because at this historic juncture
we are troubled at the prospect of repeating the experiences of our neighbors;
because we fear the human catastrophes that the autocratic absolutists are
bound to bring forth in their single minded path of maintaining their power.
We live in a country in which every
individual, whether in the public or in the private sphere, cannot but be in
permanent entanglement with a vast state apparatus, an absolutist machinery
without accountability that seeing the perpetuation of its own domination in
the conservation of the status quo, prevents all caring and candid criticism
from getting anywhere, crushing all citizenry's attempts at the improvement of
their lot.
Freedom of speech, freedom of expression of
one's opinion, freedom of assembly, association and unions, freedom of holding
conferences and meetings [E], freedom of religions and the exercise of their
rites and rituals, right of access to public forums, rights of women, right to
choose what one wears and how, right to privacy from the sphere of government,
the right to a just due process of law ... these and more are some of the very
articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the Government of
Iran has indeed undersigned but unfortunately not only does not see itself
responsible in the upholding of it, but violates it in a fashion that one would
think it had no legal liability whatsoever to it.
Mr. Kofi Anan,
today in preparing this painful letter for your attention we took to reviewing
the booklet of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nearly all of the
articles of which are trampled underfoot by our rulers. In doing this we saw
the name of one of the greatest victims of the violation of these very
principles, the late Mohammad Ja'far Pouyandeh, on the cover of this booklet - as its
translator. One of the victims of the so-called chained-murders, which never
received proper attention and never saw justice, the translator of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Mr. Pouyandeh
was murdered in the most cruel and horrendous fashion at the hands of the
regime's executioners.
Your Excellency,
Mr. Kofi Anan,
Based on a dogmatic reading of religion and
faith, it has been years since the political and sociological apartheid [E] in
our country has separated the insiders from outsiders, the like-minded from the
free-thinkers, the revolutionaries from the non-revolutionaries, and ultimately
the first-class citizens from the second-class ones, making thereby the
attainment of social resources such as power, wealth, positions and
information, an impossibility, if not through a direct tie to the ruling elite.
Meanwhile, the following is what the first and the second article of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights tell us. Article 1: "All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with
reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood." Article 2: "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and
freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such
as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national
or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction
shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international
status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other
limitation of sovereignty."
Iranian students know full well that the path
to progress, success, freedom and democracy cannot but go through a full
commitment to human rights and a peaceful struggle, and it is therefore that in
all solemnity call on the insiders of the government to respect human rights
and political decency.
Here, we must quite directly say that if the
threats by powerful countries that has brought on certain sensitivities in Iran
should be based on their considerations for their own profits, we expect from
the United Nations a humane and compassionate approach for the improvement of
the situation in our country, an approach stemming from the gentle spirit of
the articles of Human Rights and based on the rudiments of liberty, equality
and fraternity. It is this approach surely that is better deserved by our
compatriots.
Your Excellency,
Mr. Kofi Anan,
According to the article 3
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to
life, liberty and security of person."
But in our country, during the course past
two decades and a half, scores of murders and other crimes have taken place
with the design of eliminating people solely on the basis of their undesired
opinions; crimes in which the ruling regime, or at least portions of the ruling
clique, have had a direct hand.
The murder - at the hands of intelligence and
security forces of the regime - of writers and independent freethinkers such as
Dr. Saami, Dariush Forouhar, Parvaneh
Eskandari, Majid Sharif, Mohammad Mokhtari, Ja'far Pouyandeh, Sa'idi Sirjaani, Pirouz Davani and other famous
persons and many more non-famous individuals in the '80s and '90s, and
particularly in the fall of 1998, together with summary executions of many
activists of the opposition to the regime in the 1980s without any trial or
proof of wrongdoing mainly during the period 1988-89 ... all of these are in
direct violation of this article (3) of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights; the right to life of these individuals has been quite simply taken away
from them by the regime and the forces linked to and appointed by it, and the
juristic apparatus has attained the right to take the life of individuals
accused of the smallest of deviances. (These days there are further murmurs of
possible execution orders for those arrested in the recent disturbances).
We provide you here with some of the instances
of the regime's incursion into the private sphere of citizens in our country,
ranging from years back and right up to today, and ask you, Mr. Secretary, in
this situation, how can one expect any security for the critics of and
oppositions to the regime:
A few years back, the security forces of the
government drew plans for the driving of a bus with 30 writers and
intellectuals aboard it into a canyon and tried to execute this plan as well;
exactly four years ago, the police and the paramilitary forces connected to the
regime attacked the student dormitories of the University of Tehran, invading
and destroying the private quarters of the students, burning and destroying
their belongings, and according to the official reports, killing one person,
and injuring many more. In the recent days, again, the dormitories of University
of Tehran and Allameh Tabatabai University,
University of Hamedan
and University of Yazd have been under siege by
the security forces wielding knives and daggers, batons and clubs, beating and
battering the students in the most horrendous ways. Again recently, those
representatives who signed a critical letter to the leader of the regime have
been threatened in various ways and even one was, again, thrown into a canyon...
Again, how can we expect "security," "life" and "liberty"
under such conditions?
2) According to the 5th article of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "No one ought to be tortured, or
have to endure cruel, inhumane or denigrating behavior and punishment"
In Iran
not only political activists and students are, but also the average person is,
punished under disparaging, cruel and inhumane conditions. Some of the
instances of this that one could point to are as follows:
Harsh and taxing tortures for the purpose of
extracting confessions, denigration and using vulgarity and profanity, beating
and battering, tying and chaining to torture beds, and threatening flogging,
whipping and thrashing, sleep deprivation, forceful standing or sitting for
long periods of time, mock executions for the purposes of exerting
psychological pressures, etc. are only some examples of the methods of
extracting confessions by interrogators and torture specialists in unknown
prisons without any supervision, public oversight and transparency. Documented
witnessing to this behavior includes letters from Ali Afshari, Ahmad Batebi, Ezzatollah Sahabi, Mohammad Maleki, Amir Farshad
Ebrahimi, Alireza Jabbari and Faraj Sarkouhi, who only because of their especial status as
famous personalities could have attained publicity without the fear of
repercussions, a factor which stops the majority of victims from speaking up. Otherwise,
there are scores of others, lesser known students and innocent victims who
enjoy much less protection and therefore continue to swallow the pain in their
throats. There are very few members of our organization (DTV) in fact, who have
not endured denigration, excruciating agony and dread if not outright torture
and other cruel and inhuman behaviors.
Along these lines, one could also point to
the films documenting the interrogation of those accused of the so-called "chained-murders"
that shows how wickedly and despicably the interrogators treat their own people
in order to have their way and get their desired confessions, let alone those
who are not "insiders".
3) In articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights we read:
6: "Everyone has the right to
recognition everywhere as a person before the law."
7: "All are equal before the law and are
entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are
entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this
Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination."
8: "Everyone has the right to an
effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the
fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law."
In Iran
these articles have blatantly been violated: many political activists and
students undergo long periods of arrest without being charged with any clear
crime and have no access to an attorney or public and impartial courts, which
would then prove their guilt or innocence. Here one could point to the yearlong
temporary arrest of Ali Afshari and Ezzatollah Sahabi, Akbar Ganji,
Habibollah Peyman, Taqi Rahmani, Reza Aalikhani, Alireza Rajai, Hadi Saber, Ahmad Zeidabadi together with all of those arrested in the recent
days who have been detained for long periods of time without any effort on the
part of the regime to conduct a trial or a court. Even the attorneys of those
accused on political charges don't enjoy any protection while attempting to
defend their clients, as the lawyer for the case of the so-called "chained-murders"
(Nasser Zarafshan) and the lawyers for students, political
and "Religious-Nationalist" activists have been themselves arrested
on the charge of attempting to defend their clients and have been stripped of
their legal credentials. Here, we could name amongst others, Nasser Zarafshan, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Ebadolfath Soltani, Rahami, and Shirin Ebadi. These are clear violations of the
articles 6, 7 and 8 as cited above.
Mr. Secretary General,
In Iran, criminals who charged the student
dormitories, and armed terrorists who invade the private spheres and homes of
those with different opinions and thoughts, attempting to and in some instances
succeeding in taking lives, such as the chained-murders, or the assassination
of Sa'id Hajjariyan, under
the protection of power go free and further show force, while all the
courageous attorneys of the cited cases (chained-murders, university
dormitories, Religious-Nationalists, etc.) are thrown into prisons to pay for
their quest for justice.
Even when victims such as students, rounded
up through abduction or by means of beatings and the use of teargas and
instruments of terror and shock, are in fact tried and given a sentence by a
judge in a court, this person is not immune from beatings and tortures and
abductions, so much so that often the place in which the prisoner is being
detained and its conditions is not known.
4) The 9th article reads: "No one shall
be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
There are in fact only few days in which we
are not witnesses to the autocratic violations of this article at the expense
of many of our student-friends:
a) The year-long arrest of the likes of Ali
Afshari, Mohandes Hesabi, Habibollah Peyman, Hodi Saber, Reza Alikhani, Taqi Rahmani, Alireza
Rajai, Mohammad Maleki,
Mohammad Bastenegar, Ahmad Zeydabadi,
Mohammad Tavassoli, Hashem Sabaghiyan and others and their detainment in solitary
confinements and under the most intense psychological and spiritual tortures in
the year 2000 is an example of this breech. Now that three years have passed
from that time, there is yet to be a trial proceeding set in motion to address
their predicament. Is not the arrest of those accused in the "polling-affair"
(Abbas Abdi, Fazeliyan, Geranpayeh), writers and freethinkers, newspaper reporters
and students under national-security excuses not arbitrary?
b) Another testament to the arbitrary nature
of the regime operation is the arrest of students in the late fall of 2001
without a court-issued order, and their detainment in undisclosed locations. Amongst
those detained then one can point to: Abdollah Mo'meni, Sa'id Razavi-Faghih, Akbar Atri, Mehdi Aminzadeh
(all from the central office of DTV) and Ali Farokhi,
Farid Moddaressi, Sa'id Moradi, Morteza
Zavarzadegan (from other offices of DTV) not to
mention the arrest of 300 students with no particular association.
c) The students-related events in the late
spring and early summer of 2002, when according to the confession of Mr. Namazi, the Attorney General of the country some 4000
people were arrested and detained throughout the country, many of whom were
merely the onlookers and innocent bystanders to the events. Here again one must
make mention of the use of teargas and intimidation with weapons and the
violent abduction of many students and other activists, whose whereabouts are
to this day unknown.
The arrest of Roozbeh
Shafii, Mohammad Faraqdani,
Abdollah Mo'meni, Mehdi Aminzadeh, Mojtaba Najafi, Baqer Oskui, Ruhollah Rohani, Mehdi Khosravi,
all members of the Islamic Association of University of Tehran, are further
examples of tons of arbitrary arrests of those who are being detained in
undisclosed locations away from the view of law or the international inspectors'
of Human Rights.
One can assert with certainty that the dark
shadow of these arbitrary arrests loom over all our heads. In our interactions,
in every moment of our daily lives, we are expecting our and our friends'
arbitrary arrest.
5) It is written in the article 10 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "Everyone is entitled in full
equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal,
in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge
against him." Also in article 11.1 one reads: "Everyone charged with
a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty
according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees
necessary for his defense."
Unfortunately the instances of breach of these
articles in the juridical institutions of the Islamic Republic number so many
that we are unable to make mention of, let alone analyze them all here. Just to
make a brief mention of some of the cases: the behind the closed doors trials
of the Religious-Nationalists, the case of the "chained-murders," the
press-trials, and many other court-proceedings that have been conducted without
a jury, and in which the judges have made statements before the beginning of
the proceedings that raise questions about their impartiality, all and all are
in direct violation of this article. Over and beyond that, it is interesting to
note that in many instances when the court is supposedly conducted openly, the
judge does not allow the accused and the reporters to publish and disseminate
of the news of these very trials.
In violating this article (11), the juridical
apparatus has time and again has scared the reputation of the accused and has
forced them into false confessions broadcasted via the official information
outlets: Ali Afshari was forced into confession and recantation on state
television; Siamak Pourzand
had the same predicament on several television programs; Ezzatollah
Sahabi was coerced into writing a letter that was
published in the newspapers. And these all were cases in which the guilt of the
accused was not proven in a court of law.
The case of those accused of participating in
the so-called "Berlin Conference" (although the foreign ministry had
not charged them with anything) was trumpeted with so much embellishment and
exaggeration so as to prepare the public sentiment for their eventual guilty
sentence.
6) Article 12 of the Declaration says: "No
one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home
or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and
reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such
interference or attacks."
What took place in all these years was quite
often doubled with unlawful search and seizure of homes and offices etc. The Plumping
[F] of Sherkate Jama'eye Ruz [Today's Society Corporation] and the offices of the
newspapers, Jame'e, Tus, Neshat, seizure of the offices of Ezzatollah
Sahabi and Irane Farda and the seizure of the home of Ebrahim
Yazdi and Habibollah Peyman, the offices of Nehzate Azadi [Religious-Nationalist Party] and the early summer
invasion of the homes of Reza Alikhani, Taqi Rahmani, Hodi
Saber and Mehdi Aminzadeh
are examples of grievances that unfortunately have not and will not receive any
due-process and protection of law.
7) In the article 18 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, it has been said plainly that "Everyone has
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes
freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in
community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or
belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." In Iran
this article, in its entirety is systematically violated with the
institutionalization of the heretical and anti-heretical doctrine. According to
this law in the Islamic Republic the sentence for changing ones religion is
execution.
8) Article 19 says: "Everyone has the
right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Refusing permission to lecture to many of the
professors of our country including Dr. Soroush; the
closure of the teaching and discussion sessions of the likes of Ayatollah
Montazeri; the throwing in prison of Dr. Kadivar
because of free expression of his view; the sentencing of Dr. Hashem Aghajari to death because
of his speech regarding Islamic Protestantism (E); the issuing of long prison
terms for Misters Akbar Ganji
and Emmadoddin Baqi for
voicing their courageous criticisms; the imprisoning of many newspaper
reporters such as Mas'ud Behnood,
Ebrahim Nabavi, Masha'ullah Shamsolvaezin, Hamidreza Jalaipour, Mohsen Sazegara, and the closure
of some 14 newspapers in one night in mid spring of 1998 and some 100 others
since then because of the expression of thoughts and opinions contrary to the
official dogma of the regime (before any proof of wrongdoing in any court); the
issuing of prison sentences for Ali Afshari and Ezzatollah
Sahabi because of their critical speeches; the
revoking of the social rights of Ahmad Zeydabbadi, a
courageous Iranian reporter, for the crime of expression of opinion; the
imprisonment of students who wrote in university newspapers such as Moj and Kavir again because of
their exercise of speech; the revoking the right to publish many books and
political publications; the closure and locking [plumping] of the offices of
many publishing and cultural centers without any legal or even semi-legal proof
of wrongdoing, such as the closures of Serat [A, The
Way] Mo'assesse Ma'refat o Pazhuhesh [Institute for Morality and Research] and others;
the closure of news and information sites, the filtering of them; production of
parasitical static in order to interfere with radios and satellite news sources
in order to curtail free flow of information and thought; imprisoning many
members of Islamic Associations charged with publishing and dissemination of
their flyers and memos; and hundreds upon thousands of other cases are direct
violations of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In Iran
the fear of expression of one's thoughts and opinions, and hiding one's true
voice and view has been institutionalized for years. The forbidding of the free
expression of opinions, views, ideas and thoughts and the eventual fear and
dread and anxiety in face of the probable and very likely repercussions of such
an undertaking has become part of the nature of Iranians and the fabric of
their society, and something quite ordinary and usual. (Self-) Censorship has
become a defining character of our existence.
9) Article 20.1 reads: "Everyone has the
right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association."
Mr. Secretary General,
It has been five years that the Union of
Islamic Associations of the Students of the country has not been permitted to
hold a meeting anywhere outside the confines of the university. It is still
much longer since political Parties, associations and unions cannot meet with
their members in a Party convention. Teachers and workers unions apart from
rare occasions when they have met in ceremonial and prescribed functions, have in effect also been unable to hold true
meetings.
Students, in order to show their disgust with
the catastrophe that took place in the dormitories of the University of Tehran
in 1998, have been imprisoned and have had to endure other restrictions for
attempting to hold peaceful and non-violent memorials within the framework of
their human rights in honor of their dismembered, otherwise injured and killed
friends, and year after year are denied permission to honor their comrades and
friends.
The 30-man congregation of the members of
Tehran branch of DTV in front of the offices of the presidency of the Republic,
the congregations of the Religious-Nationalists, and other congregations that
were undertaken for the realization of the rights of individuals were met with
violent and harsh reactions by the military and security forces.
Nehzate Azadi Iran
(the Religious-Nationalist Party) has been dissolved and its members have been
named "enemies" [of God] because of their membership in unlawful
groups. The Writers Association of Iran is not even allowed to meet in order to
elect their internal officers, is constantly under surveillance and must endure
a constant atmosphere of fear and terror.
10) Article 21 reads as follows:
"(1) Everyone
has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or
through freely chosen representatives.
"(2) Everyone has the right of equal
access to public service in his country.
"(3) The will of the people shall be the
basis of the authority of government; this will shall
be expressed in periodic and genuine elections, which shall be by universal and
equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting
procedures."
Today the governance of our country is based
on, and draws its legitimacy from the vote that was taken in 1980. The right to
choose one's own predicament and choose a regime according to the will of the
nation is therefore not possible outside the will of those who already enjoy
supremacy over the population, based on this one-time vote.
Only those are allowed to be elected by the electorate
as their representatives, who have already been approved by the government and
have passed hundreds of official and unofficial filters [E] that would ensure
their expediency for the regime. In Iran for to prove the righteousness and the
liability of an individual to be elected, the individual must prove his
innocence, and it is quite interesting that people who in fact manage to pass
through all these filters and be accepted by the government and so enjoy the
right to be elected, once they have also attained the vote of the nation, are
in effect without any necessary tools for the implementation of the right of
nation for self-governance and the choosing of their own fate.
In Iran
the existence of a Parliament [E] is nothing other than a Democratic jest [E],
for the smallest act of the parliament that tries to challenge the unjust
nature of the regime will be met with the veto [E] of the unelected and chosen
members of the regime and will in effect not get anywhere. What country in the
world (that has a true parliamentary system) do you know of, in which members
of the parliament, in order to attain the just wants of their constituents from
the regime, would resort to a congressional strike?
The president of the Republic of Iran, who
has been elected repeatedly in the past 6 years with over 20 million votes
[close to 80 percent of the electorate], according to his own admission, has
less executive power than an ordinary person and so in effect the presidency of
the nation is merely a ceremonial position for someone, who can only act in
matters that do not challenge the real sources of power in the regime. Under
these circumstances, what claim to choose their own destiny remains for the
people?
11) According to the article 29.1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has duties to the
community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible."
Dear Mr. Kofi Anan,
Now that we have brought our case before you
in a quest for justice, now that we have sat down and reiterated the bitter
memories of days and years past, and now that we find our free and full
development as an impossibility, this is no time or place to ask regarding our
duty towards our community, to redefine our citizenship rights anew.
"In the exercise of his rights and
freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined
by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the
rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality,
public order and the general welfare in a democratic society." (29.2)
We are sorry that fundamental rights and
freedoms and moral and just requirements, public order and welfare are trampled
underfoot in our society, and friendly advise and
enlightened criticisms in good faith by intellectuals and reformists also don't
get anywhere.
Your Excellency, Mr. Kofi
Anan, these are black and blue days of a lifeless people that searches for the
news of a brighter future, a tomorrow in which they can account for their own
fate and can take on their own affairs, fight injustice and spread justice, and
find freedom and democracy tied into the very fabric of their ancient land.
Do them justice. There is no other time but
now that they have taken refuge with you in all innocence and are waiting to
see human catastrophes and tragedies [E] prevented, and the shade of peace and
freedom, democracy and human rights spread over this land forever.
With thanks and much due respect,
Islamic Student Associations (of 29
Universities):
Amir Kabir Technical University (Polytechnic of Tehran),
Teacher's University of Sabzevar,
University of Sistan and Baluchestan,
Sahand University of Tabriz,
Scientific University of Science of Post and Transmission,
Sharif Technical University,
Martyr Rajai University of Tehran,
Persian Gulf University of Bushehr,
Technological University of Esphahan,
Ibn Sina
Medical Sciences University of Hamedan,
Teacher's University of Tehran,
University of Shahre Kord,
Zabol University,
University of Lorestan,
Technological University of Khwajeh Nasir,
Zanjan University,
Martyr Chamran
Univewrsity of Ahvaz,
University for the Water and Electrical
Technologies of Abbaspour,
Alzahra University of Tehran,
Message of Light Center University of Som'eh Sara,
University of Economics,
Arak University,
Ferdosi University of Medical Sciences in Mashhad,
Mohaqeq Ardabili University,
Alameh Tabatabai University,
Martyr Bahonar University of Kerman,
Medical Sciences University of Iran,
University of Esphahan and Medical Sciences,
Sciences and Technologies University of Tehran.
__________________________________________________________________________
* Translation by A I T for ABF
