The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has reported that a group of prisoners in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj wrote to António Guterres (just elected as the next United Nations Secretary General) and to Asma Jahangir (the new UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran). In their letter they complain about the appalling human rights abuses and political violence that is taking place in the country.
The signatories included the following people: Ali Moezzi, Saeid Massouri, Ass’ad (Behnam) Ebrahimzadeh, Saleh Kohandel, Hossein Gholami-Azar, Hassan Sadeqi, Reza Akbari Monfared, Soheil Babai, Ibrahim Firouzi, Hossein Kakavand, Amir Hassanvand-Seyyar, Alireza Nasseri and Assad Mohammadi.
They highlight that the human rights situation is getting worse and worse and that the Iranian regime clearly has no regard for the people and their rights. “What is in particular of concern is the worsening and worrisome situation of human rights in Iran which is being violated blatantly by the Iranian regime.”
They also pointed out that the regime is seriously undermining and ignoring international conventions that should guarantee human dignity for everyone. “In Iran both in previous decades and at the present time human rights have been systematically and despicably abused, and this situation is continuing.”
The prisoners say that the Iranian regime is carrying out human rights abuses in other countries such as Yemen, Syria and Lebanon where they are also meddling in internal affairs. They then pointed out that the mullahs’ regime is responsible for the death of dozens of political prisoners over the past year and say that the people responsible were also in power in 1988 when they killed around 30,000 political prisoners.
Ethnic minorities are repressed by the mullahs’ regime. As are women and religious minorities. Extra-judicial executions take place. Political dissidents, workers’ rights activists, teachers and journalists are arrested and tortured on a regular basis.
The prisoners, in their letter, asked the UN officials to call for a stop to all executions in Iran, the release of civil activists from prisons, an end to pressures on opponents of the regime and also to demand the publication of the full names and sites of mass graves of the 30,000 victims who died during the 1988 massacre in Iran.
