Iranian Regime Continues to Violate Human Rights in Iran

News from the KNC Public Relations Committee

Kurdish National Congress of North America       
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Contact: Brusk Reshvan

Iranian Regime Continues to Violate Human Rights in Iran

California. October 28, 2008. Despite the international calls to promote human rights and respect human dignity, the Iranian regime has been continuing its mono-religious sectarian policy of suppression against civil and non-violent movement in Iran. As a result thousands of innocent Iranians have been imprisoned, murdered, or forced to leave the country and live in diaspora.

The Iranian regime, in its sectarianism, has developed a belief system that requires all to become blind followers, and allows no one to offer an idea outside of the regime's political spectrum. Thus, it would be a high risk for anyone to disagree with their theocratic political monopoly over Iran.

Recently, the Iranian authorities have intensified their brutal suppression against activists and advocates of human rights and gender equality in Iran. To legitimize its action, the Iranian regime has employed its propaganda machine to discredit all those who have been advocating the promotion of a civil society. In the past, Iranian clergies have labeled such activists as "seditious on earth." This means all those who are labeled with such a tag are no longer allowed to remain on earth. This tactic allows the regime to justify a belief that such activists should be liquidated.  As a result, thousands of innocent Iranians have fallen victim to the intolerance of the Iranian theocracy.  Among them are many Kurdish human rights activists in Kurdistan-Iran.

The Azar Mehr association, which has been striving to promote Kurdish women's status and gender equality, has become a main target of the Iranian security forces in their crack down against its members. These are women members who have been engaged in the women's rights campaign, "One Million Signatures." The strategic goal of the campaign was to promote social equality, civil liberty, uphold human rights, preserve human integrity, and empower women in Kurdistan. Dozens of the Azar Mehr activists have been imprisoned including the founder and former chair, Nagin Shaikholeslami, and other prominent members, Hana Abdi, Ronak Safarzadeh, Fatemeh Goftari, and Zainab Bayazidi. They have been physically and psychologically tortured. They have been imprisoned with no viable charges being brought against them. Many of them have been held incommunicado. Occasionally, families of the prisoners had been given only the briefest visitation with their loved ones with no time allowed for conversation. Such conduct by the Iranian regime is considered another means to psychologically torture the prisoners and their families.

We call upon the United Nations, Amnesty International, European Union, United States of America, Canada, Russia, China, France, Germany, and England to urge the Iranian regime to honor basic human rights, preserve human integrity, free Ms. Shaikholeslami, her associates and other prisoners of "conscience," and to stop mistreating women based on its religious sectarian interpretation.