Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi
The clerical regime has been ruling Iran for 28 years. It has hardly spent one day without suppressing the population. This theocratic dictatorship has survived by this widespread suppression.
The truth is that the regime of velayate-faghih, meaning the absolute religious dictatorship was imposed on the Iranian people at some peculiar juncture of their history. Because of its backward medieval nature, this regime cannot and will not respond to the Iranian people’s wishes and needs.
This is the reason it began on the one hand suppressing the people and the democratic forces advocating political freedom, democracy and economic welfare. And on the other hand with the policy of instigating the Islamic revolution, crisis, war and terror in other countries prevented the untied social forces from freely expressing themselves. In this manner, export of crisis and terrorism is in one way the driving force behind the internal suppression and in another way an essential part of the widespread repression of the population.
The clerical regime’s repression is generally applied to everyone, such as suppression of women and particularly dissident groups such as MEK. A statistical review of the suppression in Iran could to some extent describe its true nature:
– 120,000 political executions
– 500,000 cases of political prisoners and tortures
– Massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in just a few months in summer of 1988
– Use of 174 types of torture against the political prisoners
– 450 cases of terrorism outside Iran where 220 targeted Iranian dissidents and the rest aimed at foreigners
– Arrest of more than 700,000 people per year in recent years and arrest and imprisonment of a total of eight million during the rule of this regime
– Thousands of cases of execution by hanging in public
– Public use of medieval physical torture such as stoning, amputation of arms and legs, gauging of the eyes, beheading, flogging, etc.
– Discrimination against women in all areas
– Suppression of religious and ethnic minorities
– Closure of 133 newspapers and magazines during Khatami, the so-called moderate. Hundreds of news media have been closed or suspended since the inception of this regime.
– Establishing 25 organs directly involved in suppression of population.
– Increased numbers of suicides and self-burning, especially among women who are under enormous social and political pressure hence resulting in depression
The following statistics reveal other long-term damages that indirectly resulted during the rule of a brutal regime in Iran:
– Death or impairment of two million people in Iran-Iraq war
– More than one thousand billion dollar in economic damage during the Iran-Iraq war
– 70% of the Iranian people live under the poverty line. As an example during the recent demonstration by the teachers throughout the country, they announced that seven hundred thousand Iranian teachers live under poverty line.
– Seven million drug addicts
– Import and distribution of 12 billion dollars of smuggled goods. This is only the amount of goods imported to the country in one year by the Revolutionary Guards Corp using non-governmental ports.
The clerical regime holds the record for political executions in the second half of the 20th century. As a matter of fact, compared to its population, Iran ranks number one in annual executions.
With this statistics in mind, to better understand the political persecution in mullah’s regime, Let me give some specific examples. Thousands were arrested after a peaceful demonstration on June 20th, 1981, which was turned into a bloodbath by Khomeini’s direct order. Two days later, Etela’at newspaper published 12 photographs of young girls announcing their execution and the fact that they refused to reveal their identities before execution. The paper had called upon their parents to show up in Evin prison and identify their children’s bodies.
Montazeri who was chosen as Khomeini’s successor, wrote a number of letters to Khomeini in 1988 and objected to the great number of political prisoners of Mojahedin. Khomeini dismissed him as his successor because of this objection. Montazeri in his letters had warned that: “execution of thousands in a few days” is not to the advantage of the regime. He had also requested that they should at least stop executing pregnant women.
In a decree, Khomeini had clearly ordered drawing the blood of political prisoners on the eve of their execution and using the blood for the Revolutionary Guards.
After Khomeini issued a decree in 1988 to kill all Mojahedin prisoners, his son Ahmad asked him a number of questions where he responded: My goal from issuing the decree to execute all political prisoners is to “immediately eliminate all the enemies of Islam.”
This trend is still continuing. Last month the regime’s Supreme Court acquitted 5 Basij militias (the suppression organ within companies, factories, schools, neighborhoods, etc.) who had brutally buried 5 people alive in Kerman. The reason for acquittal was that those killed were morally corrupt.
In Shiraz, four years ago the revolutionary court issued the verdict of amputating the right arm and left leg of 4 people.
Precisely because of these documents and the testimonies of Iranian Resistance officials, this regime has been condemned 53 times by the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Commission. One of the documents is a book containing the names of twenty thousand of those executed in Iran on political charges.
The suppression of women is widespread. Gender discrimination is the pillar of repression in the theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran. In addition to execution of tens of thousands of women, including pregnant women and teenagers for political reasons, this suppression is applied to the general public as well. That is what we are witnessing these days in the streets of Iranian cities. Mullah Eje’ei, regime’s Minister of Information has officially announced that women’s “mal-veiling” will result in regime’s overthrow. They have mobilized all the suppression organs, Police force and Revolutionary Guards to repress women in our country.
The regime has exported its suppression to the neighboring Iraq. Regime’s revolutionary guards and its mercenaries have brutally murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi personalities, women, engineers, university professors and officials. These acts of violence are ongoing.
That is the reason we, as the Iranian Resistance, appeal to all international humanitarian organizations to object to these extensive criminal acts. The fact is that this regime does not belong to the twenty first century. For years, Iranian people and their Resistance have been ready to clear this black stain from their history and bring about a democratic and free Iran based on human rights declaration.
Unfortunately, instead of assisting the Iranian people to establish democracy in their country, the European countries, for mere financial interests have curbed the activities of the Iranian Resistance by placing the MEK in the terrorist list. They have practically paved the way for the regime to increase suppression of the population and have blocked the path to democratic change in Iran.
In order to put an end to these catastrophes, the European court ruling to remove MEK from the terror list must be respected and the Iranian people’s Resistance for establishing democracy in their homeland must be supported.
Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi is the Chairman of the Judicial Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.