By: Behzad Naziri
The despicable behaviour of the Iranian regime in inviting Western countries’ parliamentary delegations to whitewash its deplorable human rights record reminds me of a memory that goes back 30 years to February 1982, when working for AFP in Tehran, I was accompanying a team from French TV Channel 1.
An invitation by the government for them to visit the infamous Evin Prison north of the capital aroused my interest. Asadollah Lajevardi, who welcomed the group, was known as ‘Evin’s Butcher’ for his role in organizing the mass executions and torture of the opposition. Nevertheless, that night, his behavior in the interview, with a number of ‘remorseful prisoners’ wandering around him, was like a caring official in a students’ dormitory.
Of course, the team of reporters was never able to have any conversation with the many prisoners who were only filmed from behind. My attempt to let the head of the delegation know that he should not be deceived by this stage-setting was hardly needed; Lajevardi’s corruption and mercilessness were amply evident from his appearance.
Five months later, when I was arrested for my political activities and transferred to that same Evin prison, there was no sign of that fabricated show; all that was left was the torture chamber and the disjointed bodies of prisoners that were taken in groups to every day to the gallows.
Now, the government of Rouhani – that contrary to Lajavardi wears a smile on his face, but nonetheless as a senior security official is no less responsible for 30 years of atrocities by this regime – claims that it is inviting the parliamentarians of democratic countries to become familiar with the ‘new face’ of the religious dictatorship ruling Iran. A number of these parliamentarians had, even prior to Tehran’s invitation, already packed their suitcases and were ready to go. Instead of learning a lesson from the West’s failed experience and the delusion of ‘Khatami’s moderate government’, they are now in Iran or on their way back hopeful of lucrative contracts.
Mullahs that today question the nuclear deal in Geneva and are not prepared to give any concessions in the human rights realm – such as inviting the UN Special Rapporteur to Iran – or for that matter regarding their meddling in the region and their support for terrorism, and especially in the massacre of Syrian people by Bashar al-Assad, could have found no better tool to tell their people that despite the fact that nothing has changed in their lives, Western representatives have come to their beautiful country to see its officials and visit its tourism sites with a forgiving gesture. As much as ‘Evin’s Butcher’ showed his prison to the French reporters, Iran’s present officials are showing the realities of Iranian society to their Western guests.
However, democrat parliamentarians who are committed to universal values and are not prepared to become instruments of propaganda to a theocracy to mislead public opinion, know well that such a visit could not take place without preconditions. As an example, four European parliamentarians cancelled their visit to Tehran once they learned that the Iranian regime has crossed out discussions on human rights from the delegation’s program. And a senior French representative that Tehran publications had widely reported was travelling to Tehran this weekend, postponed his visit on Friday to a time ‘when suitable conditions would be met’.
Parliamentarians need not go far to search for suitable preconditions; they need do no more than put on the table parts part of the demands by the international community ratified on November 19 in the UN General Assembly resolution on human rights violations in Iran.
“The General Assembly… Calls upon the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (…)
(a) To eliminate, in law and in practice, amputations, flogging, blinding and other forms of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(b) To abolish, in law and in practice, public executions and other executions carried out in the absence of respect for internationally recognized safeguards including by stoning and suspension strangulation.”
If the intention of such visits is discovering the realities of today’s Iran and not tourism, and given the fact that the regime’s officials shall never take their parliamentarian guests inside prisons or to street intersections where strangulated bodies are hanging from cranes for the public to see, then, these visits void of preconditions only help to cover up the atrocities of a regime that still commands a voluminous and deplorable human rights dossier in the United Nations, and is under scrutiny of international human rights organizations and defenders.
Behind the ‘today’s Iran showcase’ arranged for Western parliamentarians, we still have the same bloody torture chambers that ‘Evin’s Butcher’ was concealing from French reporters some 30 years ago.