Urgent Action for an urgent matter

Every week, families of the political prisoners of recent unrests were allowed a visit. Suddenly, this week visitations stopped without further explanations. This has spread a wave of worries among those who have a husband, son, daughter, brother, father, mother or another member of family locked in for months under dire consequences.

 In the late1980s, the prison authorities stopped visitations for two months in similar circumstances, during which they murdered more than 4000 prisoners in Evin and other prisons throughout the country. The Islamic regime has never responded to national and international calls to investigate the mass killing of so many young men and women,  some of whom were due to be released but went to the firing squad instead. It is now revealed that those killings were carried out under direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini himself. A decision which was approved in a secret meeting with high ranking personalities of the regime. Among those who disapproved  were the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri who was quickly removed from his appointed position of being Khomeini's replacement and has been kept under house arrest ever since and Khomeini's own son, Ahmed who also opposed the decision and was later found dead in suspicious circumstances. Many present in that historical, deadly meeting are now in the opposition camp. They too have never taken responsibility and have not reponded the calls for an investigation into the mass killings.

Now, 21 years later, we might witness a catostroph once again. This time, the self-appointed rulers, especially the un-elected president see no reason to have regards for human rights and so they kidnap, detain, torture, rape and ultimately kill at their own pleasure and in front of the bewildered eyes of the Iranians whose only crime is the wish to work for human rights and democracy in their country.

We call on the international community to raise their voices against the growing spread of human rights abuses in Iran. Iran's situtaion, its nuclear programme and a final settlement of any kind is directly linked to the situation of Iranians in the hands of their un-elected rulers.