Weekly Commentary

Of Mullahs and Tyranny

The UN General Assembly passed a resolution late last week which censured Tehran for its flagrant human rights violations, expressing "serious concerns" about use of torture, persecution of dissidents, politically motivated killings and restriction of free speech.

And on Tuesday, the European Union condemned Iran’s persistent and grave human rights violations accusing it of torture, concerns over the treatment of minorities and frequent death penalty for minor crimes. "Iran executed more child offenders in 2005 than in any recent year," the EU said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Karim Fahimi, a 32-year-old Iranian Kurd and father of two aged six and 10, was sentenced to death by hanging after being found guilty of "alcohol consumption" in public according to Amnesty International

Reuters reported earlier in the week that Zabihollah Mahrami, 59, an Iranian of the Bahai faith who died in his jail cell where he had been forced to perform arduous physical labor, of unknown causes in Iran after10 years of imprisonment by Iran rulers.

"His death comes amidst ominous signs that a new wave of persecutions has begin" in Iran, according to the Bahai International Community. At least 59 Bahais have been arrested, detained or imprisoned so far this year, up sharply from the last several years, it said.

Still, this by no means is the most blatant example of religious intolerance practiced by the theocratic regime. Late November Compass news site published a chilling report entitled “Iran: Convert Stabbed to Death, 10 Other Christians Tortured.” The news article confirmed that, “an Iranian convert to Christianity was kidnapped from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death, his bleeding body thrown in front of his home a few hours later… According to one informed Iranian source, during the past eight days representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have arrested and severely tortured 10 other Christians in several cities, including Tehran.”

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a senior official of the clerical regime, last month told state-sponsored suicide volunteers that “non-Muslims are sinful animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption,” according to the state-run daily Entekhaab website

Make no mistake, when it comes to killing and maiming Iranians, dissidents or otherwise, no one holds on to equal opportunity standards stronger than the clerical regime. Muslims Iranians, particularly Shia Muslims, by far have been the primary victims of mullahs’ gallows and firing squads.

The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hand-picked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former assassin and senior commander of Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, raised continued international outrage over his remarks about the Holocaust and deservedly so.

The Holocaust, however, is not the only mass killing the clerical regime, and now Ahmadinejad, calls a “myth.” Indeed, Tehran has been hard at work to wipe off the 1988 massacre of political prisoners form Iran’s contemporary history. The families of victims of the massacre have been reporting in recent months that the Iranian authorities are planning to bulldoze the sites of mass grave yards under pretext of new housing projects to erase any trace of the clerical regime’s crimes against humanity.

Beginning in mid-summer of 1988, in a systematic six-month long campaign the clerical regime under direct decree of Ayatollah Khomeini purged Iran prisons from tens of thousands of political prisoners, majority of them members and supporters of the main opposition organization, the Iranian Mujahedeen.

In a shocking fatwa, Khomeini ordered that: “Those who are in prisons throughout the country and remain committed to their support for the [Mujahedeen], are waging war on God and are condemned to execution…. Destroy the enemies of Islam immediately.”

Ahmadinejad’s Interior Minister, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, represented the ministry of intelligence on a three-person committee that ordered the 1988 executions. The published memoirs of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the designated successor of Khomeini in 1988, “identified Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi as the representative of the ministry of information in charge of questioning prisoners in Evin Prison and saw him as being a central figure in the mass executions of prisoners in Tehran,” according to the Financial Times.

The scale of massacre was so horrifying that, Ayatollah Montazeri, complained to Khomeini in July 1988 letter that: “...As you presumably will insist on your decree, at least order that women not be executed, especially pregnant women. Ultimately, the execution of several thousand people in several days will not have positive repercussions and is not without mistakes.”

The ruling tyranny in Iran has been hell-bent on ensuring its permanence by waging a reign of terror on Iranians at home. Abroad, it sponsors terrorism, exports fundamentalism and culture of hate, and seeks nuclear weapons capability to achieve the same goal.

Never before, the interest of Iranians and security needs of the region and the free world have been so singularly embodied in the strategic imperative of a democratic secular government in Iran. The ruling theocracy has a formidable enemy from within which could force the regime’s demise: The Iranian people and the democratic opposition which seeks to unseat this regime.

To this end, a comprehensive and resolute policy aimed at empowering the indigenous movement for democratic change is a clear and present necessity. (USADI)
 

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The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI), is a US-based, non-profit, independent organization, which promotes informed policy debate, exchange of ideas, analysis, research and education to advance a US  policy on Iran which will benefit America’s interests, both at home and in the Middle East, through supporting Iranian people’s  aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government, free of tyranny, fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.

USADI supports the Iranian peoples' aspirations for democracy, peace,  human rights, women’s equality, freedom of expression, separation of  church and state, self-determination, control of land and resources,  cultural integrity, and the right to development and prosperity.

The USADI is not affiliated with any government agencies, political groups or parties. The USADI administration is solely responsible for its activities and decisions.