PING YOUR FRIENDS AND REMEMBER, JUNE & JULY THIS YEAR!
Posted on 05/18/2004 11:41:28 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
With summer fast approaching, Iran’s internal security forces are gearing up to crackdown on anti-government demonstrations which usually escalate in the months of June and July.
There have been many protests in Iran’s major cities already. In March, violent anti-government protests erupted in Fereydoun Kenar, Marivan, Boukan, and Isfahan. And earlier this month, teachers in Tehran and elsewhere staged demonstrations that led to the closure of many schools across the country. Moreover, more than 20,000 people took part in a protest by tea growers in northern Iran last week.
To stem the rising momentum of popular protests, Iran’s theocratic rulers are undertaking pre-emptive measures by deploying the security forces in Tehran and other major cities. Special units of the Revolutionary Guards Corps regularly take position in many of the capital’s major intersections and streets. Roaming around in groups of four or five, they harass particularly the students and young people, making their presence felt.
In an editorial entitled, “The Guards must keep their guard up,” the state-controlled daily, Ressalat, expressed concern over the spread of popular uprisings. “Certainly, the psychological atmosphere of June and July requires the vigilance of the Hezbollah as never before,” it wrote last week.
The number of executions including public hangings has been on the rise in recent weeks. Agence France Presse reported last week that three people were hanged in Tehran and in the northeastern city of Mashhad. Execution, torture and ill-treatment of political dissidents are a main component of Iran’s highly elaborate and institutionalized suppression designed specifically to terrorize and subdue an increasingly restive population.
Last month, Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi issued a statement purportedly banning “any kind of torture to obtain confessions.” Human rights organizations wasted no time in dismissing this proclamation as a non-starter, pointing out that Shahroudi’s statement was in fact an official admission of systemic use of torture in Iran. What is more, Iran has not yet joined the Convention Against Torture, because, among other things, Tehran has sanctioned as divine punishment the very conduct the world community has condemned as torture.
Some of the punishments under the Iranian regime’s penal code are flogging, eye gouging, limb amputation and stoning, just to name a few. On any given day, a religious judge could issue an order for “Tazir”, a religious term for physical punishment of the detainee that ranges form lashing the victim for hours to solitary confinement and electric shock, etc.
Iran’s fundamentalist rulers even dispute the definition of “political prisoner”, saying that Iranian law did not recognize the status of political prisoners. "This word has no legal definition, but some people consider actions against national security as a political crime," a Judiciary official said last month.
In the past quarter century, Iran’s leaders have used spin and double-talk in dealing with the international community. In negotiations over suspending uranium enrichment program, the term “suspension” has a totally different meaning for the mullahs. The same goes for the meaning of “torture” and “political prisoner”. The plight of thousands of Iranians who paid the price of trusting the mullahs for their words should serve as examples to those who still believe the mullahs really mean what they say.
Clearly, the mullahs, anticipating a long and hot summer of discontent, are banking on the international community’s ambivalence as they implement their pre-emptive measures to keep the democracy movement at bay. Without doubt, the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s indifference toward the deteriorating state of human rights in Iran, reflected in the European Union’s failure to table a censure resolution against Iran in the Commission’s April session in Geneva, emboldened Iran’s ruling tyrants.
Iran’s democracy movement offers the only chance for real change in Iran through peaceful means. The United States’ security concerns could only be alleviated if and when the rule of law and democracy prevail in Iran. The mullahs shield their tyrannical house of cards behind tall, thick and ubiquitous walls of suppression. We should, therefore, give priority to efforts aimed at ensuring respect for the human rights of Iran’s citizens and Iranian dissidents striving to establish secular and representative governance in that country.
PING YOUR FRIENDS AND REMEMBER, JUNE & JULY THIS YEAR!
Thank you for the Ping.
Free Iran!
BUMP
Some of the punishments under the Iranian regime’s penal code are flogging, eye gouging, limb amputation and stoning, just to name a few. On any given day, a religious judge could issue an order for “Tazir”, a religious term for physical punishment of the detainee that ranges from lashing the victim for hours to solitary confinement and electric shock, etc.
Pageing Seymour Hersch, Pageing Seymour Hersch, where are you, isn't this a story you need to be on????????
Pageing Michael Slug Moore,Pageing Michael Slug Moore, shouldn't this be yr next movie
Yeah!
But the people you named are Blind or corrupted so that they can't see or don't tend to see!
Thanks for the ping!
Here is a great flash video on Iran from Krisof of NYTimes.
He is just back from a trip to Iran and wrote some interesting articles about the current situation of the country.
Here is one flash video that I am sure you will enjoy!
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/opinion/20040519_IRAN_FEATURE/index.html
Let Freedom Ring ~ Bump!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.