The International Centre for Human Rights: With only days before the Spring Equinox and the Festival of Norouz, which marks the arrival of the New Year in Iran, Iranians remain perplexed by the atrocities committed by the Islamic Republic. The accounts of executions, tortures, rapes and false confessions are far too many to recount and too painful to describe in this statement (but available for full disclosure upon request!)
Justice has lost all meaning and the country’s many prisons have turned into torture-houses filled far over capacity with innocent men and women who have simply dared to ask for democracy and justice. It should be noted that human-rights activists constitute a great number of these innocent prisoners who are waiting for trial or living out their sentences under incredibly harsh conditions.
Moreover, the general public is being violently attacked by the revolutionary guards, plain-clothes officers, as well as the members of the “Basij” Group, who have been employed by the regime’s revolutionary guard for the mere purpose of attacking the crowds and imparting fear in the hearts of the country’s inhabitants.
What started with a peaceful march in the summer of 2009, when the nation was demanding its votes after the last Presidential elections, has now turned into a nation-wide protest against the prevailing dictatorship in Iran. The people of Iran have begun to speak out with their democracy-seeking slogans, only to be beaten to silence with the brutally violent response of the government.
The world cannot sit idle and watch with indifference the atrocity of this tyrannical behaviour. The world must step up and speak out in defence of human and civil rights in Iran. The people of Iran — like those of any other nationality — are entitled to democracy in their land.
The International Centre for Human Rights (ICHR) — in Toronto, Canada — is herewith issuing a strong appeal to the Canadian government to support the efforts initiated in Sweden to have the United Nations Human Rights Council appoint and dispatch to Iran a special investigator to look into the grave violations of human rights by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It is our ardent hope that Canada, following the exemplary precedence she has set in supporting democracy and human rights, will lend a strong voice to this plight and pursue this vial task with diligence — thus bringing hope to a nation that has longed for decades to see justice prevail.
The International Centre for Human Rights