Rajavi: UN Security Council must look into crimes against humanity by mullahs' regime

In the wake of the latest report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission's Special Representative on Iran, Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: "The report's emphasis on the continuing, grave violation of human rights in Iran and the use of torture and inhuman punishments, such as the gouging of eyes, stoning and amputation of limbs, the continuing abuse of the rights of women and those of ethnic and religious minorities, the lack of a legal system based on international standards, the persistence of disappearances and suspicious deaths and the appalling prison conditions, make it incumbent on the Commission on Human Rights to condemn strongly this inhuman regime.

"After 45 UN resolutions condemning the Iranian regime's rights violations, it is high time for the UN Security Council to look into the clerical regime's crimes against humanity and take binding decisions," Mr. Rajavi said.

Various constraints, including the report's limited space and the Iranian regime's refusal to allow a visit to Iran by the Special Representative, have meant that major areas of human rights abuses such as increasing executions, the brutal crackdown on popular protests and demonstrations and continuing terrorist operations against Iranian dissidents abroad, have not been addressed in the report. In the past year, the clerical regime's use of truck bombs, bombings and antipersonnel mines planted in public thoroughfares has claimed the lives of 11 Mojahedin members and several innocent Iraqi civilians, while dozens have been wounded in these terrorist attacks.

Mr. Rajavi said: "In such circumstances, the ruling mullahs are trying to whitewash their crimes by using as a pretext the recent Majlis elections, which took place in the framework of clerical supremacy and not the supremacy of popular will. Numerous filters in the selection procedure supervised by the Guardian Council ensured that even those who held senior positions in the mullahs' regime in the past two decades were not allowed to stand in the elections. Huge rigging and electoral fraud have come to light and factional infighting among the mullahs has aggravated. A month after the elections, the results have not been announced and the anti-democratic nature of the election has become evident.

The NCR President forwarded to the UN Human Rights Commission a copy of a shocking video recording showing the mullahs' agents gouging out a prisoner's eyes and amputating several prisoners' hands. Mr. Rajavi said: "As the Special Representative's report emphasizes, there has been no substantial or serious change in the human rights situation in Ira and these crimes are continuing until this very day." He added: "Any leniency and flexibility toward the clerical regime and efforts to water down the resolution condemning this regime on the pretext of encouraging the ruling mullahs to continue illusory "changes" is unjustified and detrimental to the human rights situation in Iran, while being also against the highest interests of the Iranian people.'

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
March 16, 2000


Back Home