Rajavi: Widespread human rights abuses require Security Council intervention
Resolution indicates mullahs' abysmal human rights record and shows human rights have not improved during Khatami's 4-year tenure

The United Nations Human Rights Commission adopted today a resolution condemning flagrant human rights abuses in Iran including "the continued executions... in particular in public and especially cruel executions," "the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, in particular the practice of amputation," the lack of "international standards in the administration of justice," "the absence of due process of law and the use of national security laws to deny the rights of the individual," "the deterioration of the situation with regard to freedom of opinion and expression, especially attacks against the freedom of the press," and "imprisonment and mistreatment of students." The Commission also renewed the Special Representative's mandate for one more year.

National Council of Resistance of Iran President Massoud Rajavi said in this regard: "The 48th censure resolution by Human Rights Commission and General Assembly and continuing human rights abuses in Iran make it ever more imperative that the file on mullahs' crimes be referred to the UN Security Council. This is particularly the case as the mullahs have ignored all UN resolutions."

Mr. Rajavi added: "Although this resolution addresses only a fraction of the clerical regime's atrocities, it does reflect the abysmal record of the mullahs' medieval regime. It also indicates that there has been no change in the human rights situation in Iran during Khatami's four-year-tenure."

"Hollow claims of improvement in Iran, designed to justify economic ties and political dealings with the religious dictatorship ruling Iran, have emboldened the regime to continue its crimes," he said.

Mr. Rajavi emphasized that the clerical regime's launching ago of 77 Scud missiles against Mojahedin camps and Iraqi cities two days that left a number of innocent civilians dead or wounded demonstrated palpably that the world community must shun this anti-human regime. Appeasement of the mullahs, under whatever pretext, amounts to sacrificing human rights and democracy in Iran and peace and stability in the region, he noted.

NCR President said: "The escalation of suppression and the rise in executions and arrests since the Commission's 56th session, also confirmed by the Special Representative, leave no room for bogus claims of 'improvement' and 'positive developments.'" "Such claims are in direct contradiction with other paragraphs of the resolution. Experience has shown that such unjustified concessions to the criminal mullahs will only ensure them that they will be immune from the international repercussion of their crimes," the NCR President emphasized.

Recalling that "those responsible for these crimes are also responsible for massacre of 30,000 political prisoners," Mr. Rajavi underscored the "just demands of the Iranian people and Resistance that the clerical regime's leaders be indicted by an international tribunal."

He said 11 years ago around this time, terrorists dispatched from Tehran assassinated Dr. Kazem Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance's representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. He called on the Swiss government to "set aside political considerations and compel the clerical regime to hand over the killers to the Swiss judiciary, particularly since Swiss judiciary is aware of the identities of the killers."

The clerical regime dispatched two high-ranking Foreign Ministry and Judiciary officials to Geneva, offered economic and political concessions and tried to take advantage of the Commission's current composition in a futile effort to prevent the adoption of the censure resolution.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 20, 2001

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