NCR regrets suicides of Iranian asylum seekers, draws attention to deplorable condition of human rights in Iran

The National Council of Resistance of Iran regrets the November 6 suicide of an Iranian asylum-seeker in Sweden and sympathizes with his family. Another three Iranian asylum-seekers committed suicide in early November in the Netherlands. According to the report of the Dutch Refugee Organization (PRIM), at least 20 Iranian asylum seekers have committed suicide in the past one and a half years in that country.

The National Council of Resistance urges the governments of Europe to relieve the restrictions imposed on Iranian asylum seekers. These Iranians have escaped the mullahs' inferno of death, repression and poverty in search of minimum human rights and security thousands of kilometers away from their homeland.

Without doubt, the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship tops the list of human rights violators in the world today. The recently published report of the UNHRC Special Representative, Prof. Maurice Copithorne, emphasizes the "deterioration" of the condition of human rights in Iran. So far in 1996, the regime has carried out more than 100 executions, which is double the number of public executions all year in 1995. The actual figure of executions, accounting for those carried out secretly, are much higher. Also this year, a number of the leaders of Sunni and Christian minorities were murdered and 15 political opponents assassinated by the clerical regime's mercenaries in foreign countries.

The harassment and pressuring of political activists and refugees abroad was another of the mullahs' repressive policies in the current year, highlighted in the Special Representative's report. The regime thus aims to force the refugees to return home or publicly smear the Resistance movement.

In such circumstances, the European countries' pressuring of Iranian asylum seekers and deporting them against their will, is a flagrant violation of the sacred right to asylum and disregards their most fundamental human rights.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran calls on the European human rights organizations, political parties and general public to sympathize with the Iranian asylum seekers and oppose restriction of their sacred right to asylum, so as to prevent the occurrence of horrendous events such as those which took place in Sweden and the Netherlands in early November.

Beset by irremediable political and economic crises and incapable of confronting the Iranian people and Resistance, the mullahs' are doomed to go. In tomorrow's democratic Iran, the Iranian people will never forget those who came to their assistance in the darkest era of Iran's history.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris
November 15, 1996
CC:
- UN High Commissioner for Refugees
- International Committee of the Red Cross

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