ANOTHER MASS KILLING IN IRAN: AN AFFRONT TO HUMAN DIGNITY
Fox news, July 30 , 2008
With its usual
unparalleled barbarity, the ayatollahs' regime marked the
20th anniversary of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners
in Iran with "the largest mass execution in years,"
according to eyewitness accounts and reports by human rights
groups. On Sunday, July 27, 2008, at dawn, 29 people were
hanged in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, the site of 30,000
political executions in a spate of a few months in summer of
1988.
Many of those executed on Sunday were dissidents arrested
during last June's fuel uprisings in Iran. Tehran often
describes as "thugs" the restive youths arrested by the
State Security Force (SSF) for staging antigovernment
protests and demonstrations. Young people are often beaten,
tortured and humiliated in public in order to intimidate the
population and deter others from joining their ranks.
The European Union's French presidency strongly condemned
the 29 hangings, adding, "The Iranian regime's action of
staging these executions and making them the focus of media
attention is an affront to human dignity."
In recent weeks, news reports from Iran indicated that eight
women and one man are waiting to be stoned to death. Their
sentence defies the so-called moratorium on stoning
announced in 2002 by the mullahs' Chief Justice, Ayatollah
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. According to BBC World Service,
at least "three people are reported to have been executed by
stoning since then." In July 2007, the regime stoned to
death Jafar Kiani in the northern Iranian city of Takestan.
RELATED
The latest hangings are the most recent in a dramatic rise
in executions in recent months. Dissident groups and
international human rights organizations insist that Tehran
regularly executes political activists as armed robbers and
drug addicts. This new trend goes even further, apparently
as part of a wider effort to quell an increasing
disenchanted and enraged citizenry. Although Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's tenure has seen a marked crackdown on every
sector of society, the ayatollahs have failed to terrorize
the opposition into submission.
Student activists, women, laborers, journalists, bloggers,
ethnic and religious minorities and bus drivers (or the
non-conformists as the regime calls them) , risk arrest,
torture and execution. But such risks have not deterred
them, further rankling a regime already beset by infighting
and facing growing isolation abroad.
The French monthly Afrique Asie reported from Tehran that
"scenes of resistance against suppression are
increasing...Iran is lonely and abandoned internationally,"
while at home the regime is "faced with increased daily
protests by students and workers. The fear of this volcano
erupting is depriving the mullahs of a good night's sleep."
For all their populist claims, the mullahs lack the capacity
and will to fulfill the Iranian people's legitimate social,
economic and political demands. Well aware of this inherent
weakness, they have built their regime on suppression at
home and crisis-making abroad.
The driving force of the ayatollahs' nuclear weapons
campaign and terrorism export — the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corp (IRGC) — is first and foremost tasked with
protecting the regime from Iran's democratic opposition.
This overriding duty (as stipulated many times by its
leadership) is inherent in the true translation of IRGC —
"Guardians of the Islamic Revolution." In September, IRGC's
top Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari stressed that the Corps'
"main responsibility" was to fight against "internal
threats."
Just last week, in a courageous rebuke to Ahmadinejad's
claim that his nuclear policies have popular backing, the
residents of the central city of Arak protested against
Tehran's nuclear program. Arak is the site of a heavy-water
reactor first exposed by Iran's main opposition, the
People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
A film clip of the Arak protest, provided by the resistance
network in Iran, was broadcast over the weekend via the
opposition's satellite television, Simaye Azadi. Outraged by
an explosion at a petro-chemical factory, the demonstrators
shouted "nuclear energy kills people," and "nuclear energy
means money in the pocket of the Leader," referring to the
mullahs' Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Given the magnitude
and severity of the suppression, such rallies speak volumes
about the strength and perseverance of the anti-regime
democratic movement.
As Afrique Asie Monthly put it, "The Iranian rulers are very
concerned and alarmed, not about an unfeasible foreign
military attack, but because of the people's support for the
Mujahedin-e Khalq. Today, MEK is highly capable of
attracting the young people born and raised after the
revolution."
The ayatollahs' fear of their enemies within — the Iranian
people and their resistance movement — and the surge in
popular protests present policy-makers on the both sides of
the Atlantic with a clear choice while the ayatollahs are
running out the clock on nuclear weapons as more centrifuges
are being installed constantly.
Europe is beginning to show the desire to make a new choice
by siding with the Iranian people as opposed to the ruling
clerics. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National
Council of Resistance of Iran, which acts as the
parliament-in-exile, was invited by Italian Parliamentarians
to Rome last week. A majority (320 members), voiced support
for her movement for democratic change in Iran. She was
received at the Vatican and met with the mayor of Rome in
the city's historic building where Ahmadinejad was rebuffed.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
