Recent executions in Iran

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 19, 2010 23:24 by Justin Morahan

Letter to Iranian Ambassador

(The May 9th executions of 5 political activists in Iran after secret trials and torture has sparked outrage in Human Rights and Trade Union circles.
The letter below was sent by e-mail to the Iranian Ambassador on 15 May 2010)

Dear Ambassador

Again I write to you in dismay and unbelief, also in strongest protest,
at the executions, hangings, shootings and torturing of my brothers and
sisters in Iran. News of the latest examples of these horrors have come
to me through a Nobel Peace Laureate who is also horrified beyond belief
at these callous outrages against members of our human family.

Ali Heydariyan, Farhad Vakili, Farzad Kamangar, Mehdi Eslami and Shirin
Alam Hooli, all of whose sacred lives you have violated and destroyed
for so-called "enmity against God", - all denied the "crimes" with which
you have charged them. I believe their word rather than yours. It is
reported that they were tortured in an effort to gain "confessions" and
I believe this to be true since the practice of torture is so common in
Iran according to credible Human Rights organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch.

Yours is a regime that has executed young gays for being homosexual.
You declare the expression of the most noble and tender emotion of human
love to be a "crime" punishable by death if the two people expressing it
are of the same sex. You charge and murder them for loving one another
as if love were a crime.

Yet you see nothing wrong with your hangmen violating the body of a
woman, thrusting a rope around her neck and choking her until she is
dead. You see nothing wrong either with men violating the bodies of
other men by similarly dressing them up for choking and then hanging
them until they too are murdered by your regime. How can anyone call
himself a man and be responsible for such vile acts against human beings?

The evil involved in these acts must be exterminated in Iran. The
darkness that envelopes your country is sending out messages to all
reasonable people that your regime is to be opposed for its actions just
as a similar message emanates from the State of Israel for its crimes
against our Palestinian sisters and brothers. You and Israel are sowing
seeds of hate against yourselves.

Stop this culture of torture, executions and extreme cruelty in your
country. Put an end to this horrible nightmare. Let the light shine
again on Iran. "The moon will not always be hidden behind the clouds".

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan

Human Rights activist and Pacifist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=614rMAwcyhc