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Ramin Etebar,MD
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Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 74 Location: USA
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 7:36 am Post subject: A Necropolis For The Living - The Shocking Truth About IRI |
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A Necropolis For The Living - The Shocking Truth About IRI
Dear Worldwide friends
On the eve of the UN Security Council meeting on Iranian mullahs quest for obtaining nuclear weapons,
I deemed it necessary to recommend reviewing the following article as well as watching the two videos.
Discussion about rogue regimes is usually bifurcated. On the one hand are weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand are human-rights abuses. But make no mistake: These issues are inseparable. We care whether or not a country has WMD capabilities only because of its record on human rights.
And it is why we should be terrified at the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Regardless of size or ideology, every rogue state from Hitler's Germany to Pol Pot's Cambodia has brutalized its people. In that sense, Iran is no different. There is one way, however, in which Iran is different. In most repressive states, such atrocities are cloaked in secrecy. Word of Russia's Gulag Archipelago, for instance, was smuggled out over decades and denied by Soviet apologists for generations. In Iran, however, torture and abasement are not just a province of the secret police. They are also a matter of public policy.
Reading about these atrocities is terrible. Seeing them is worse. The most disturbing sequence develops slowly. First, shovels work at the dusty ground in a public square. They dig two holes, about four feet deep. Then two bodies are carried out, and although they are wrapped in white sheets, they are animated. Hands lower them into the holes. They jerk and wobble while dirt is packed around them. Then the stones start flying. Dozens of men - ordinary Iranians, some young, some old - begin pelting the white bags with hundreds of rocks the size of a fist. As the ghoulish spectacle unfolds, the most alarming aspect - more sickening than the way the white bags wriggle and dance - is the demeanor of the men doing the killing. For them, this is not grim work; they are euphoric.
This is the face of the Iranian regime that so hungers for a nuclear bomb. We would do well not to forget it.
Respectfully Submitted
Ramin Etebar, MD
Iranian-American physician,
Human Rights and political activist
A Necropolis For The Living
January 14, 2003
Iran va Jahan
Nicole Sadighi
http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news_en.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=01&d=14&a=1
The video for this savage act of stoning can be viewed here Video #1 ( http://www.iranvajahan.net/realaudio/fa.13801211.3..v.ram )
I recently observed a video footage; which had been recorded and smuggled out of the Islamic Republic of Iran by Iranian officials who had consequently endangered their lives in the process. Whilst I began to watch this brutal account, I became increasingly disturbed and upset by the scenes. As Ali Razini, head of Tehran's Justice Department, announced the verdict for the four accused men on the amplifier, they were brought to centre stage like lambs to the slaughter, surrounded by a boisterous crowd of the revolutionary fanatics, who had scavenged their way to collect their weapons of rocks, drooling like blood thirsty wolves for their first kill.
Following a lashing, the men were covered in white shrouds, whilst a few men with spades finished digging their death pits. The accused were then placed in the pits and Razini throws the first stone – the Roman thumbs down. The four men, who were buried up to their waists, could only aimlessly try and attempt to somehow avoid the avalanche of rocks, but sadly, like prey caught in a trap, they could not avoid the inevitable. Soon their white shrouds were reddened with the colour that symbolises the personality of the government of the Islamic Republic. This 10-minute long recording is one of the tapes of an actual display of public executions by stoning and is the unruly portrayal of the subjugated society of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Stoning is an age-old punishment and was once practiced in some parts of the world, but who would ever think that today, in this new millennium there are still people on the planet who are governed under such uncivilized and brutal laws. There is the high profile case of the Nigerian woman Amina Lawal, and the other of Sufiyata Huseini from Nigeria. However, cases in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where stoning to death is prescribed for certain offences under the Islamic Penal Code, which particularly targets women, is not as widely publicised. Not only does stoning require burying a woman deeper than a man, it is also used against women more often than men. There is an irony in this cruel punishment. Even though the practice is applied to both men and women, because it is usually a punishment implemented in regards to offences like adultery, women are susceptible to be blamed and accused for social misbehaviour offences. Therefore, it is more usual that stoning will be implemented against women than against men.
In fact, since the establishment of the radical Islamic regime in 1979, Iranian women have been forced to live a life of inequality. There is less opportunity for them in the employment sectors and what opportunities they have in the workforce, their earnings are much lower now than they were during the Shah’s time.
So, this begs a question as to why the western world is not pressing for those responsible to be tried for crimes against humanity? The Islamic Republic of Iran is a signatory of Article 5 of UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and they have ignored the United Nations CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women). Western governments and EU in particular must surely give thought as to whether they can rightly carry on “business as usual” with the Islamic Republic, given the clear violations of human rights. They seem to have been too concerned with normalising relations. Concern for commercial gain appears to be much greater than concern for continuing violations of human rights in Iran. Contrary to what is frequently said, dialogue with the Islamic Republic regime has not improved the human rights situation – quite the reverse.
Today’s human rights abuses are the cause of tomorrow’s conflicts
That is certainly the case in the Islamic Republic. The Mullahs are facing a collapsing economy and have responded with intensified oppression. A government who collaborate with such a regime, which publicly executes, gouges out eyes, amputates limbs and publicly flogs is neither ethical nor principled. They should have no business cooperating with such a regime and no business interests can justify such involvement. To quote Professor Maurice Copithorne, Special UN Envoy in 2001: [in Iran] “Breaches of human rights are in large part as common today as they were five years ago”. So where is the progress towards a better system of justice in the Islamic Republic? No resolution, however diplomatically it is drafted, can deny the fact that the people of Iran live in fear.
Under the standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to which logic, can one argue that the Iranian people are not entitled to them? In the wonderful civilisation that we enjoy in the west, it is difficult to understand any civilised government can have dealings with a regime that publicly executes, lashes and stones its own people. The proof is in the pudding as they say, all one has to do is watch this ten minute footage of viciousness and one can immediately witness the suffering of the victims of the Theocrats in Iran, who merely exist in a Necropolis for the living.
Nicole Sadighi is a Market Research Analyst and freelance Journalist based in London, UK. She contributed this article to Iran va Jahan.
http://rahai-zan.uhrtv.com/A_Few_Simple_Shots/ Video #2
We shall not forget!
CC: UN, World Leaders, Government officials, Human Rights Organizations, International Media, Activists,
several thousand e-mail recipients, and Yahoo groups _________________ Ramin Etebar, MD |
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