News from the KNC Public Relations Committee Kurdish National Congress of North America
Inquiries: 818-434-9609 Contact: Mrs. Soraya Fallah
California. June 28, 2008. The Iranian Islamic authorities, soon after they tightened their grip on the country in 1979, following the overthrow of the Shah’s tyrannical establishment, have been suppressing every basic human, religious, and ethnic right in Iran. This, in essence, is a grave violation of every democratic principle. Months after they established their religious sectarian rule, and on an order from Khomeini, the Iranian authorities sent their forces to Kurdistan-Iran in order, as they put it, to wipe out the “foreign agents.” They declared a so-called “Jihad” against the Kurdish people. Their jihad did not even spare pregnant women and children sleeping in their cradles.
After regaining control over Kurdistan, instead of working to bring tranquility to the people and show concern for their welfare, the Iranian regime continued the same policies of its predecessor, the Shah’s despotic regime. The Iranian regime maintained the policy of persecuting Kurdish human rights advocates and freedom seekers. In 1989, Iranian regime used the negotiation tactics to trap the Secretary General of Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Dr. Abdurrahman Qasmlu along with two of KDPI leadership members in Vienne, and murdered them while they were negotiating terms to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish national demands within a democratic Iran. They were slain while sitting at the negotiation table. This pattern of suppression and murder was repeated in 1992 in Berlin when Qasmlu’s successor, Abdurrahman Sharafkandi along with several of his supporters were murdered after returning from a peace conference. Dozens of other Iranian Kurdish democratic and human rights activists who had fled to Kurdistan-Iraq to escape a certain death were murdered by Iranian co- conspirators and agents who followed them to Iraq and executed them.
According to the Amnesty International’s recent report (2008), Iran is the only country in the world that still executes children and child offenders (those accused of committing an offense when they were under 18 years of age). In the past decade, the Iranian regime sentenced 177 child offenders to death, of which 34 executions have already taken place. Their ages ranged from 12 to 17 years. The remaining 114 await execution. Today, Iran accounts for 73% of all juvenile executions worldwide.
The theocratic state has also launched a campaign of suppression against women and women’s organizations who are advocating for human rights for women. Iranian women’s groups have been peaceably assembling and using democratic means to try to make the regime to