Green Path of Hope appeals to Ban Ki Moon

The Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope has called on the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, to take action and ensure an end to the ongoing detention of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mahdi Karroubi and their wives.

The Council's letter comes just ahead of planned opposition rallies against the continued detention of the Green Movement leaders and their wives. There is currently no news about the men's state of well-being.

The council “requests that the United Nations and its Human Rights organisations use their good offices in accordance with the United Nations declarations and the documents pertaining to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to end the flagrant violation of the rights of these national leaders and free them without delay.”

The International Campaign for Human Rights has already warned that the incommunicado nature of their eighteen day long detention in an undisclosed location increases the likelihood that the four are facing psychological and physical torture for the purposes of extracting false confessions.

Following orders by Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, Mahdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Fatemeh Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard have been held incommunicado and have “deprived them of their liberties since 14 February,” when hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters came to the streets to express solidarity with the recent uprisings in the Arab world.

Authorities have been holding Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Fatemeh Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard incommunicado and have deprived them of their liberties since 14 February, when thousands of Iranians joined protests for which the opposition leaders had called. Several sources are reporting that all four have been transferred to either Heshmatiyeh Prison in Tehran, or to an undisclosed third location. Yet Iran’s Prosecutor General Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, told the semi-official ISNA news agency on 28 February that, “published news by some hostile media regarding the transfer of Mr. Mousavi and Mr. Karroubi to the Heshmatiyeh detention centre is false.”

The Council's letter is as follows:

Subsequent to the Iranian Presidential elections of 2009 a wave of widespread, peaceful protests disputing the declared outcome of this election inundated the entire country. The protesters requested the recognition of their right for determining their own destiny through fair, free and unadulterated elections.

However, the government chose to severely repress the protesting citizens through blocking the paths of free communications and by censorship and shutting down autonomous newspapers and political parties. By arresting and imprisoning around fifty thousand protesters including women, the youths, political activists, leaders of political parties and members of nongovernmental unions such as the associations of journalists, students, teachers and workers, the government has violated the Iranian Constitution and civil law as well as the international provisions of Human Rights that are endorsed in civil and political conventions that the Iranian government has endorsed and is officially and legally obligated to observe.

Four people have died under torture in prisons and at least eighty people have been murdered during peaceful street demonstrations. Those who have ordered these crimes have not been identified or prosecuted. Information and security organizations and government-controlled media have published lies and calumnies about the leaders and active members of the opposition while denying them the opportunity to respond. Anyone who objects to the government’s illegal conduct of the last election is deprived of government jobs. Studying at institutions of higher learning is predicated upon remaining silent about the actions of the state potentates.

After Mir Hossein Mousavi (the prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran during 1982-90) and Mahdi Karroubi (the Speaker of the third and sixth parliaments of Islamic Republic of Iran) called on the people to express their support for the people's uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt on 14 February 2011, all channels of communications with these two leaders were blocked. The government violated all the citizenship rights of these two 2009 presidnetial candidates and their wives, Zahra Rahnavard (professor and former president of Al-Zahra University) and Fatimah Karroubi (former member of parliament and social activist) by holding them incommunicado and preventing even their children from meeting with them. In effect they have been imprisoned. The family and relatives of these prominent national figures and public opinion have no news about the place of their detention, health, or even their food despite the fact that Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Mousavi have not been tried or convicted in a court of law.

“The Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope of Iran” requests that the United Nations and its Human Rights organisations use their good offices in accordance with the United Nations declarations and the documents pertaining to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to end the flagrant violation of the rights of these national leaders and free them without delay.

Source: GVF