Torture Ban in Iran: "Mullahs' PR Ploy is Dead on Arrival


Apr 30, 2004, 12:54
Hamid Namvar
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If there were a contest as which country in the world is "the wonderland of the dark side", Iran under the mullahs' rule would have won it hands down. Just a quick look at the recent news headlines about Iran, would erase any doubts.

No, I am not referring to dozens of UFO citing in Iran, and, no, I am not talking about a court ruling in Tehran declaring that the United States should pay $600 million in compensation to the mullahs. I am talking about the mullahs' head of Judiciary, the Iraqi-born Shahroudi, declaring that from now on torture is banned in Iran.

Implicit in this statement, is the obvious admission that indeed torture to extract confessions for made-for-TV shows has been a common practice in Iran. One may ask what the meaning of this statement is given the fact that while the utterly anti-democratic Constitution of the mullahs' regime bans torture, and still the most barbaric medieval forms of torture, have been exercised on Iran's political dissidents in the last two and half decades,?

Shahroudi's audience obviously is not the Iranian crowd; it is the mullahs' EU trade partners. The same EU which, as it was announced last week, has about $23 billion annual trade with the mullahs. The same EU which for the second time running chose not to not to censure the clerical regime's human rights violations. The same EU which is aiding the mullahs to get away with their nuclear weapons program.

Increasingly embarrassed by its inaction in the human rights front and as reports of ill-treatment of many political prisoners continue to get out - with many of them in immediate need for medical treatment - the EU needs a huge fig leaf to cover its ugly deals with Iran: Trade contracts in exchange for its silence.

And see how empty-handed the EU is that all it could get so far is an empty declaration form one the most fascist figures of the mullahs' regime. For sure, one should expect that as new EU delegations go to Tehran, they would heap praise on this regime, no matter how brutally Iranian students are suppressed, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.

As the mullahs' become more isolated at home, they will be ever more eager to put out the "going out of business Sale" for the EU to see. The give-away deals are reported every day. Just a few days ago IRNA reported that Iran has granted Total of France a $1.3 billion energy deal. And Britain announced today that, despite sanction on selling military parts to Iran, they are selling parts for military planes to the mullahs.

As major EU governments shed humanitarian tears for Iraqi people, they look the other way when the mullahs kill, rape, maim and suppress; they provide them with anti-riot gears and military hardware; they give them the diplomatic cover to crackdown on students and women; and then their diplomats in Tehran tell foreign reporters that there is "no serious opposition" to the mullahs. They enthusiastically assist the mullahs' campaign to bury the democratic opposition under a medieval suppression so that in the next breath the can claim there is no opposition.

Well, would they succeed? No, never.

Since our Constitution Revolution in 1906, the Iranians' fight for democracy has been always intertwined with facing up those foreign governments rushing to preserve the status que at the expense of democracy movement in Iran. The support of two great powers of the time, Britain and Russia, did not deter the Iranians during the Constitutional Revolution.

Britain which owes all of its industrialization and economic success to plunder of our oil wealth has historically been a staunch ally of the mullahs. And right now under the tacit approval of the British forces in the Southern Iraq, the mullahs are spreading their network there. The sly Brits are advancing their plan of having a friendly Islamic Republic eventually taking power in Iraq, while Washington gets the body bags.

Today as Iranian men and women, students and teachers, young and old, are standing up to this regime, we have a huge responsibility to expose the EU's reprehensible dealings with Iran which is legitimizing the mullahs' reign of terror, and compromising the human rights of Iranian people.