GENEVA - An Iranian resistance group has sent UN human rights chief Mary Robinson a list of some 47 people it claims were murdered or abducted by Iran's intelligence ministry, the group said Thursday.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCR) urged Robinson to "condemn these sinister killings" and to form an international fact-finding mission to Iran to investigate the alleged crimes.

The NCR alleges that more than 80 percent of the victims, who it says were not political activists, disappeared or were murdered over the past four years.

The list, and separate letters, were also sent to the foreign ministers of the European Union, Canada and the US Secretary of State, said a statement received in Geneva.
 
 

Four Students Abducted At Tehran University, Agence France Presse, 27 May

PARIS - Manuchehre Mohammadi and three fellow students were abducted by security forces earlier this week at the university of Tehran during a rally , a Paris-based Iranian group said Thursday.

The Iranian Committee Against State Repression and Terrorism said in a communiqué that Mohammadi and the other students have been missing since Tuesday, when security forces stormed the university to stop a rally to defend free speech and political prisoners.

It accused the Iranian secret service of being behind the abductions and expressed concern about the students' fate.
 
 

Satellite TV Equipment Seized, Agence France Presse, May 27

TEHRAN - Iranian police seized 855 satellite television dishes and decoders hidden in a trailer hauling wheat in a southern suburb of Tehran, Kayhan paper reported Thursday.

The trailer was stopped in Ray city along with five people involved in smuggling.

Satellite dishes have been banned in Iran since 1995 to protect the country from the "western cultural onslaught."
 
 

Moderation In Iran Is Still A Mirage, The Dallas Morning News, May 22

Two years ago this week, Mohammad Khatami was elected the Iranian regime’s president…

Mr. Khatami’s election was promoted in the press as the beginning of the long-awaited transformation of the religious dictatorship into a (relatively) moderate, democratic state. He is looked upon by some people as a genuine reformer locked in an uphill struggle against the "hard-line" clerical establishment.

Other people acknowledge that Mr. Khatami’s words may differ somewhat from the vitriolic invective coming out of Iran during the past two decades, but they argue that the man should be judged by his deeds. Viewed in that light Mr. Khatami looks like an insider firmly committed to the clerics’ monopoly on power.

Where does Washington stand? Apparently on the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" side….

That policy has produced a lengthy list of unrequited goodwill gestures, but little else. Iran was removed from the U.S. list of major drug-producing countries last year. Similarly, trade sanctions were loosened last month, and U.S. companies were permitted to sell food and medicine to Iran. In its annual terrorism report released last month, the State Department dropped its designation of the mullahs' regime as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The reality is quite different. In remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last month, Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk acknowledged that Iran continues its support for a variety of terrorist groups in the Middle East, is pushing for nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and remains firmly opposed to the Middle East peace process.

… The latest session of the UN Human Rights Commission concluded that grave, systematic violations of human rights - including public executions, torture, stoning and arbitrary arrests - were continuing. Under Mr. Khatami, women are still discriminated against and suppressed.

Two years into Mr. Khatami's presidency, there is no sign of "moderation," and there have been no reforms. The facts are clear: The Iranian people’s conflict with their dictatorial rulers is irreconcilable.

The leader of the Iranian resistance, Massoud Rajavi, always has made it clear that if the mullahs and their allies are true to their words, they should try their luck against the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance, Maryam Rajavi, in a free election supervised by the United Nations.

But the clerical regime, including Mr. Khatami, never would allow that Moderation or reform would be the kiss of death for the rulers, a fact no one grasps better than Khatami himself. Two years into his presidency, he has proved to be the poison chalice - not the magic potion - of the mullahs’ rule in Iran.

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