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On the invitation of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Iranians supporting the Resistance will begin a week-long protest campaign today, Thursday, April 12, in different cities in Europe and North America, including Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Paris, Melbourne, The Hague, Rome, Ottawa, Brussels, Geneva and Washington, DC.
In these rallies, to be held outside the Foreign Ministries or Parliaments, Iranians will be demanding a review of the policy of appeasement toward the medieval dictatorship ruling Iran by these governments and underscore the need to sever political and economic ties with a regime that has executed 120,000 political prisoners in the past two decades and has been condemned in 47 resolutions by the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission. They will also call for the recognition of the Iranian people's legitimate right to overthrow the mullahs' regime and establish democracy and popular sovereignty in Iran.
Members of parliament and human rights personalities in these countries will address the gatherings. Iranians will emphasize that the mullahs' presidential election sham will be boycotted by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people.
In five operations in the past week,
Mojahedin operational units inside Iran pounded centers of suppression
in Tehran and several other provinces in retaliation for the new wave of
execution and suppression.
NCR Supporters Demonstrate Against Suppression of Human Rights in Iran, Agence France Presse, April 12
BERLIN - Opponents of the Iranian regime demonstrated in Berlin Thursday in protest at the repression of human rights in their country.
The organizers of the demonstration in front of the German foreign ministry, the National Resistance Council, said several hundred people took part.
The demonstrators carried banners condemning the "executions, terror and crime" of the government headed by President Mohammad Khatami and denounced as an "illegitimate farce" a presidential election in Iran scheduled for June 8.
They also called on the German government
to support tough UN resolutions condemning the regime for human rights
abuses.
Iran's Hard-Liners Pressure Khatami, The Washington Post, April 12
ISTANBUL - Iran's religious conservatives are intensifying attacks on reformers in an effort to weaken progressive President Mohammad Khatami and discourage him from seeking reelection, less than a month before the candidates' filing deadline, according to political observers in Iran.
The crackdown has put Khatami -- who has refused to announce whether he will run for a second term in June -- under intense pressure not only from conservatives, but from competing factions within his reformist movement…
The pre-election turmoil has widened schisms in Iran's reformist and conservative camps, driving deeper wedges between extremists and moderates within each group...
The strains within Khatami's reformist
camp have also been severe, with radical reformers complaining that he
has accomplished too little during his four-year term…
Mullahs' Supreme Leader Criticizes US World "Interference", Associated Press, April 12
TEHRAN - Supreme leader Ali Khamenei told India's visiting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Thursday that stronger regional cooperation was needed to combat what he called worldwide U.S. "interference."
"Under the present global circumstances,
it is logical and necessary for Eastern countries such as Iran, India,
Russia and China to improve their cooperation," Khamenei told Vajpayee,
who is on a four-day official visit to Iran.
News Bites
Agence France Presse, April 12: Former Iranian justice minister Ahmad Sadr, 84, who was freed on bail Thursday after being held with 41 other liberal figures, said the case would backfire on those who had brought it. He said that following his arrest he had been kept alone in a bare cell with only a blanket and a jug of water.
Tehran Times, April 11: The Tehran-based daily Kar-va-Kargar has not been published after the Iranian New Year holidays, ended on Friday 6 April. The daily, run by the House of Labour, is said to have stopped publication due to sacking of a group of its staff.