This transparent ploy is another one of the regime's attempts to pave the way for compromise on the UN Human Rights Commission's resolution on the abuse of human rights in Iran. Meanwhile, the regime arrests and imprisons hundreds of people every day under various pretexts, keeping them under inhuman conditions.
On June 16, 1997, the head of the National Organization of Prisons announced that due to the large number of prisoners, they have turned even libraries, mosques and cultural clubs into jails. Reports from Iran as well as the admissions by the regime's officials point to serious shortages of prison space and absence of minimum facilities for prisoners. In some prisons in Tabriz, Shiraz and Isfahan, 7,000 prisoners are detained in cells made for only 1,000.
In recent months, the clerical regime's Ministry of Intelligence, Guards Corps and State Security Forces have made more arrests across the country and on the borders, as social and student protests and workers strikes have been on the rise. The increasing trend of executions have continued during Khatami's tenure. Various officials, including Mohammad Yazdi, the Head of the Judiciary, and Ata'ollah Mohajerani, Khatami's government spokesman, have emphasized on the need to carry out and "defend" medieval punishments such as stoning.
The Iranian Resistance draws the attention of international human rights organizations to the inhuman conditions in the Iranian prisons and calls on the current session of the UN Human Rights Commission to strongly condemn the violations of human rights in Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 16, 1998
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