This visit comes a month after the Iranian people openly expressed their demand for the overthrow of this regime during a week long uprising in Tehran, Tabriz and other cities. During the suppression of the uprising, carried out on orders of Khatami as the head of the Supreme National Security Council, a large number of people were killed or injured and 10,000 were arrested. Many of the detainees face execution.
Two years after Khatami's inauguration and particularly after his role in the suppression of the recent uprising, no doubt exists that he is no reformer and is no different from other criminal rulers of Iran. Thus there is no excuse for expansion of trade and diplomatic ties with this regime. Moreover, the severe economic and political crises engulfing the mullahs render any political or economic investment in this faltering regime futile and doomed to failure.
The visit by the Japanese Foreign Minister comes at a time when continuing and systematic violation of human rights, brutal suppression, public executions and inhumane punishment such as stoning to death persist in Iran, while the clerical regime has been condemned 44 times by different organs of the United Nations for human rights violations and export of terrorism. The last such censure was by the Human Rights Commission in April.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 17, 1999
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