RESOLUTION REQUIRING URGENT ACTION - by UNPO Presidency.

In a blatant defiance to the UN General Assembly, UN Independent Experts on Human Rights, the European Parliament and international human rights organizations, and contrary to Islamic faith which prohibits execution in the month of Moharam, the Iranian regime has executed another 4 ethnic Iranian (Ahwazi) Arab opposition activists on 24 January 2007. Their names are as follows:

 1. Mohammad Chaabpour, 28, married with one child, student at Shushtar University
2. Abdolamir Farjolah Chaab, 26, married, student at Shushtar University
3. Alireza Asakereh, 24, single from Maashur (Mahshahr)
4. Khalaf Dohrab Khanafereh (Khazirawi), 34, married with one child from Falahieh.

 On 10 January 2007, independent experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, Mr. Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Mr. Leandro Despouy, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, and Mr. Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture, issued a statement urging the Iranian Government to "stop the imminent execution of seven men belonging to the Ahwazi Arab minority and grant them a fair and public hearing". Three more face imminent execution.  

http://www.ahwaz.org.uk/2007/01/unhcr-iran-must-stop-executions-of.html.  

This is just another of series of execution as on 19 December 19, 2006, Malek Banitamim, Abdollah Solaimani, and Ali Matorizadeh were executed for "waging war on God" in Ahwaz City. This was done one day after the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Iran’s human rights violations.

On March of this year, 2 other ethnic Ahwazi Arabs, Ali Afrawi-(age 17) and Mehdi Nawaseri (20 years old), were publicly hang in Ahwaz City for similar charges, after a TV broadcast of their “confession” was shown a day earlier on Khuzestan TV.

 On November 13, 2006, the Iranian regime broadcasted videos of forced confessions of 11 Ahwazi Arabs on Khuzestan TV but due to international outrage including unanimous condemnation by the European Parliament in a resolution on November 16, 2006, as well as a resolution by 48 British MPs and similar actions by other EU parliaments, the execution of the these men were delayed.

On November 9, Iran’s Supreme Court has confirmed the execution sentence of at least 19 of the 35 Iranian Arabs sentenced to death following a one-day trial in absence of lawyers or witnesses. Two of these 35 men sentenced to death, Nazem Bureihi and Abdolreza Nawaseri, were already serving prison sentences for insurgency at the time of the bomb attacks for which the regime claims they were responsible for. “One of the wonders of the Iranian Judiciary is that it can accuse a person of carrying out bombings while he’s in prison,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “That lays bare the arbitrariness of his conviction.”  

 The convictions are evidently arbitrary and are intended to collectively punish Ahwazi Arabs for opposing the system of apartheid that they are subjected to.

 Peaceful opposition among Ahwazi Arabs to the Iranian regime's racist policies of ethnic cleansing has been brutally suppressed. Since April 15, 2005 the beginning of the Ahwazi Intifada (Uprising), over 25,000 Ahwazis were arrested, at least 131 were killed and over 150 were disappeared (believed to have been tortured and killed by Iranian security forces). Iranian authorities level accusations against the USA, Great Britain and Israel as the cause of Ahwazi demands for democracy, social and economic justice. Ethnic cleansing against Iranian-Arabs in Khuzestan has intensified since the mid-1990s, particularly following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 UNPO Presidency urges an immediate action to compel the Iranian government to commute the remaining sentences. UNPO presidency also urge establishment of an investigation team by the UN Human Rights Council to look into these killings.  

UNPO Presidency

Brussels, 2 February 2007