Letter to the Honorable Ban Ki-Moon

Your Excellency:

I am writing to share with you my profound concerns about the continuing, serious and flagrant human rights violations of my compatriots by the clerical regime in Iran, and respectfully request you adopt urgent and appropriate measures to put an immediate end to such violations.

The shameful record of the clerical government’s endless violations of all the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - to which Iran has long been a signatory - needs no recounting. Since its inception thirty years ago, the clerical regime of Iran has been repeatedly cited for human rights violations by a host of international human rights agencies and organizations, including United Nations’ Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and The International Federation for the Defense of Human Rights.

Since the fraudulent presidential election in June, the leaders of the clerical regime of Iran have opted for the use of deadly force to prevent the Iranian citizens from exercising their freedoms of assembly and speech. I was deeply grateful for your prompt expression of concern and dismay on 22 June 2009, particularly “the use of force against civilians.” However, the clerical regime in Iran chose to ignore your call on them “to respect fundamental civil and political rights, especially the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of information” of the Iranian citizens.

According to official reports the number of those killed, injured and arrested in Iran so far is over two thousand. Many of the unjustly arrested are held incommunicado and have been subjected to unspeakable acts of torture. Sadly, the clerical government has prevented many families of those killed from receiving and burying the bodies of their slain relatives in order to obscure the cause of death. More alarmingly, the clerical government is preparing to execute a number of the detainees who are suspected of either leading or merely participating in recent demonstrations.

Your Excellency,

I cannot overstate the urgency of the matter. Widespread and increasing violations of the human rights of millions of my compatriots in Iran have reached catastrophic proportions. The continuation of the current state of affairs in Iran is potentially a serious threat to the peace and security of the region if not the international community as a whole. The situation seems particularly urgent if one also considers the insistence of the clerical government to continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions in defiance of its binding international obligations and the repeated recommendations of the Security Council of the United Nations.

I consider it my solemn responsibility to respectfully urge Your Excellency to use your singular authority to take the necessary measures to bring to a halt the intolerable and increasingly dangerous march of events in Iran. To this end, I sincerely suggest the adoption of the following measures:

• Call upon the clerical regime of Iran to immediately release all those who have been arrested and kept in detention on the basis of their participation in, or mere expression of support for, the post-election demonstrations. Pending the release of the detainees, the authorities must allow the detainees to have access to legal counsel and normal visiting rights;
• Appoint a special rapporteur to travel to Iran in order to prepare a firsthand report on the nature and dimensions of the recent violations of human rights committed by security agents, judicial authorities, and members of the revolutionary guards and the armed militia of the clerical regime in Iran;
• Inform the Human Rights Commission and the General Assembly of the United Nations of the serious nature of ongoing violations of human rights in Iran; and
• Urge the member states of the United Nations to recall their respective ambassadors from Iran as a minimal but clear indication of their support for the rights and freedom of the Iranian citizens and their serious objections to widespread and flagrant violations of these rights by the clerical regime in Iran.

I, along with my aggrieved compatriots in Iran, and all free and freedom loving peoples of the world, would be most grateful if Your Excellency take up this matter with the urgency required.

Please accept the expression of my deep esteem and gratitude,

Reza Pahlavi

His Excellency Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General of United Nations
The United Nations
New York, N.Y 10017

Dec. 31st, 2009