He must be arrested and put on trial!

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami has been invited by the Centre for Global Justice to visit the United States of America for a series of speeches and dialogues. He is to speak at the Washington National Cathedral and possibly Harvard and Virginia universities. He is also to attend a UN meeting in New York and he will hold a press conference there. His upcoming meeting with former US president Jimmy Carter is said to help the two countries to overcome their long term hostility.

Khatami has always been introduced to the world as the smiling and reformist face of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is famous for his ‘dialogue of civilizations’, a term he first used in a speech to the UN general assembly in September 1998.

But reality is far from the general picture the western media draws of Mohammad Khatami. During the eight years of his presidency:

• more than 200 people were executed,
• tenfold of women were sentenced to death by stoning,
• 4 workers from Khatoon Abad (Babak Shahir) were killed for going on strike,
• Students’ demonstration in commemoration of 9 July 2004 was brutally crushed on his orders,
• The organised killings of dissidents famous as the ‘serial murders’ took place when he was in power.
• Women had no rights and were constantly harassed. Any protest against discriminatory laws was answered by whips, arrests, torture, humiliation and imprisonment,
• Many homosexuals were arrested and sentenced to long term imprisonment or execution,
• Thousands of people were arrested and tortured for trying to defend their human rights against the Islamic regime,
• Hundreds of workers’ strikes and demonstrations and students’ and women’s protests and nurses and teachers strikes were savagely attacked and suppressed,

And the list is endless…

Mohammed Khatami and the regime he was its president for eight years have done nothing but organising terror and murder and oppression. Khatami and all other leaders of the Islamic Republic are criminals and must be tried in the international courts for their crimes against humanity.

During the eight years of Khatami’s presidency, the persecution and murder of Iranian people continued non stop. As far as the Iranian people are concerned, inviting Khatami and providing him with platforms to speak and treating him as a respectable politician is condemned. Khatami has, doubtlessly incited violence against people in Iran and his government has helped Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, inviting him as a respectable person for civilized dialogue is despicable and unacceptable.

The Worker-communist Party of Iran is against giving the criminal leaders of the Islamic regime any opportunity to travel around the world and pretend that they are opening civilized dialogues, while at the same time they are murdering and torturing Iranian people and clearly supporting international Islamic terrorism.

We call upon all freedom lovers, individuals and international human rights bodies to make their protest heard and to demand Khatami’s arrest and international trial as a criminal.

Worker-communist Party of Iran- organisation abroad
August 30, 2006