IHRWG-Moratorium 2000

Towards a society free of capital punishment - Moratorium 2000

A worldwide campaign is underway to make the world free of the capital
punishment by the end of the year 2000. On Human Rights Day (10th
December) Amnesty International is launching "Moratorium 2000" with the
same objective. Three years earlier, on Human Rights Day in 1996, the
Iranian Human Rights Working Group (IHRWG) launched a campaign to
abolish the death penalty in Iran. We welcome this opportunity to
combine our efforts with the international human rights organisations
and press for an early end to the practice of capital punishment in
Iran.

Our call issued on 10th December 1996 was endorsed by a significant
number of Iranian political organisations as well as hundreds of
individuals from all walks of life. Among these were Iran Nation Party,
the first political party inside Iran ever to come out against the death
penalty, and its leader Mr. Darioush Forouhar who was slain together
with his wife last year by agents of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence in
what was later to be known as the "chain murders".

The campaign against the death penalty launched by IHRWG was supported
by a series of educational and promotional articles written by members
of the group for the Iranian media which were mostly published outside
Iran. However, this year, for the first time we managed to bring up the
issue inside Iran through publishing an article in the mass circulation
daily Neshat. Regretfully, the article was responded with a huge outcry
by certain politico-religious groups in Iran who claimed that a call to
abolish the death penalty amounted to the negation of Islam and its
religious laws of retribution (though the article had made no reference
to these or any other religious laws). Following this outcry, the
newspaper was shut down, its publisher and editor persecuted and
sentenced to imprisonment, and the author of the article was vilified
and threatened with death. However, as a result of this article being
published, and the publicity surrounding it, the issue of the death
penalty has been raised to a main topic of political debate in Iran with
promising signs of growing support among the politically active
population (both religious and secular) for an end to capital punishment
in Iran.

We once again repeat our call to all Iranians and Iranian political
groups to join the world campaign against the death penalty and support
our call to the Iranian government to respond positively to human rights
organizations and put an end to the practice of capital punishment in
Iran - NOW!

Please write to us or visit our web page dedicated to the death penalty
campaign (www.ihrwg.org/CP/), see the text of our 1996 call, and declare
your support.

Iranian Human Rights Working Group (IHRWG)
Human Rights Day
10th December 1999