Dear Friends,

In three days, the world marks the International Human Rights Day. The Universal Declaration for Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. This Declaration, in essence, was an achievement for all mankind of all cultures, races and religions.

On the eve of the International Human Rights Day, we look at our nation Iran, where human rights are trampled upon. Our people suffer from the scars of lashes, are humiliated, stoned to death, with their hands tied, their feet chained and their lips sewed together. 

In my nation, Iran, even at a time when the mullahs boast of moderation, one person is being hanged every three hours, from construction cranes before the innocent eyes of children who are to be the future generation.

Indeed, for the past three decades, the concept of human rights in Iran has been buried alive by the religious dictatorship while the world simply watches. In Iran, the violation of human of rights is the law and respect for human rights is a violation of the law.

But this is not the whole story of human rights in Iran.

For the past 35 years in that country, the people’s vanguards have been paying the price of human rights with their blood. As Prof. Kazem Rajavi said, they are writing the history of human rights in Iran with their blood.

For the past three decades, members of this resistance movement have waged an epic struggle, paying the price for defending human rights under all kinds of conditions, such as those of September 1, without any means to defend themselves, with their hands tied, with coup de grace shots to their heads, while being run over by Humvees, and during a 100-day hunger strike, with suffering bodies and dry lips.

The Iranian people and their brave children paid the price for human rights in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 and in the uprisings in 2009, in Kahrizak detention center and Evin Prison.

But on the 100th day of this struggle and the hunger strike by members of this resistance, I must say that human rights, in the true sense of the word and at its zenith, is alive and moving in the struggle of those human beings, who above and beyond their self-sacrifices, have arisen to wage a struggle and a resistance no matter what the cost and without any expectation of reciprocation. This is a resistance to safeguard noble human values, including human rights.