Sunday, March 08, 2009

In a letter to Amnesty International, the Organization of Australians Advocating Democracy in Iran urged it to condemn the arrest and torture of protesting students as well as Ashraf residents’ families by the clerical regime of Iran, and emphasized necessity of their immediate release.

Peter Murphy wrote in his letter to AI: On February 23, the students of Polytechnic University and Tehran University protested against burial of the bodies of Iran-Iraq war victims in the University campus; while chanting “death to dictator” and “we don’t want fascistic regime “they asked for freedom of political prisoners. The student’s demonstration was brutally suppressed, 60 were injured and 120 were arrested; among the arrestees were many women. The next day, on February 24, agents of Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) attacked the students’ homes and arrested many of them.

Referring to the arrest of Ashraf residents’ families that had visited their relatives in Ashraf City or intended to go to Iraq for visiting their loved ones, the Organization of Australians Advocating Democracy in Iran wrote: “We ask Amnesty International to ask decisively the Iranian government to release all those detained for visiting their relatives in Ashraf City and to stop prosecution of the Iranian citizens because of their political beliefs.”