Dear General Secretary of the United Nations Mr Ban Ki-moon

We would like to draw your attention to the issue of Iran. We formally ask you not to relax your criticism of the ongoing human rights violations in Iran and indeed to voice it before the Security Council and the committees of the United Nations.

I.

The most serious human rights violations in Iran since the early 1980s continue, provoking what has now become a worldwide protest movement.

This protest is directed at the torture of Taraneh Moussavi, who was brutally raped and then murdered. It is directed at the targeted shooting of defenceless demonstrators, against the sniper attacks on the streets of Tehran. It protests against the life-threatening conditions under which people are being detained. These include Shapour Kazemi, the brother-in-law of the presidential candidate Moussavi, the Reformer Saed Hajarian and the countless unknown people whose names we as yet do not know because the authorities refuse to disclose them to us.

We do not know the exact amount of murder victims. The figure meanwhile confirmed by the Reformists in mid August totals sixty-nine specified names. Human rights organisations believe the figure to be much higher.

We do not know how many of the thousands of people who have been arrested since the 12 June 2009, some of whom have since been released, were subjected to torture in Irans notorious prisons or indeed how many of these continue to be tortured.

On 10 August 2009 the Reformer Ayatollah Mahmoud Kharoubi quoted released political prisoners on his website who reported that young men and women had been sexually abused while in prison. The sexual abuse led to depression and serious psychological problems on the part of the victims. The rape of women and men is one of the most terrible forms torture, involving the gravest of physical and psychological injuries.

In the meantime the United Nations Special Correspondent on Torture in Prisons, Manfred Nowak, has reported 300 cases of torture and abuse by the Iranian authorities and said with regard to Iran: I fear that people will be convicted on account of forced confessions. (Die Welt, 14.08.2009)

Instead of pressing charges against the violators and their superiors and releasing all political prisoners held since 12 June 2009, the regime has decided to stage totalitarian-style show-trials. They have tortured the accredited Reformer and aid to Khatami, Mohammed Ali Abtahi, and, according to reliable reports from a member of Abtahis family, used heavy drugs to force statements from him in which he admits to alleged mistakes. Like the chain of murders in the days following the election on 12 June, this show-trial now likewise demonstrates the totalitarian potential of the Presidents rule aided by the Revolutionary Guards Secret Service and with the backing of the Religious Leader.

II.

The situation facing the people of Iran requires our public awareness and our protest; this is of particular importance months after the beginning of the human rights violations that followed the demonstrations against the election on 12 June 2009. The human rights violations are continuing. Iran needs us to insist on the observation of human rights as set out in the Iranian constitution and in international conventions signed by Iran. Iran has not abided by the principles of the United Nations and has repeatedly violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since the election of 12 June 2009.

We ask you, both the United Nations and individual governments and parliaments of the United Nations, to use any appropriate means to protest against the systematic human rights violations in Iran and to take action against them in resolutions, through protest against the presence of those responsible for these crimes and by a refusal to return to business as usual.

We demand that the human rights violations in Iran that continue to this day be brought before the United Nations and that criminal proceedings be instigated. Normal relations must not be resumed as long as these crimes have not been investigated and verifiably ceased.