State Department Human Rights Report: Only a Glimpse Of Khomeini's Bloody Failure

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Khomeini has now lost control over the situation. The illogical measures and policies that Khomeini adopts must be viewed in this context. It is all done out of absolute desperation."

—Ayatollah Jalal Ganje'i, founder, Iranian League for the Defense of Democracy and Independence, and member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran March 9, 1989, Washington, DC

Although Israel's massive violations of Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories got the headlines, the grimmest reading by far in the US State Department's worldwide compilation of Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988 is in its 12 pages devoted to Iran.

"Major human rights abuses continued in Iran in 1988," the report explains. "These included at least several hundred political executions; continuing arbitrary detentions; the repression of freedoms of speech, press, and association; and the use of torture in repressing political opposition."

A major opposition group, the People's Mojahedin, whose National Liberation Army last year twice penetrated deeply into Iran from Iraq, reports that 12,000 political prisoners have been executed by the Khomeini regime since the Iran-Iraq cease-fire in August 1988.

That this is understatement, no one would contest. A major opposition group, the People's Mojahedin, whose National Liberation Army last year twice penetrated deeply into Iran from Iraq, reports that 12,000 political prisoners have been executed by the Khomeini regime since the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in August 1988. It lists the names of 1,634 of these victims, and reports that Khomeini's regime executed a number of medical doctors early in 1989 and now is executing Muslim clergymen, some from the Iranian holy city of Qum, where anti-Khomeini demonstrations broke out on Feb. 22 of this year.

Violations May Increase in 1989

With the erosion of the diverse coalition upon which the regime has depended for support apparently accelerating, the atrocities that have become its hallmark may proceed even more rapidly in 1989 than in 1988. Last year's cease-fire signaled the utter failure of an eight-year war against Iraq that Iranians know Khomeini could have ended six years earlier on the present terms. This year, because of its inability to revive war-damaged industrial production, the country seems to be gripped by economic chaos, Opposition sources report nearly 50 percent unemployment, a shortage of teachers and of medical services, an increase in drug addiction, and widespread poverty and homelessness. The government is said to have borrowed $140 billion from the country's banks, and total war damage is estimated by the Mojahedin at $600 billion. To put this into perspective, Iran's total revenues from the past 100 years of oil production were $270 billion.

Khomeini's reluctant acceptance in mid-1988 of the "poison cup" of peace, urged upon him by virtually every member of a despairing inner circle of advisers, signaled the opening of a bloodbath as bad as any of the previous waves of executions that followed his regime's assumption of power.

Instead of releasing the hundreds of prisoners from many opposition groups who were serving or had completed long prison terms, the government cancelled prison visits in mid-summer and, reportedly, began mass executions. As reports spread of massacres of nightly batches of 100 prisoners in each of two prisons in the capital area, relatives frantically seeking information created daily traffic jams around the cemetery where truckloads of corpses were delivered.

As reports spread of massacres of nightly batches of 100 prisoners in each of two prisons in the capital area, relatives frantically seeking information created daily traffic jams around the cemetery where truckloads of corpses were delivered.

While up to half of the executions reportedly have been carried out in secret in the country's three major prisons, at the same time brutal public executions were taking place across the country, not only of captured National Liberation Army members, but also of residents of western Iran suspected of supporting or welcoming them. In some cases the victims, many in their 20s and some in their teens, were taken to construction sites and hung from steel girders or construction cranes so that corpses dangling high overhead for as long as 24 hours could be seen throughout the provincial towns where the executions took place.

A few photos of these gruesome spectacles were printed in Iranian newspapers, and many such photos have been smuggled out of the country. In Tabriz, blood-soaked clothes were delivered to the parents of victims to inform them of the executions of their sons and daughters. In Tehran, 15-yearold Sima Harari was executed along with five other members of the Harari family. Also in Tehran, Mostafa Mirza'i, who was only 10 when he was imprisoned in 1981, was executed at age 17 along with a brother and a sister.

These horrors are touched upon only sketchily in the State Department report for the good reason that the US government, without diplomatic and consular representation in Iran, is dependent upon secondary sources for information. The American report acknowledges its debt to the 1988 Amnesty International (AI) report, which in turn is based upon facts gathered in 1987. Concerning the most recent events, the US government report notes that in December 1988 "Al published a report alleging the execution of more than 300 people since July, but said the true death toll could number in the thousands."

In some cases the victims, many in their 20s and some in their teens, were taken to construction sites and hung from steel girders or construction cranes so that corpses dangling high overhead for as long as 24 hours could be seen through out the provincial towns where the executions took place.

Even though the State Department report barely mentions the particularly brutal violations of late 1988, and is conservative about the numbers of secret mass executions, which apparently are continuing in 1989, some of its passages nevertheless make shocking reading:

"Because of the lack of basic procedural safeguards for defendants tried in revolutionary courts, " the report explains, "most of the executions ordered each year by such courts amount to summary executions." Nor is it possible to separate executions for criminal activities "from executions based purely on the defendants' beliefs, statements, and associations, given the regime's practice of cloaking the latter category with charges from the former."

The State Department report cites the UN Human Rights Commission special representative as the source of information about political affiliations of the victims: "Many opponents of the regime were executed during July, August, and September, including members of the Tudeh Party, the People's Fedayeen Organization, the National Liberation Army, and collaborators with the People's Mojahedin Organization ...

"The UN special representative cited tortures such as rape, beating by several guards at once, threats against prisoners' families, and forcing relatives or other prisoners to watch torture." The report notes further that "former Iraqi prisoners in Iran's prisoner-of-war camps have reported that Iran subjects prisoners to whippings, random executions, and psychological torture."

Political prisoners "are arrested on trumped up criminal charges" and "there is no legal time limit on incommunicado detention." Trials may last "only a few minutes," there is no access to a defense lawyer, "and there was no appeal process." Those sentenced may be "imprisoned beyond the limit of their sentence."

The report noted that "homes are still entered, mail opened, and phones tapped," and that "women whose clothing does not completely cover the hair and all of the body except hands and face, or who wear makeup, are subject to arrest."

It notes also that books are censored, broadcast facilities and most publications are government controlled, and that "independent publishers run the risk not only of press shut downs and confiscation of publications and equipment, but of arrest and summary punishment if they are overly critical of the regime."

Reporting on the 10 percent of Iran's population that is not Ja'fari Shi'ite, the report says that "although Sunni's have encountered religious discrimination on the local level, the regime has made efforts to reduce Shi'ite-Sunni antagonism." It notes that "the Baha'i religion, an offshoot of Islam, is considered a misguided sect' by the authorities. " Its 300,000 to 350,000 members in Iran "have suffered severe persecution, mainly government directed and aimed at the religious leadership." It quotes Baha'i is in the US as saying, however, that the situation of sect members in Iran improved somewhat during 1988, and the number held in prison was believed to have dwindled to 129.

Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian populations are concentrated in urban areas and their religions are recognized by the constitution and have seats reserved for them in the Parliament. "Nevertheless, Christians are sometimes suspected of harboring sympathies with Western powers, while Jews are seen as pro-Israeli and therefore a possible fifth column against Islam and 'Iran," the report states.

The Khomeini regime has established Iran as a theocratic state whose citizens are not free to question or to change this theocratic form of government," the report says. It adds that the only political party, the Islamic Republican Party, "was disbanded in June 1987 at the request of President Ali Khamenei and Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and with the consent of Ayatollah Khomeini."

Parliamentary elections are held, the State Department reports, but "all candidates must be approved by the Council of Guardians... In practice, only supporters of the theocratic state are accepted. There has, however, been considerable diversity of opinion among candidates on economic and social questions... The independence of the Parliament is enshrined in the Constitution and exists to a large degree in practice. At least three women serve as deputies in the Parliament."

The State Department report also makes clear the problems involved in gathering evidence of Iranian transgressions: "The regime in Iran is disdainful of foreign human rights groups, government-sponsored or independent, and regards them as a Western means of interfering in the country's internal affairs. Since 1984, the government has refused to allow a UN Human Rights Commission special representative to enter Iran to prepare his reports, and has not commented on human rights violations submitted for consideration. There are no internal human rights groups."

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been visiting Iranian prisoner-of-war camps since November 1986 and has interviewed Iraqi prisoners and assisted in POW exchanges between Iran and Iraq, the State Department reports, but Amnesty International has been less successful.

"In its 1988 report, Al reported that it had intervened repeatedly with Iranian authorities in 1987 to urge the release of certain prisoners, fair trials within a reasonable time for all political prisoners, and an end to torture and the death penalty. It said that the government had failed to provide any substantive response and continued to assert only that there were no political prisoners or torture in Iran."

Reps. Mervyn Dymally (D-CA) and Donald Lukens (R-OH) introduced a resolution into the US House of Representatives, cosponsored by 230 members and passed unanimously on Oct. 21, 1988, designating June 20, 1989, as "National Day of Remembrance for Political Prisoners in Iran."

On June 20, 1981, half a million residents of Tehran took to the streets to start organized resistance to the Khomeini regime. Revolutionary Guards fired on the crowds, killing scores, and thousands were arrested. Since then, leaders of the People's Mojahedin estimate that at least 70,000 opponents of the regime have been killed, and 140,000 imprisoned.

"The prisons of the Khomeini regime today resemble Hitler's concentration camps during the final months of the Third Reich," the organization says. It charges that after "the Khomeini regime started its own 'final solution' for the thousands of political prisoners languishing in its jails," it not only filled cemeteries across the country, but also has resorted to secret mass graves and to incinerating the corpses of its victims.

At a recent Los Angeles rally for another opposition group supporting the return to Iran of the son of the late shah as Reza Pahlavi II, a constitutional monarch, a spokesman said Iran lost 1 million soldiers in the war with Iraq, suffers 40 percent unemployment, and recently executed 1,700 political prisoners.

"You only kill when you're afraid," the spokesman told California journalists.

However, in Iran leaders of the regime defend Khomeini's order that, "if it is established that a prisoner is an opponent of the regime, that is sufficient cause for his execution."

Asked at a question-and-answer session with Tehran University students whether executions served any purpose, President Ali Khamenei answered: "Executions are for carrying out divine orders. They may or may not solve a problem ... Do you think we should give candy to those who have links from inside prison with the Monafeqin (hypocrites—the regime's term for the Mojahedin) who mounted an armed attack inside Iran's borders? In our view they deserve death. We execute them, and we don't hide it."

Parliament Speaker Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, still frequently referred to in the West as the leader of "moderates" within the regime, and the Iranian with whom Reagan administration White House aide Oliver North tried to do business, was even more adamant in defending the regime's program of killing its opponents:

"We have stated our course and will continue to do so. We shut our ears from the start. Whatever they said was to no avail." He blamed criticism of the regime on a US propaganda campaign against Iran and said the US was "backing terrorism through its support for counterrevolutionaries of Iran and Nicaragua."

As usual, the Ayatollah Khomeini had the last word on the stepped-up repression. In a Feb. 22 broadcast on Tehran radio he declared:

"We should not be affected by out-of-place and irrelevant pity for the enemies of God and opponents and violators of the regime, and promote something in a way which would question Ciod's verdicts and divine limits... As long as I live, I will not let the rule fall into the hands of the liberals... I will not let the Monafeqin annihilate the Islam of this people ... I will not retreat from the principle of neither East nor West. As long as I live I will cut off the hands of the agents of America and the Soviet Union."

It was the rhetoric of a faltering leader with a long and predictable history of masking failure at home by manufacturing crises abroad. Now, as the failures become clearer, the crises come at more frequent intervals.

There have been recurrent open threats to resume the war against Iraq. There are veiled intimations of increased terrorism against neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has already suffered riots by Iranian provocateurs disguised as pilgrims and killings of Saudi diplomats in Asian capitals.

In mid-February Khomeini issued his widely publicized order to the faithful to kill Salman Rushdie, complete with a bounty placed on the novelist's head. The motivation clearly was more political than religious, since the Rushdie book had been published months earlier.

There was also the Ayatollah's widely publicized suggestion that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev look to the Quran for a solution to his economic problems at home, followed by the demand, again widely publicized, during Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's late February visit, for a progress report on Gorbachev's Islamic studies.

March brought the threat to unleash Khomeini-directed terrorists at the UK for protecting British subject Salman Rushdie, and at the US for allowing Rushdie's book to be published and circulated. This was followed by the bombing in San Diego, CA, of the car of Captain Will Rogers, commander of the USS Vincennes, which accidentally shot down an Iran Air commercial airliner last August with the loss of 290 lives. Iranian opposition leaders predict Khomeini will launch as many such terror attacks as possible in the West, to divert attention from his faltering regime at home.

Iran's immediate future, therefore, may depend largely upon how much longer the shedding of blood will prop up the brutal rule Khomeini has established in the name of God, and through which he has created so much mistrust of Islam.

Richard H Curtiss, a retired Foreign Service information officer, is the chief editor of the Washington Reporton Middle East Affairs.