Adnan & Hiva

“At 1:00 pm, a group of the Pasdars(the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) arrived to the village Qarna. At first look, they found nobody as everybody ran away toward the mountains or tried to be hidden somewhere. Then Guards started to search the houses one after another so they could find the hidden ones. Some of those citizens were killed right in front of their houses. The others were shot or beheaded in the mosque. Then they dragged the dead bodies by their trucks and cars to the Naqadeh and show the bodies to the town of Naqadeh. Most of victims were children, disabled and old people. They were all unarmed and innocent. They beheaded even the only clergy in the village.”
This Happened on Sept 2nd 1980 in a Kurdish village, 12 Kilometer far from Naqadeh in Iran.
Nobody out of Iran ever heard of this massacre. Even inside of Iran rather than the local people, hardly heard of it. Those Pasdars never charged for their crimes or nor got punished for what they did in Qarna. Instead, they got prized and promoted for that genocide.
These kind of crimes kept continue since back then in many ways. Now there are 8 civil rights activists, journalists and teachers are sentenced to death on charge of being Mohareb (fighter against God). Their lives are in danger. According to the recent news, Kurdish political prisoners in Iran, since Monday 25 August 2008, began an indefinite hunger strike to protest those sentences and huge human rights violation in Iranian Kurdistan.

The following eight Kurdish journalists and civil rights activists have been condemned to death in Iran:

1. Adnan Hassanpour, journalist, also the award-winning journalist who has been condemned to death. Adnan was awarded a media award in Italy by the Information, Safety & Freedom Association, death penalty
2. Hiva Botimar, civil rights activist and journalist, death penalty
3. Farzad Kamangar, civil rights and human rights activist, death penalty
4. Anvar Hossein Panahi, teacher and civil rights activist, death penalty
5. Farhad Vakili, civil rights activist, death penalty
6. Ali Hardarian, civil rights activist, death penalty
7. Arsalan Olyaei, civil rights activist, death penalty
8. Habib Latifi, student, civil rights activist, death penalty
   

While another seven have been sentenced to penalties up to 11 years for their alleged Civil Rights activists. Mohammad Sadigh Kaboudvand, Human Rights activist- 11 years- Hana Abdi, Women Rights activist- 5 years- Zainab Bayazidi, Women Rights activist- 4 years- Fatemeh Goftari, Women Rights activist- 19 months- Amir Reza Ardalan, Student - 1 year - Ali Shakeri, Student, 2 and half years - Sohrab Jalali, Civil Rights activist, in spending his charge and deportation to Kashmar.
The prisoner’s hunger strike is to "sensitize Iranian and international public opinion" to "protest against the death sentences given to Kurdish representatives and to denounce continuing human rights violations in prison and outside prison”. If the world was unaware of what happened to Qarna, now with the tools of media there is no excuse for not being informed of what is going on in Iran. We shouldn’t be silent anymore. We should do anything we can to keep their lives safe. This is our responsibility to notify this to all international communities.
We are asking you to help them to stop these executions.
We will get together at 13:00 h, on Aug 29th in front of international crime court in The Hague in order to protest against the death penalty of these 8 journalists and asking the ICC to prosecute the Iranian crime against Kurds victims.

Day and time:
Friday 29 August 2008
1:00 pm
Place :
International criminal court(ICC) http://www.icc-cpi.int
Maanweg, 174
2516 AB, The Hague
The Netherlands
Organizers KDPI, KOMALA, CHAK, PAK, KMCN, ICHRN, KJB, IVZO, RASTAN
Campaign: Stop Kurd Execution in Iran
Kurds Human Rights Network
info@kurdsnetwork.com
alimahmud2001@yahoo.com