Stop the execution of Farzad Kamangar!
Appeal to Save Kurdish Social Activist from Death Sentence:
Write to Iranian leaders to stop the execution of Farzad Kamangar, a 32 year old Kurdish teacher and social activist, sentenced to death following an unfair trial.
Cut and paste the following letter into your email. In the subject line write: “Stop the Exceution of Farzad Kamangar”
Send your email to:
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Your Excellencies,
I am writing you to express my concerns about serious violations of international and Iranian standards in the trial of Farzad Kamangar, whose death sentence of 25 February 2008 by Branch 30 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court has reportedly been upheld and confirmed by the Supreme Court.
In imparting my concerns I also appeal to you to commute the sentence and order a new investigation and trial under your supervision, both to ensure justice in this case and to protect the integrity of the Judiciary itself.
Security agents arrested Mr. Kamangar around July 2006 in Tehran. Mr. Kamangar was held incommunicado for seven months, and even after that, contacts to his family were very limited; there have been none since the beginning of the Persian New Year, 21 March 2008. Being held incommunicado violates Principle 19 of the United Nations Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1988.
Mr. Kamangar has been denied access to his lawyer, before, during and after his trial, which violates Principles 17 and 18 of the Body of Principles, as well as Article 14 (3) (b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the Islamic Republic of Iran ratified on 24 June 1975
While the charges against him have been changed in the course of his case, Mr. Kamangar has been denied any and all information concerning the case against him. This violates Article 9 (2) of ICCPR, as well as Principles 10 and 11 of the Body of Principles.
Evidence confirmed by multiple sources strongly suggests that Mr. Kamangar has been tortured during his detention. Your Excellency, I do not need to remind you that torture, as well as ill-treatment in detention, are egregious violations of human rights, and prohibited by Article 7 of the ICCPR.
Your Excellencies, I am confident that an objective review of Mr. Kamangar’s trial will lead to the conclusion that no factual evidence whatsoever was presented in support of the charges against him. According to his attorney, there is no evidence confirming the charge against him (Mohareb, taking up arms against state) in his interrogation records, his file, in the prosecutor’s presentation in court or in the judges ‘decision.
Indeed, Mr. Kamangar was reportedly informed that he had been identified by intelligence and security officials as Mohareb prior to his trial.
It appears that the result of this trial was prepared in advance and that the trial was staged in order to give the appearance of a proper legal process leading to this result. Mr. Kamangar was not allowed the possibility to prepare a defense, and he was afforded no fair hearing before an impartial court. His trial in Branch 30 of Revolutionary Court in Tehran lasted no more than seven (7) minutes, three (3) of which were consumed by the reading of the indictment against him by the prosecutor. Neither Mr. Kamangar nor his lawyer was permitted to speak at his trial. Thus, Article 14 of the ICCPR was violated.
Your Excellencies, the life of a person hangs in the balance and is dependent on your decision. Given these grave violations of international standards and those governing the judicial system of the Islamic Republic, I sincerely hope you will give positive consideration to a review of the case.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
Comments
To Farzad*, the teacher who teaches on the death row
Farzad you remain a teacher …
You’re the blaze to burn ignorance and injustice. You are the star in a dark sky. The burning candle in “Zahak’s dungeonâ€; a dungeon, with “walls as high as history itself†but so insufficient to mute you. These walls are not enough to conceal your height from your people’s sight and to darken the rays of your candle light. These walls are humbled and amused by the loftiness of your stature. The walls long have been used as the site of horror and exhibition of tyrants’ might. They are erected to tear down freedom lovers’ “will, love and humanity and to make them as obedient and docile as an obedient lamb.†Now, those walls, meant to fraught, have become as spurious as the distance between you and the people, as evanescent as those lines that are dividing your nation’s whereabouts. In truth, the walls embody the frustration and fright of the guard[ians] of darkness and the night. Their height and solidness is thrown in to a total doubt. The ceiling of the Zahak’s dungeon has become a sky for “a disobedient star [from up above Zagros] that shoots from one corner to the other tearing down all darkness with light.†A star, whose movements is watched by our youth from across the homeland for their wishes to come true. “This inflicted generation’s†hearts rejuvenate as they once again believe life is worth living. They watch the rise of that star in the sky of their own hopes. No “matter where they live; whether on the shores of KÄrÅ«n, in the outskirt of Mount. Sabalan, on the edges of Eastern desert or on the heights of Zagros where everyday they observe the sunriseâ€, all think of him as their hope; their teacher. His defiant and yearning heart will keep beating and continue to inspire. Every child sleeps with his lullaby and wakes up with his songs, full of stories from their land. The songs contain the love of Mam and Zeen, relate the stories from Dersim and Baytushabab; they are the weeps of Badinan and Halabja. They are the lyrics of hope from the founders of the first Kurdish school in Maku, in 1913, for geyandini (development and training) of a generation, a generation that was to be “more audacious in telling their childhood wishes to the moon and to the stars.â€
This, the founders cherished to teach the children, the heirs of this land, pride and humanity. The prison guards still use batons when our children’s teacher requests a paper and a pen to write his stories. They can not listen to his songs and they are blind to see his love. The children know that no one can bar them from singing. Now, all of them can sing loudly with a clear throat in a decipherable language! They all sing. They see their teacher compel the guards of Zahak’s dungeon and Zahak himself to listen his songs. The children hear their ancestral songs from the tongue of such teacher; he is “enclosed in a cell†but his voice is heard through the cracks in the walls. Their songs as their language can be “imagined in.†Neither Tehran nor Ankara, nor Baghdad will turn their language into an undecipherable noise from the mountains. Despite their effort, they will fail because this language is breathing. It’s being taught in the dungeon by Farzad.
* Farzad Kamangar, 33 years old Kurd, is a member of the human rights’ activists, a teacher, and a journalist in Iran. He was in charge of public relations of the Kurdish branch of the teachers’ union before the union was outlawed. In July of 2006, upon his arrival in Tehran to follow up with his brother’s medical treatments, Farzad was arrested. His prison conditions, torture, and 7 month of solitary confinement has been documented by human rights organizations, including Amenity International. On February 25th 2008, Farzad was sentenced to death for “risking national security.†Below is Farzad’s latest letter addressing his prison guards.
very nice .thanks