An urgent Call to All Humanitarian Organisations for Urgent Action to Save Lives of Six Innocent Baloch from Death Row in Iran

Dears,

On Tuesday 22^nd January 2008 the regime’s kangaroo Court in Zahidan, capital of Balochistan announced that six Baloch were tried and found guilty of subversive activities against the state. Their sentencing was adjourned for the coming week.

Balochistan National Movement calls for your urgent humanitarian action to save lives of these six innocent Baloch who have been deliberately convicted by the regime for fabricated charges.

The sources in Balochistan and their relatives report that none of these innocent Baloch had any access to any independent defence attorney. The trial totally lacked any international standard and was a mere show trial for a politically motivated purpose. Despite the regime’s claim for conduct of an open trial for the defendants, the trial was conducted in closed doors in absence of any independent human rights observer. The six wrongly accused Baloch were forced to read totally fabricated confession under severely degrading tortures for their involvement in the Chah-Jamaal incident around Iranshahr.

The regime has accused them of being members of Jondullah without substantiating the charges against them. The regime has been resorting to indiscriminate mass arrests and killings when encountered resistance in Balochistan. In the Chah-Jamaal incident the use of force by regime was so arbitrary and indiscriminate that their brutality had no bounds and killed two innocent Baloch women and five other innocent Baloch by using heavy artilleries. It is a common and widely used ploy by the regime to put blames on the Baloch fighters when their brutalities cause uproar among people of Balochistan. For instance the regime when faced with anger and resentment of Baloch people for killing of these innocent Baloch women, it distanced itself from the committed atrocities and resorted to misinformation, and accused Baloch fighters for it.

The degree of repression and use of indiscriminate brutal force in Balochistan by the regime is not a new phenomenon, but now it is to an unprecedented level. Balochistan is witnessing executions day and day non-stop. Medieval barbaric punishments of amputation and stoning are also being carried out on Baloch innocents by the regime. Recently hand and legs of five Baloch were cruelly cut off in Zahidan’s prison.

Violation of human rights in Balochistan is perpetual, systematic and ripe in Iran. Therefore there is real fear that the lives of these six innocent people are in imminent danger. The record on violation of human rights of Baloch people by the regime is well documented, so it is the humanitarian obligation of  all human rights organisations to act immediately and on time to exert utmost pressures on Iranian regime to refrain from sentencing these innocent Baloch people as they are on death row; and demand for their release.

Please act now to save lives from imminent execution.

Balochistan National Movement

24.01.2008