THOUSANDS ATTENDED FORUHARS COMMEMORATION CEREMONIES
TEHERAN 22 Nov. (IPS) The commemoration of the 3rd anniversary of the deaths
of the charismatic leader of the Iranian People’s Party, Mr. Dariush Foruhar
and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari was held at a central Mosque located in the
Darvaze Shemiran area of Tehran.
The ceremony, called by the Foruhar’s children, Ms. Parastoo and her brother Arash, was attended by many Iranians, from senior scholars, politicians and intellectuals to ordinary people and students, amidst heavy security measures aimed at preventing any trouble at a time that the British Foreign Minister was in the Capital, some sources said.
"The ceremonies this year was more emotional that previous years, there were much more people, particularly young ones and students, who chanted national Iranian songs and called for the release of all political prisoners", Ms. Parastoo Foruhar told Iran Press Service.
Eyewitnesses present at the ceremonies said the crowd chanted slogans against the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, calling for more freedom and democracy.
"Death to Taleban/in Tehran or in Kabol"… "Referendum, referendum/This is the people’s battle cry"… or "Political prisoner/Independent Journalist/Should be freed" were among slogans chanted by the participant while walking from the mosque to the Forhuars residence in central Tehran.
"Hundreds of regime's Patrol cars and thousands of Militias and the famous Plainclothes men have been seen in most Tehran’s strategic points and all accesses to the Darvaze Shemiran area of Tehran have been placed under control of security forces", said the Los Angeles-based Students Movement Co-ordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI).
The Forouhars, three intellectuals and two political activists in Mr. Mohammad Mokhtari, Mohammad Ja’far Pooyandeh, Majid Sharif and Pirooz Davani had been murdered savagely by senior officers of the Islamic Iran Intelligence Ministry exactly three years ago.
Though Mr. Khameneh’i, -- suspected by a majority of Iranians to be the cleric who issued the killing order, had from the outset, pointed at "foreign agents", but under pressures from the public and the press, the Intelligence Ministry ended to "confess" that it had carried out the assassinations, known as "chain murders".
But while the authorities acknowledges the murder of the Foruhars and the four others, lawyers and independent investigators put the number of political, intellectual, journalists and scholars killed by the Islamic Republic in the last 22 years at more than 200, both inside and outside Iran.
The authorities, in order "protect" the clerics who issued the religious orders for the killings being identified, said that the assassinations mastermind, a certain Sa’id Emami, suicide himself in prison and destroyed his confessions.
But Ms. Foruhar said she and the families of other victims continue their struggle for "the truth to come to light".
"We don’t want vengeance, we want justice. We want those who ordred the murders to be identified, as promised by the president", she said. ENDS FORUHARS COMMEMORATION 221101