Dissident Provides Harrowing Account Of Iran's Prisons

The Middle East has been topping headlines recently as ISIS is being defeated in both Iraq and Syria, and Iran is playing a significantly destructive role in both campaigns and across the region.

All the while, the Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is gearing up for its massive annual convention in Paris. The July 1^strally will be the stage of hundreds of prominent figures from four corners of the globe and most likely over 100,000 members of the Iranian Diaspora expressing support for the NCRI President Maryam Rajavi’s and her ten-point-plan platform for a future Iran without the mullahs.

I had a chance recently to sit down and talk with Shabnam Madadzadeh, a young Iranian woman and former political prisoner who just recently was able to exit Iran. She has written articles and delivered remarks in different events shedding light on Iran’s dungeons atrocious conditions.

Shabnam Madadzadeh:

I was a college student in Iran and like my brother I spent five years in the regime’s jails as a political prisoner. Long interrogations, solitary confinement, forced to witness my brother being beaten, deprived of any contact with my family, death threats and mock executions were the tortures I was placed through.

These methods are used by the Iranian regime to obtain so-called “confessions” and forge a case against you in court, while depriving you of legal representation. I was sentenced to prison and exiled in the notorious Gohardasht Prison in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran.

During my time behind bars I was deprived of any furlough. I witnessed many crimes by the regime authorities, many executions and tortures inflicted not only on political prisoners, but also ordinary inmates arrested on other charges.

In prison I was in a ward with hundreds of other women and up close I witnessed the human rights violations they suffered. Time and again in prison I was deprived of family visits and phone calls for informing the world about the harsh conditions those women went through and the circumstances inside the prison walls. I was also deprived of medical care.

Recently a letter has leaked from inside Iran written by Gohardasht Prison political prisoners describing those taking part in Saturday’s convention as “the voice of all the Iranian people in the larger prison called Iran, who all yearn for a ‘Free Iran,’ a democratic Iran.”

Iran is also the leading state sponsor of terrorism and exports its Islamic fundamentalism to the Middle East. With Hassan Rouhani becoming the regime’s president the international community wrongly provided an image of a moderate at the helm in Iran. This is nothing but a fantasy and mirage for those not familiar with the reality of Iran’s regime.

I was a young college student and spent one year of my time in prison during Rouhani’s tenure. After being released I witnessed how the highly boasted nuclear deal signed by the P5+1 with Iran failed to render any positive change in people’s lives. In fact, their living conditions have become far more difficult. The Iran nuclear deal has only loosened sanctions in favor of the ruling elite in Tehran, and yet human rights violations and state-backed violence have ramped up.

The number of executions under the “moderate” Rouhani skyrocketed, reaching the point of one every eight hours. All the while Iran’s powder keg society was the scene of an increasing number of popular protests in the past four years, and especially in the few months leading to the May 19^thpresidential election and afterwards. Teachers, workers and people from all walks of life are protesting as making ends meet becomes impossible.

The regime has continuously resorted to responding viciously to these acts of dissent. Life has become so unspeakably unbearable that a number of workers, teachers, college students and even teenagers have resorted to suicide due to financial problems, unemployment and other social distresses.

The truth of the Iranian people’s current living conditions proves the windfall billions poured into Iran after the nuclear deal has not eased the population’s pains, all usurped by Tehran to export its terrorism across the region.

The Iranian people are demanding the mullahs’ regime bring an end to warmongering and exporting terrorism to neighboring countries that they see as their friends. This money belongs to the Iranian people and must be allocated to advance their needs and welfare.

Any negotiation by the West with Iran will only add more gallows in Iran’s squares, escalate the Iranian people’s misery and fuel further meddling by the Revolutionary Guards in the Middle East and even beyond.

For the first time this year I will be taking part in the NCRI’s annual convention in Paris scheduled for July 1^st.

Shabnam Madadzadeh:

Source:Dissident Provides Harrowing Account Of Iran's Prisons

Struan Stevenson: Reprisals are not the answer to terror

We must not resort to reprisals following terror attacks, writes Struan Stevenson The Finsbury Park mosque attack in London is the latest horrific outrage to stun public opinion. So many innocent lives have been taken in recent terrorist attacks that many people in the UK are now clamoring for an appropriate response. The tit-for-tat nature of these events plays perfectly into the hands of the terrorists, whose aim is to set one section of society against another. We must not allow this to happen. It is too easy to get caught up in debates about the proportional value of solutions that involve an increased security presence and those that call for deeper engagement with, for example, Muslim communities, to identify and root out extremist voices within. But following the Finsbury Park atrocity, should we also be calling for deeper engagement and surveillance within primarily white, British communities to root out extremists? Following the Manchester and London Bridge atrocities there was an inevitable reaction from certain factions of the public and even some factions of the political establishment that immediately attempted to lay the blame at the feet of our British Muslim communities. This is a common knee-jerk reaction, which is not only logically unsound it is also terribly impractical, because the demonization and alienation of moderate Muslims from British society is just the outcome that the terrorists would like. There is a naïve assumption that if moderate Muslims were just more vigilant, the authorities in Britain and throughout the Western world would never be caught off guard by new attacks. But Muslim communities are just as caught off guard as we are and they are no more to blame for the Manchester or London attacks than the majority of white Britons were to blame for the Finsbury Park mosque outrage. The extremists who murdered indiscriminately in Manchester and on London Bridge are no more representatives of the Muslim community than the white driver of the van who allegedly ploughed into innocent bystanders outside Finsbury Park Mosque can be said to represent the majority white British community. These people are extremists. They are fanatics. We cannot and must not attempt to label the communities they come from in the same fashion. People affected by the recent attacks need our support. It was heart-warming to see the response from all sectors of society for the survivors of each of these tragedies, in particular the horrific Grenfell Flats fire. Muslims, Christians, people of all religions and none, came together to provide money, clothing, food and shelter, confounding the hate preachers and lifting the dark shadow which has been cast over peace-loving people everywhere. Britons of every ethnic and religious background must work together to make sure that police forces are given the assistance they need, that moderate and peaceful dialogue is maintained no matter what the underlying ideology and that the extreme fringe of Islam, right-wing fascists, left-wing thugs, or indeed any other religious or 

political movement are denied a platform anywhere in our society.

 The extremists on both sides want us to believe that Islam and

 Western democracy are incompatible. Their objective is to force more and more impressionable people to take a side. But of course this is simply wrong-headed. Anti-democratic systems of government in places like Iran are not a consequence of the dominant religion, they are simply a blight on the region that prevents mainstream Muslims bringing their religion fully into the light of the modern world. Still, the world is full of Muslim citizens who are striving to achieve that goal, either by participating in and actively supporting the societies and political institutions of the UK and other Western democracies, or by struggling to bring a secular, democratic system of government to the Middle Eastern nations that gave rise to ISIS and other forms of violent, political Islam in the first place.

 For example, in Paris on July 1, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) will be holding its annual Iran Freedom rally, which in recent years has been attended by upwards of 100,000 Iranian expatriates and their European supporters, including hundreds of dignitaries from political and academic circles in various nations of the world. Each such event reiterates the 10-point plan for democracy and justice promoted by NCRI President MaryamRajavi, a Muslim like the overwhelming majority of the organization’s members. The plan calls for a truly secular democratic government in Iran, where religion is separated from the state, the death penalty is abolished and men and women have equal rights. A plan that repudiates the existing regime’s long history of sponsoring terrorism and bolstering sectarian conflicts in the region and throughout the world. This and other gatherings of moderate Muslims should serve as a reminder to the people of the UK and Europe in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks that there are Muslims all around us who dedicate their very lives to demonstrating the abiding compatibility between Islam and our cherished rights to live, believe and worship in freedom and peace. Those of us who are not of the same faith and those of us of no faith must do everything in our power to promote that message and to recognize that the conflict at hand is not between Islam and the West, but rather between extremists and those who believe in coexistence and would defend the rights of all people from Britain to Middle East and throughout the world. Struan Stevenson is president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA). He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland from 1999-2014

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/struan-stevenson-reprisals-are-not-the-answer-to-terror-1-4484921

Via: Struan Stevenson: Reprisals are not the answer to terror