6/20/03 

President Jacques Chirac
Palais de l'Elysée
55, rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré
75008 Paris, France 

Dear President Chirac,  

We are writing to you to express our concern over the recent actions taken by the French Police against several Iranian refugees who are members of the opposition group, Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MEK). 

We urge the French government to intervene on behalf of these individuals who have been taken into custody with no clear charges. We are concerned about the fate of these refugees as we learned that the Islamic Regime has demanded their extradition to Iran.   

As a human rights watchdog organization, we monitor the human rights violation in Iran very closely.  We have witnessed the persecution of the members of different opposition groups under the Islamic Regime for many years.  We strongly believe that once these individuals are deported to Iran, they will face immediate arrest and possible torture and execution due to their known opposition to the Iranian Regime. The MEHR organization believes that the human rights of the members of MEK, regardless of their political and social ideology, must be observed.  

According to a recent proposal by the Amnesty International,  “the forcible return of recognized refugees is a violation of the principle of non-refoulement. This prohibits the forcible return of a person to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened. It is a principle of customary international law, which binds all states. France and Iran are parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibits torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 

The French government has never produced any evidence of any illegal activities by this group. Therefore, we demand the freedom of all the detained refugees.  The MEK members have resided in France for many years and have never been associated with any acts of terrorism in France.  However, the agents of the Islamic Regime of Iran (IRI) in France have murdered many exiled Iranians such as Bakhtiar, Mazloman, and Nirumand. No one has ever been convicted for these murders and it is highly hypocritical to let the murderous agents of the IRI to roam freely, while arresting the legal refugees. Iranians still remember the shameful act of setting free the assassin of Shapoor Bakhtiar to please the Islamic Regime for political and financial gains.  

We hope that France will uphold the international human rights laws and will not sacrifice human lives for its own interests.   

Respectfully,

Mohammad Parvin, Ph.D
Executive Director

CC: 

H.E Jean-David Levitte, Ambassador
Embassy of France
4101 Reservoir Rd., NW
Washington, DC 20007