26 January 2006 :

To the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan
To United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour
To the President in office of the Council of the EU, Wolfgang Schüssel          



The year that has just begun has been marked in Iran by news of a death sentence handed down to a girl, Nazanin, for murder.
Nazanin allegedly stabbed to death one of two men that had tried to rape her in Teheran in March 2005, when she was still only 17 years of age.
Nazanin’s case is one of many of minors being condemned to death in Iran, a totalitarian and misogynist regime with a disregard even for the most fundamental of human rights, particularly with relation to women.
Locked up in the juvenile prisons of Teheran and Rajai-Shahr are at least 30 people sentenced to death who were under 18 years of age at the time of the crime.
At least eight minors were hanged in 2005 in direct violation of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Iranian regime, which oppresses its citizens with unheard of violence, also represents a threat to the security of the international community as demonstrated by its atomic ambitions and the public announcements by its President against the existence of the state of Israel.
For Hands Off Cain the death penalty in Iran is first of all a battle for the affirmation of human rights and the constitution of a democratic state.
For us democracy in Iran also starts with the young life of Nazanin and of all the forgotten women on death rows in the mullahs’ regime.
For this, we ask You, as the highest representatives of the International Community, to work in bringing about respect in Iran for the life of its citizens and to assure the right to freedom and democracy, fundamental elements of the international community of which today we all feel an active part.