[hr-wsis] FYI - Omid A Memorial in Defense of Human Rights

Hi:

I just received this - thought it might be of interest to caucus members. It uses a interesting combination of website & database to document human rights cases in Iran.

Please forward to others you might think will find it of interest

Contact : Ladan or Roya Boroumand
ladan@abfiran.org ; roya@abfiran.org
www.abfiran.org
Office : 1-202-5364194

On January 20th it will be 25 years since we witnessed an historic event: the release of the US Embassy hostages in Iran. Who can forget the images of those fifty-two US citizens being released after being held captive for over a year by a group of state-sponsored students in Tehran?

As the American hostages settled in at home, an untold number of Iranians and nationals of other countries were becoming the victims of repression and violence by a government that still rules Iran. To coincide with this anniversary, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), a human rights organization based in Washington DC, is paying tribute to those countless victims. It is launching the largest ever database of cases of abuse and murder of innocent people at the hands of the Islamic Republic. The foundation has collected nearly ten thousand cases, a representative sample, combining its research with official government documents, memoirs and other reports. It is a shocking look at the vast and horrific abuse of power by the government, both int he past and tragically, continuing to the present day. Until now, nothing of this magnitude has ever been available.

You can access this project by going to www.abfiran.org There you will find the countless stories of these victims, of all nationalities, in both English and Persian. The project's main goals are to give voice to the thousands of forgotten victims, deny legitimacy to any form of political violence, and provide human rights advocates the tools needed to gain domestic and international support for a peaceful transition to democracy. The project is a work in progress.

ABF was started by two sisters with first hand knowledge of the terror the Islamic Republic has inflicted on its people. Ladan and Roya Boroumand, both historians, were raised in a liberal family opposed to the late shah's dictatorship. At the time of the revolution, they were students in France, where their family, fleeing the increasing political repression in post-revolutionary Iran, joined them. They both visited Iran following the establishment of the Islamic Republic and witnessed the rise of the new Islamist tyranny. since then, along with many other courageous Iranians around the world, they have been actively supporting the cause of human rights and democracy in Iran. In 1980, their father joined Dr. Shapur Bakhtiar, the prominent pro-democracy Iranian opposition leader. In 1991, three months before Bakhtiar's assassination, he was found murdered in his Paris apartment. Their fathers' death has been an inspiration for the sisters to start ABF and to continue his fight for human rights, freedom and democracy for the millions of Iranians held hostage themselves by the Islamic Republic.

Case examples:

http://www.abfiran.org /person--3293.php ; http://www.abfiran.org /person--3501.php

http://www.abfiran.org /person--2940.php ; http://www.abfiran.org /person-10986.php