The people of Iran are the inheritors of the Cylinder of Cyrus, one of the earliest declarations of human rights, predating the Magna Carta. Yet the abuse of human rights has become a state-sanctioned policy enforced through repression, unrestrained violence against peaceful protesters, mass show trials, and executions. As I said in Cairo, the Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent—it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Quran also says that whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. That is why along, with our European allies, we will offer safe haven to human-rights activists who flee Iran in fear of their lives. Rather than heed the words of the Holy Quran, Irans leaders use rhetorical confrontation to distract from their dismal human rights record. In a country where candlelight vigils were held by average citizens the day after 9/11, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the mass murder of nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. In a country that bears the legacy of King Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from Babylon, Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. Women in Iran have been the true harbingers of democracy in the last two decades, yet the Iranian government confines the brave and educated women of Iran to the prison of a medieval ideology. Today I would like to speak directly to the brave people of Iran. As President Reagan said, it is the duty of American presidents to speak of freedom. Enlarge Image There are walls that imprison the people of Iran. They are not walls of concrete, or of barbed wire as we saw in Eastern Europe. They are walls that prevent the courageous women of Iran from exercising their God-given rights. They are walls that hinder hungry Iranian youths from achieving their potential; barricades that impede labor from organizing, and separate the general populace from the dividends of Irans natural resources; there is a cyber wall that restricts the Internet, and barriers that disinherit the Iranian people of their historical legacy of democratic and human freedoms. And finally there is a wall of nuclear secrets that isolates the people of Iran from the community of nations.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 02:24:47 +0000
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