To Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all other human rights organizations

I write to request you to condemn the Turkish government for brutal physical and emotional torturing of Daavood Baagheri, Iranian escapee student activist, and demand his immediate transfer to a safe country.

      According to Freedom-Equality Newsletter (Khabarnaame Azadi-Barabari), Daavood Baagheri, who has fled Islamic Republic in fear of his life, has attempted to take his own life in prison in Turkey due to unbearable jail conditions and his inhuman treatment by the prison officers. We are in receipt of news stating that he has been admitted at Ardane prison infirmary for the past five days. It is said that during the days prior to his attempted suicide Davood Baagheri had been subjected to harsh beating and cruel degrading treatment.

      Daavood Baagheri, charged with illegal entry into the country, has been in jail for four months. However, despite his plight in the hands of Turkish officials, the office of UNHCR in Turkey has attempted nothing whatsoever to either recognize him as a refugee or rescue him from the barbaric treatment he has been subjected to in jail.

      The office of UNHCR has been apparently set up in Turkey to attend to the refugee applicants affairs. Yet, in the same country, a refugee such as Daavood Baagheri who fled Iran because he was persecuted and prosecuted by Islamic Republic and, naturally, could not leave the country legally, is detained and might finally be deported by the Turkish police without any intervention on the part of the office of UNHCR with the aim of saving the lives of the deportees from the Iranian regime. 

      The Turkish government should not be allowed to imprison, torture, and finally deport the people who have fled for the fear of their lives from the Islamist regime. At the same time, the office of UNHCR should be faced with our earnest demand to not let the Turkish government give the refugees any cruel treatment it just wishes. Neither should the fascist Turkish state be given a free hand in turning the countries boarders as well as its jails into torture chambers and, eventually, slaughter houses for the refugees.

      International Federation of Iranian Refugees requests, therefore, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all other organizations with similar causes to condemn the Turkish government for its inhuman treatment of Daavood Baagheri as well as all other refugees, and, at the same time, demand that the office of UNHCR in Turkey grant Daavood Baagheri the refugee status and start the process of his transfer to a third, safe country.

Solidarity (Hambastegi) - International Federation of Iranian Refugees

July 13, 2008