Wiesenthal Center Call for Human Rights Solidarity Campaign to Convince UN Secretary General to Shun Non-Aligned Conference in Tehran

August 17, 2012

Centro Simon Wiesenthal
Cabello 3872, PB "C" (C1425APR) - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Teléfono: (5411) 4802-1744 * Fax: (5411) 4802-1774
E-mail: info@cswlatinoamerica.org

“The same Supreme Leader who would welcome Ban Ki Moon, only this week proclaimed that one of the latter’s constituent member-states, Israel, ‘must vanish from the landscape of geography’

Buenos Aires, August 17, 2012

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the intended participation of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the 26 August Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran as “lendingendorsement to the principal patron of world terrorism and violator of human rights.”

The Center appealed to church movements, trade unions, women and LGBT groups, child protection agencies, Iranians in exile, Baha’is and especially Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and other sister organizations to, once and for all, join insolidarity in naming the fundamental rights crimes in Iran.

“The Secretary General must hear civil society’s voices of revulsion to understand that his Tehran visit would undermine the UN’s own sanctions regime, whitewashing the Iranian nuclear programme and show indifference to his host’s victims of domestic oppression and international terror. Mr. Secretary General, your place is not there!,” declared Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center.

“Iran has been directly implicated by INTERPOL in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish Centre, leaving 85 dead and over 300 wounded. Will Mr. Ban Ki Moon shake the bloodied hand of Defence Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, one of the seven charged by Argentina in that atrocity, or will he publicly request the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to grant their extradition for trial?,” asked Sergio Widder, the Center’s Director for Latin America.

“The same Supreme Leader who would welcome Ban Ki Moon, only this week proclaimed that one of the latter’s constituent member-states, Israel, ‘must vanish from the landscape of geography’. This statement, as an expression of genocidal intent, violates the UN itself,” concluded Samuels and Widder.

For further information, please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158 or Sergio Widder at +54911 4425-1306, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).