IHRWG: Iranian Human Rights Working Group
http://www.ghandchi.com/IHRWG.htm
Postscript 2013: The role of Dr. Jamshid Naghizadeh was not noted in the formation of IHRWG because he traveled frequently to Iran at that time and played a pioneering role in introducing the Internet to Iran. He held a PhD in physics. He told me in recent years it was OK to mention his name. I have lost contact with this old friend for some time now but he was active in soc.culture.iranian (SCI) in 1994 and actually along with Farhad Shakeri and Dr. Hossein Bagher Zadeh were among the founders of SCI. He knew my cousin Ahmad Ghandchi from old days when he was a university student in Iran. When he saw my call on SCI to start a human rights group, he introduced me to Dr. Hossein Bagherzadeh. The group started based on RFC 1603 which was published by IETF around the same time. Moreover, about the history of this first Internet based Iranian human rights group that was founded in 1994, please also visit the following links:
http://www.hrweb.org/groups/ihrwg.html
http://blog.world-citizenship.org/wp-archive/234
Iranian Human Rights Working Group (IHRWG) was an Internet-based community of individuals committed to campaigning for the improvement of human rights in Iran that was founded in March 1994.
History:
The following text was provided to SCI Site by IHRWG in Nov 1999:
It all started with the news of a yet another stoning (to death) in Iran in March 1994. Sam Ghandchi was outraged and posed the question in the electronic bulletin board soc.culture.iranian (SCI) if something could be done by way of petition to stop this barbaric practice*. Hossein B. Zadeh followed it up by arguing that the real evil is the death penalty itself - human beings allowing themselves to take lives of other human beings. Then followed a series of correspondence in which Hossein also invited a group of other like-minded SCI contributors to take part.
In the discussions that followed, a number of human rights issues, including torture and various forms of death penalty in Iran were raised. It was realized that organizing a thorough and effective campaign against any of these abuses of human rights in Iran required more self-education as well as a forum for discussion and planning actions. And so the idea of forming the Iranian Human Rights Working Group (IHRWG) was born.
Some 14 members of the people who were involved in the discussion welcomed the idea and registered themselves as "founding members" of the group. They approved a Charter for the group and elected a 5-member Steering Committee in May 1994 after which the group was officially launched.
Early in 1995, proposals were put forward for some changes in the Charter. As a result of these changes, the number of Steering Committee members was raised from five to eight and their terms of office from one to two years (elected on a roll-over basis).
IHRWG Website:
www.ihrwg.org (ihrwg domain is no longer active)
Abolition of Death Penalty:
Please note that IHRWG ran a campaign against the death penalty, which covered qessas killing and stoning and the petition was also signed by the late Dariush Forouhar:
IHRWG's campaign against the death penalty
http://archive.apc.org/mideast.gulf/msg03752.html
*The link to the petition is no longer active (www.ihrwg.org/CP/signatures.htm)
Letters of Support for Abolition of Death Penalty by Dariush Forouhar and Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran sent to IHRWG Chair, Dr. Hossein Bagher Zadeh in 1997:
http://ghandchi.com/frvhr1.gif
http://ghandchi.com/frvhr2.gif
Forouhars'Memorial Slideshow
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/Forouhars81/memorial.htm
Related Links
University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/links/alphalinks.html
IHRWG condemns crackdown on Baha'is in Iran
http://bahai-library.com/newspapers/1998/101698-1.html
Dr. Hossein Bagher Zadeh: Human Rights are
Universal - Period!
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/universal.htm
MEHR.ORG: Dr. Mohammad Parvin: Human Rights, Political Activities and Hypocrisy of IRI's Apologists
http://www.ghandchi.com/IONA/MEHR/HR_Political.htm
About Cultural Relativism-"Trying Out One's New
Sword" by Mary Midgley
http://www.ghandchi.com/newsword.htm
Free All Political Prisoners
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/HR/prisoner.htm
Slideshow of July 9, 1999 Students Movement in Iran
http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Daneshjoo/daneshjoo.htm
Sam Ghandchi: Stop Stoning the Women in Iran
http://www.ghandchi.com/27-Stoning.htm
http://www.ghandchi.com/index-Page4.html
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* The above article was first posted on SCI (soc.culture.iranian) Usenet newsgroup on Dec 4, 1999
First posted on Iranscope Site in 1999
