Dariush Forouhar
Encyclopedia
Dariush Forouhar (August 1928 - November 1998) was a founder and leader of the Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran
Mellat Iran
Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran also known as Nation Party of Iran or Iran Nation Party is a liberal nationalist political party seeking secular democracy and separation of religion and state in Iran.-History:The group was founded by Dariush Forouhar in 1951, which he continued to lead up until...

(Nation of Iran Party), a pan-Iranist
Pan-Iranism
Pan-Iranism is an ideology that advocates solidarity and reunification of Iranian peoples living in the Iranian plateau and other regions that have significant Iranian cultural influence, including the Talysh, Georgians, North Caucasian peoples, Ossetians, Kurds, Armenians, Persians of Iran,...

 opposition party in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and served as Minister of Labor in the Provisional Revolutionary Government
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...

 of Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan
Mehdi Bazargan was a prominent Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government, making him Iran's first prime minister after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He was the head of the first engineering department of Tehran University...

 in 1979. He later became a critic of the Islamic government, and in 1998 he and wife were assassinated in one of the Chain murders of Iran
Chain murders of Iran
The Chain Murders of Iran , or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.The victims included more than 80 writers, translators,...

, for which a deputy security official of the Ministry of Information, Saeed Emami, was officially found culpable.

Forouhar was born in Isfahan
Isfahan (city)
Isfahan , historically also rendered in English as Ispahan, Sepahan or Hispahan, is the capital of Isfahan Province in Iran, located about 340 km south of Tehran. It has a population of 1,583,609, Iran's third largest city after Tehran and Mashhad...

. According to Ali Razmjoo in Hezb-e-Pan-Iranist (also see links here), he was one of the founding members of the original Pan-Iranist Party of Iran in 1951 with Mohsen Pezeshkpour
Mohsen Pezeshkpour
Mohsen Pezeshkpour was an Iranian politician and the co-founder and leader of the Pan-Iranist Party, which is also seen as the Old Nationalist Party of Iran.- Life :...

. During the Pahlavi
Pahlavi dynasty
The Pahlavi dynasty consisted of two Iranian/Persian monarchs, father and son Reza Shah Pahlavi and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi The Pahlavi dynasty consisted of two Iranian/Persian monarchs, father and son Reza Shah Pahlavi (reg. 1925–1941) and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi The Pahlavi dynasty ...

 era, he had been very active in the anti-Shah nationalist movement and was a strong supporter of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

In the midst of post-revolutionary tensions in Iranian Kurdistan in 1979, Forouhar was part of a delegation sent by Tehran to negotiate with Kurdish political and religious leaders. Although this delegation's recommendations were never implemented by the central government and Kurdish revolt was dealt with harshly, Forouhar's attempts to reach a peaceful settlement with Kurds earned him respect among Kurds.

He and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar
Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar
Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, was an Iranian dissident and activist who was murdered during the Chain murders of Iran in November 1998.Dariush Forouhar's wife, she became a member of the Party of the Iranian Nation when she was a student, launching anti-Shah campaign shoulder to shoulder with...

, were assassinated in their home in 1998. The murders, which are believed to have been politically motivated, remain unsolved, although the general belief is that the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was involved and had ordered the killings.

It is thought that the murders were provoked by Forouhar's criticism of human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic in interviews with Western radio stations that beamed Persian-language programs to Iran. This "brought them to the attention of Iran's ubiquitous intelligence service."

Under the public opinion pressure, the then Iranian president Mohammad Khatami
Mohammad Khatami
Sayyid Mohammad Khātamī is an Iranian scholar, philosopher, Shiite theologian and Reformist politician. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 3, 2005. He also served as Iran's Minister of Culture in both the 1980s and 1990s...

 formed a committee to follow up the case, which eventually asked for the resignation of the Minister of Intelligence, Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi
Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi
Ayatollah Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi is an Iranian politician and cleric, previously the Minister of Intelligence of Islamic Republic of Iran...

. One of the main characters behind the case, Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami
Saeed Emami was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and an intelligence officer under Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. The Islamic government accused him of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents shortly after he allegedly committing...

, reportedly committed suicide while in prison.

Their son, Arash, and daughter, Parastou, are both politically active and continue to raise awareness of the plight of political dissidents in Iran. In 2009, Parastou signed an open letter of apology posted to Iranian.com
Iranian.com
Iranian.com, also known as The Iranian and The Iranian Times, is an online English language magazine.Founded in July 1995 by entrepreneur/journalist Jahanshah Javid, Iranian.com has the largest online following among Iranians residing in North America, with about 68,000 visitors per month-Awards...

 along with 266 other Iranian academics, writers, artists, journalists about the Persecution of Bahá'ís
Persecution of Bahá'ís
The persecution of Bahá'ís is the religious persecution of Bahá'ís in various countries, especially in Iran, where the Bahá'í Faith originated and the location of one of the largest Bahá'í populations in the world...

.

Ms. Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. On 10 October 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's,...

, the lawyer of the Forouhars' relatives quoting Parastou says: "All evidence shows that my father was preparing himself to go to prison, because at the time of his slaying, his shoes had no laces, he did not wear his wrist watch and had his wallet emptied of its contents and papers except for some money."

See also

  • Chain murders of Iran
    Chain murders of Iran
    The Chain Murders of Iran , or Serial Murders, were a series of murders and disappearances from 1988-1998 by Iranian government operatives of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system in some way.The victims included more than 80 writers, translators,...

  • Saeed Emami
    Saeed Emami
    Saeed Emami was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and an intelligence officer under Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. The Islamic government accused him of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents shortly after he allegedly committing...

  • Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar
    Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar
    Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, was an Iranian dissident and activist who was murdered during the Chain murders of Iran in November 1998.Dariush Forouhar's wife, she became a member of the Party of the Iranian Nation when she was a student, launching anti-Shah campaign shoulder to shoulder with...

  • Mellat Iran
    Mellat Iran
    Hezb-e Mellat-e Iran also known as Nation Party of Iran or Iran Nation Party is a liberal nationalist political party seeking secular democracy and separation of religion and state in Iran.-History:The group was founded by Dariush Forouhar in 1951, which he continued to lead up until...

  • Human rights in Islamic Republic of Iran
    Human rights in Islamic Republic of Iran
    The state of human rights in Iran has been criticized both by Iranians and international human right activists, writers, and NGOs. The United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission have condemned prior and ongoing abuses in Iran in published critiques and several resolutions.The...

  • History of fundamentalist Islam in Iran
    History of fundamentalist Islam in Iran
    The history of fundamentalist Islam in Iran covers the history of Islamic revivalism and the rise of political Islam in modern Iran. Today, there are basically three types of Islam in Iran: traditionalism, modernism, and a variety of forms of revivalism usually brought together as fundamentalism...

  • Mohammad Mossadegh
  • Hossein Fatemi
    Hossein Fatemi
    Hossein Fatemi was a scholar, journalist, and famous politician of Iran. A close associate of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, he proposed nationalization of Iranian oil and gas assets. Initially a journalist, he served as Foreign Affairs Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953...

  • 1953 Iranian coup d'état
  • Anglo Iranian Oil Company
  • Operation Ajax
    Operation Ajax
    The 1953 Iranian coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States under the name TPAJAX Project...


External links

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