Ban Ki-moon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On Thursday 30 August, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who was in Tehran for the Non-Aligned Movement called on Iran to release its political prisoners and human rights defenders. This rather exceptional appeal to release “opposition leaders, human rights defenders, journalists and social activists,” was made in a speech to an Iranian diplomatic college last Thursday. Ban stressed that allowing the Iranian people’s voice to be heard was especially important ahead of the country’s 2013 presidential election, when a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be chosen. “Restricting freedom of expression and suppressing social activism will only set back development and plant the seeds of instability,” he added. His comments went without official response from Tehran.
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