With increasing frequency, Kurdish journalists, writers and human rights activists are summoned to interrogations, threatened, arrested, tortured, sentenced to long-term prison sentences and fired from their jobs. Iran is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights but find its articles are frequently contravened. The regional national minorities express frustration with the highly centralized nature of economic planning, which is implemented through the central-controlled provincial bureaucracy and leads to a growing economic and social gap between ethnic regions and Persian-dominated regions of Iran. A first step would be full, adherence to this Covenant and full implementation of its articles. Thank you!