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• Mr. BATES. Mr. Speaker, I am certain many of you, with great sadness, have learned of the ruthless assassination of a prominent human rights activist, Dr. Kazem Rajavi, by the Iranian regime's mercenaries in recent weeks. Dr. Rajavi, an outstanding international representative of the Iranian people's resistance for peace and freedom, was the brother of Mr. Massoud Rajavi, the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who has perspicaciously led a popular resistance against the Tehran clerical tyranny for almost a decade.

• Dr. Rajavi devoted the last 19 years of his life to unrelented activities against the dictatorships of the Shah and Khomeini. He often attended various international conferences and forums to expose the unabated violations of human rights in Iran and to defend the very rights that the Iranian people had fought for and sacrificed so many lives for under the Shah's tyranny.

• After the fall of the Shah, Dr. Rajavi was Iran's first Ambassador to the U.N. headquarters in Geneva. However, shortly after his appointment, he resigned his post in protest to the repressive policies and terrorist activities of the ruling clerics in Iran. He then intensified his campaign against mass executions, arbitrary arrests, and the medieval tortures exercised by the clerics in Tehran. Since the formation of the National Council of Resistance in 1981, Dr. Rajavi had been representing the Iranian Resistance in many international assemblies, and every year headed the resistance delegation to the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the Commission of Human rights in Geneva. His constant and effective efforts, prompting international attention to the horrible situation in Iran, resulted in condemnation of the Iranian clerical despotism by the United Nations and a variety of other human rights organizations in the past few years.

• Dr. Rajavi was a resident of France from 1957 to 1968, and subsequently resided in Switzerland, where he was given political asylum. He received six doctorate degrees in the fields of law, political science and sociology from the universities of Paris and Geneva, where he held professorship's post in the last 10 years.

• Due to his active and effective role in condemning the medieval autocracy ruling Iran, the regime's authorities despised him and plotted his murder. On many occasions, he was reportedly threatened with death by the Khomeini regime's terrorist-diplomats and personal envoys of Rafsanjani, the Iranian President, to Europe. Nonetheless, he constantly and bravely confronted Khomeini's agents in the various organs of the United Nations, engaging in a full-fledged struggle for human rights and for helping to establish a democratically elected government by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

• As the regime's verbal onslaught on Dr. Rajavi failed to stop his faithful, vigorous activities against the abuses perpetuated under the clerics in Iran, Rafsanjani ordered his proteges in Geneva to shed his blood, and it was on April 24 that Dr. Rajavi, 56, was slain reportedly by 12 bullets fired from a machinegun by two gunmen.

• The assassination of Dr. Rajavi by the Tehran agents once again proves to the world that in the past decade, even after Khomeini's celebrated death, things have not changed in Iran; that is, terrorism and repression continue to be the cornerstone of the crumbling regime. The most recent annual report of the Department of State, `Patterns of Global Terrorism,' makes clear that `the events of 1989 indicate Tehran continued to view the selective use of terrorism as a legitimate tool to achieve foreign policy.' The report calls Iran the most active state sponsor of terrorism last year, backing 28 attacks, including the assassinations of `at least five Iranian dissidents.' As the Washington Post, April 27, 1990, puts it, considering Rafsanjani any different from the terrorist clique in Iran is a `ridiculous fable.'

• We have lost a genuine symbol of service to the great cause of human rights, the embodiment of a people's resolve for peace and freedom. We are honored to salute Dr. Rajavi for giving his life of struggle for human rights a brilliant personification of the utmost devotion.

• We rise today to express our profound condolences to his family, especially to his brother Mr. Massoud Rajavi, who as the leader of a nationwide resistance for which his brother sacrificed his life, more than anybody else holds dear the invaluable services that Dr. Kazem Rajavi rendered to the just cause of the Iranian people.

• To pay special tribute to Dr. Rajavi, I would like to ask my colleagues to rise and join me in 1 minute of silence.

• I also urge the U.S. administration and the U.N. Secretary General to intervene and to take all necessary steps to cease the cowardly acts of terrorism and the continuing wave of summary executions and arbitrary arrests by the Iranian authorities.

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