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.CAIS NEWS© ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS OF THE IRANIAN WORLD |
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Kaaba of Zoroaster's Destruction Project Began by Iran's Taliban
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01 December 2006 |
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bulldozers began their work at Naqsh-e Rostam Heritage Site |
Edited by Shapour Suren-Pahlav
LONDON, (CAIS) -- Iran's Cultural Heritage Guards commander Amir-Abbas Ruhi has announced that the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (CHTO) plans to file a lawsuit against the Islamic Regime's Marvdasht public prosecutor for altering his ruling on halting the railroad construction near the ancient site of Naqsh-e Rostam.
The
railroad project had been stopped on the order of the Marvdasht public
prosecutor some time ago, but he revised his ruling and the road construction
machines began their operations at the site in Fars Province, the Persian
service of CHN reported on Friday.
“The
function of the Marvdasht Islamic court is full of ambiguities for us. Thus, we
plan to sue the Marvdasht prosecutor through the CHTO Legal Office,” Brigadier
General Ruhi explained.
“When
the prosecutor rules that an operation must be stopped to prevent a crime, he
can only rescind the decision if he is convinced that the operation is no longer
a crime,” CHTO Legal Office director Omid Ghanami said.
Many
actions have been taken to prevent the Islamic regime's destructive machines
from working at the site, people have even lain down in front of the bulldozers,
but the project workers are continuing the operations, archaeologist Afshin
Yazdani of the Parseh and Pasargadae Foundation noted.
A
five-meter high embankment spoiling the landscape of the Achaemenid site of
Naqsh-e Rostam has been made for the railway track about 350 meters from the
monument.
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Detailed map of Railway in relation to Naqsh-e Rostam and Persepolis (Click to enlarge) |
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Experts
have said that the rumbling of the trains will damage the monuments at Naqsh-e Rostam
in the future and will cause Kaaba of Zoroaster to collapse in less than ten
years if the railroad becomes operational.
Naqsh-e Rostam is important since the tombs of Achaemenian Emperors such as Darius the Great and Xerxes are carved into the living rock. The site also contains remnants of the Elamite, Parthian and Sassanid dynastic eras.
In recent years the Islamic republic has stepped up its' cultural-cleansing of the pre-Islamic Iranian heritage under the banner of development projects. The regime has undermined and destroyed a number of major cultural landmarks associated with the ancient Iranian regimes, particularly the Achaemenid and Sasanian dynasties, to deprive the Iranian nation of their rich ancient heritage.
The constructions of new of the railroad which would ensure the destruction of the Achaemenid Kaaba of Zoraster and other monuments in Naqsh-e Rostam is in accordance with the cultural cleansing orchestrated by the Taliban-like regime in Iran.
The
hatred of the extremist mullahs for the pre-Islamic Iran and Iranian nation in
general is such that they, like the Taliban of Afghanistan who destroyed the
towering Buddhist sculptures at Bamiyan, intend not only to eradicate the
ancient heritage, but even to erase all traces of its existence in that land. In
their determination to rid Iran of the pre-Islamic past and obliterate its very
memory, not only is a crime against Iranian peoples, but humankind in general.
"Rest assure, if we [Iranians] allow the [Islamic] regime complete the construction of this railway which guarantees the destruction of Iranian heritage at Naqsh-e Rostam, it is the beginning of the end for other pre-Islamic monuments in Iran, and they will finish the job that Khalkhali could not finish in 1981", said an Iranian archaeologist from Fars Province.
One of the most-notorious clerics in Iran, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, who was renowned for his brutality and mass executions in post-revolutionary Iran, had hopelessly tried to bulldoze and level-down Persepolis, and after that, the mausoleum of Master Ferdowsi, the greatest Persian epic poet in Tus. However, the inhabitants of the close city Shiraz went on the barricade, and risked their lives by laying front of bulldozers, as well as assistance from governor of Fars, Nosratollah Amini, who had been a member of the National Front during the days of Dr Mossadegh (1950s) and his personal lawyer, called upon the security forces in Fars, and in a show of force, threw out the humiliated invaders headed by Khalkhali, which saved the ancient site from total destruction.
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"History is the Light on the Path to Future" |
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Encyclopaedia Iranica
The British Institute of Persian Studies "Persepolis Reconstructed"
The British Museum
The Royal Asiatic Society
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