Deeply per­turbed by the deaths of Ira­ni­ans dy­ing by the hour, due to the lack of med­i­cines and med­ical equip­ment be­cause of the em­bargo of sanc­tions by the United States on Iran, the Sikh po­lit­i­cal body Dal Khalsa has writ­ten to the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral An­tónio Guter­res urg­ing him to use his good of­fices to per­suade the United States to im­me­di­ately lift the sanc­tions, notwith­stand­ing its po­lit­i­cal stance against the oil-rich coun­try. Dal Khalsa has re­quested to use the in­flu­ence of In­dia which is friendly with both the United States and Iran.

DAL KHALSA HAS URGED THE UN SEC­RE­TARY-GEN­ERAL AN­TO­NIO GUTER­RES to ex­er­cise all pow­ers and use its clout to im­press upon the United States to lift sanc­tions against Iran as it was fac­ing ad­verse im­pacts of the Coro­n­avirus out­break in the form of a se­vere short­age of med­ical needs and ac­cess to ad­e­quate funds. The or­ga­ni­za­tion has asked the UN to seek the ser­vices of New Delhi as In­dia has good friendly re­la­tions with Iran as well as the United States.

Hop­ing for friend­ship be­tween Modi and Trump bear­ing fruit in this hour of cri­sis, “The United Na­tions may ask In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi to come for­ward to con­vince US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to take a call of lift­ing the sanc­tions against Iran,” reads the Dal Khalsa let­ter sent via email to the of­fice of Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral.

Pray­ing for the fam­i­lies of the sick and the dead, Dal Khalsa has “ex­pressed full sol­i­dar­ity with the world com­mu­nity and es­pe­cially with the suf­fer­ing masses in China, Iran, Italy, Spain, Eng­land, United States and else­where.”

Notwith­stand­ing the po­lit­i­cal ra­tio­nale for such sanc­tions, the need of the hour is to start the hu­man­i­tar­ian phase of work­ing for com­mon good world­wide.

Stat­ing that the spread of Coro­n­avirus in the world has reached an alarm­ing pan­demic level, putting the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple across the globe in dan­ger, the leader of the Sikh po­lit­i­cal body said its test­ing times for the hu­man race.

Party spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh em­pha­sised that Iran was one of the hard­est-hit coun­tries in the world as it was fight­ing a two-front bat­tle -one against the deadly COVID-19 virus and the other dif­fi­cul­ties ac­crued due to the US sanc­tions against it.

As peo­ple con­tinue to die by the hour in Iran with Covid-19 virus, it is time for the United Na­tions to use its good of­fices to en­sure that the United States lifts the life-threat­en­ing sanc­tions. “Notwith­stand­ing the po­lit­i­cal ra­tio­nale for such sanc­tions, the need of the hour is to start the hu­man­i­tar­ian phase of work­ing for com­mon good world­wide”, said he.

Dal Khalsa ex­presses full sol­i­dar­ity with the world com­mu­nity and es­pe­cially with the suf­fer­ing masses in China, Iran, Italy, Spain, Eng­land, United States and else­where.

“It is good that Pak­istan has taken the lead in urg­ing the United States of Amer­ica to lift sanc­tions against be­lea­guered Iran. Quot­ing Pak­istan PM Im­ran Khan’s state­ment that it was very un­just that Ira­ni­ans were deal­ing with such a large pan­demic out­break on one side, and on the other, they were fac­ing in­ter­na­tional sanc­tions, the Dal Khalsa ap­pealed to the mem­ber coun­tries of the UN Se­cu­rity Coun­cil to keep pol­i­tics aside and con­cen­trate ex­clu­sively on hu­man­i­tar­ian poli­cies and prac­tices.

Mean­while, the Dal Khalsa has also ap­pealed to the peo­ple of Pun­jab to self-dis­ci­pline them­selves and fol­lows guide­lines of WHO and the Pun­jab Gov­ern­ment with ut­most sin­cer­ity to halt the spread of the virus.