After years of relentless and courageous struggle by the Iranian people, the 1979 Revolution came to fruition and the shah dictatorship was overthrown. The glorious people’s revolution celebrated its spring, but unfortunately, the spring of freedom turned into a dark autumn of repression and hostility against the most basic civil and political human rights at the hands of Ruhollah Khomeini and his thugs.
Khomeini, by hijacking the revolution, immediately began his enmity with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and other progressive and democratic forces, denying them the right to legitimate activities within the framework of the nation’s fundamental rights accepted by the international community. In this blatant confrontation, disrupting gatherings, overturning book and publication tables, beating up girls and boys selling newspapers, imprisoning supporters, and torturing and executing young political activists became the daily norm across Iran. On the other side, the PMOI exercised restraint and patience, suffering dozens of casualties and not responding in kind in an effort to use the last remnants of freedom born from a great revolution.
To keep the spirit of freedom alive, PMOI members paid a heavy price, enduring prison, torture, and killings in prisons and the streets and alleys of Iran’s cities.
The first martyrs after the revolution
The PMOI Abbas Omani was the first martyr of the PMOI, who was unjustly martyred by Khomeini’s mercenaries in January 1980 after the overthrow of the Shah’s regime. Khomeini’s bloodthirsty thugs attacked him in the middle of the night during the presidential elections because he was supporting the PMOI. While he was busy putting up posters and flyers for the PMOI candidate, Massoud Rajavi, he was assaulted by Khomeini’s mercenaries with clubs and knives, severely injuring him. The criminal attackers then took Abbas’s semi-conscious body to a place on the Saveh road and left it in the desert, where he died from a brain hemorrhage.
From February 1979 to June 20, 1981, the regime’s club-wielders murdered more than 70 PMOI supporters and members.
After Jun 20, 1981, Khomeini ordered an all-out crackdown on all forms of dissent, especially the members and supporters of the PMOI. More than 100,000 PMOI members and other freedom-loving forces remained faithful to their vow to uphold human values and basic human rights in prisons, dungeons, firing squads, gallows, and torture beds.
When human rights defender Kazem Rajavi cried out, “We write the history of human rights with blood,” no one had grasped the depth of Khomeini’s brutality and religious fascism.
The massacre of political prisoners in 1988 took place by Khomeini’s decree and was carried out by the “Death Committees” across the country. In this massacre, over 30,000 political prisoners across Iran, more than 90% of whom were PMOI prisoners, were hanged as “steadfast” prisoners for their beliefs. Key members of the Death Committees were later promoted to the highest levels of power within the regime. They included Ebrahim Raisi, the former regime president who was known to the people of Iran as the “Butcher of Tehran” for his role in the 1988 massacre.
Maryam Rajavi, the torchbearer of the justice-seeking movement
In 2016, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), called for justice for the martyred heroes and urged all Iranians, prominent jurists, and honorable people worldwide to help address the ongoing tragedy in Iran. She reiterated this call during the third day of the Free Iran 2024 World Summit to honor the justice-seeking movement for the massacred prisoners, saying: “Iran holds a contemporary world record in many forms of repression, including the imprisonment and torture of at least 500,000 people for political reasons and the execution of more than 100,000 political prisoners. Iran also has one of the highest numbers of executions each year. Last year, three-quarters of the executions recorded globally took place in Iran.”
The lack of any international accountability for these crimes has allowed the mullahs to continue their unabated bloodshed for the past four decades.
This is the bloody story of the massacre of the people of Kurdistan, the executions of the 1980s, the 1988 massacre, the killings of protesters in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022, and a series of terrorist operations and hostage-taking of foreign nationals.
In fact, human rights violations in Iran under the mullahs’ rule have never been limited to certain decisions, decrees, and laws of the regime but have always been systematic repression against the entire society at all times by the entirety of the regime.
Human rights and freedom against the tyrannical regime
In another part of her speech, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi said: “For our people and us, human rights, freedom, and the right to choose are fundamental principles. Following Khomeini’s rise to power in 1979, the PMOI endured the deaths of dozens of their colleagues over 28 months and exercised restraint in response to the imprisonment of thousands of their supporters. This was done to sustain political and peaceful activities for as long as possible.
“However, the tyrannical regime, which fears even the slightest hint of human rights or freedom, has devoured everything. Indeed, this ruling barbarism has decimated civil society and eradicated any possibility of meaningful activity by the people within this framework.
“What words can adequately express the tragedy of the systematic stoning of human rights in Iran? It is tantamount to a pervasive massacre across all aspects of life.
“It is the massacre of civil society, the environment, livelihoods, production, knowledge, ethics, culture, noble concepts, and, above all, freedom itself. As a result, the hearts, minds, and emotions of Iranians are constantly wounded and in pain.
“A poignant illustration of this pain is the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners 1988 with 90% being from the PMOI whose names and the locations of their graves remain largely unknown.”
Interestingly, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights previously announced in a new report that the 1988 massacre and the execution of political prisoners in the 1980s were crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide. This report is a necessary and worthy step that the United Nations neglected in 1988.
In that horrific period, while the massacre was still ongoing in prisons, Massoud Rajavi, on August 26, 1988, sent a telegram to the then UN Secretary-General for the first time revealing Khomeini’s decree, which in his own handwriting ordered the execution of political prisoners and PMOI members. This was the first step and the beginning of the bright justice-seeking movement that continues to this day.
On behalf of the Iranian people and resistance, Mrs. Rajavi addressed the United Nations and its member countries and called for an end the impunity of the criminals ruling Iran and for an international criminal court for the perpetrators of these crimes.
Indeed, the Iranian Resistance, led by Mrs. Rajavi, considers it their urgent duty to pursue the justice-seeking movement to its conclusion, which is the implementation of justice and the realization of the disregarded rights of the people, the families of the martyrs, and the punishment of criminals. That day is not far off.
