Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, December 12, 2020—The detailed letter of a group of United Nations human rights experts demanding clarity on the fate of thousands of Iranian political prisoners executed in 1988 was another strike reminder of an undeniable reality: You can’t trust dictators to investigate their own crimes.
in the summer of 1988, Iranian regime supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the purging of all prisons from opponents of the regime, especially members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). On Khomeini’s orders, regime officials carried out mass executions of political prisoners across Iran. According to information obtained by the MEK’s network inside Iran and the few prisoners who survived the carnage, more than 30,000 prisoners were executed in the span of a few months and were buried in mass unmarked graves.
The letter, dated September 3, 2020, was made public the eve of International Human Rights Day on December 9, following 60 days of silence and inaction by Iranian regime authorities on questions posed by the human rights experts.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) described the UN experts’ letter as a great victory for the Iranian people and Resistance on their path to seek justice and a major blow for the mullahs.
In a video message, Mrs. Rajavi, who has been spearheading a global effort to hold the regime accountable for this heinous crime against humanity, said, “The justice movement is bearing fruit on the international front and the era of silence and ignoring of the clerical regime's vast crimes is over.”
The UN experts had warned the Iranian regime about its continued cover-up of the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 and systemic impunity enjoyed by those who ordered and carried out the extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. They include the current justice minister Alireza Avayi, the head of judiciary Ebrahim Raisi, and Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a former justice minister and current advisor to the judiciary chief.
On July 24, 2019, Pour-Mohammadi defended the massacre in an interview with the state-run Mosalas magazine, and said the MEK must “face the capital punishment.”
“We have not settled the score with the MEK. We will discuss these matters after we eliminate them. We have to deal with each and every one of them. We are not joking,” Pour-Mohammadi said.
Pour-Mohammadi was a member of the “Death Commission,” a trio of regime officials who acted as judges in minutes-long trials of the prisoners executed in 1988.
Why the regime cannot investigate its own crime?
“We are concerned that the situation may amount to crimes against humanity,” the signatories of the letter write, adding that if the regime does not uphold its obligations under international human rights laws, the rights experts will “call on the international community to take action to investigate the cases including through the establishment of an international investigation.”
An international probe into the 1988 massacre is a necessary and long-overdue measure. The 32-year history of the 1988 massacre is dotted with half-measures by international bodies that have mainly relied on the regime to investigate its own crimes, a course of action that has only aggravated the regime’s human rights abuses.
In this regard, Mrs. Rajavi underlined that “turning a blind eye to this crime was a fundamental element of the appeasement policy internationally.”
30,000 Iranian political prisoners, members of the MEK were executed following a fatwa of Khomeini.
In December 1988, the UN General Assembly expressed its grave concern about the new wave of executions of political prisoners from July to September 1988. However, the issue was not referred to the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly did not follow up on the resolution, and the Human Rights Commission did not act.
On many occasions, the regime was confronted with the question of political executions in 1988 but despite ample evidence it denied flatly denied the killings and called it propaganda.
On November 29, 1988, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN in New York, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, denied the mass executions in a meeting with the UN Special Representative on the situation of human rights in Iran and claimed that “many killings had in fact occurred on the battlefield, in the context of the war.”
On January 26, 1989, the UN Special Representative on the situation of human rights in Iran challenged Iran’s “global denial” of the wave of executions. He submitted to the authorities a list of 1,084 names, asking for information on their fate and whereabouts, and noted that “there were in all probability several thousand victims.”
On November 2, 1989, the UN Special Representative spoke of the mass prisoner killings of July-September 1988 no longer as an allegation but as a verified fact. But again, the UN refrained from investigating the killings or referring the dossier to the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, the regime has continued to promote the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre, persecuting the families of the victims, and destroying many mass graves to eliminate evidence of its horrendous crime against humanity.
Also, in the last 32 years, numerous demands of the NCRI president to the UN Secretary-General to attend to the issue have remained unanswered. “Global policies remained pinned on the hopes of moderation inside the regime through regime president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani,” Mrs. Rajavi reminded and added that the outcome was nothing but stabbing human rights in the back.
In 1995, following a 7-years campaign by the Iranian Resistance, the regime accepted a visit by the UN special rapporteur to Iran’s prisons. At the time, Iranian Resistance leader Massoud Rajavi demanded to answer 15 fundamental questions, including the number of the victims, their burial places, and addressing the fact that the families were uninformed about mass graves. Expectedly, the regime didn’t come clean on any of those issues. And the international community did not press the matter.
Now, 25 years later, in their letter to Iranian regime authorities, the UN human rights experts are asking those very same questions.
In her message, Mrs. Rajavi called for the referral of the case of the 1988 massacre to the UN Security Council and an international tribunal. For far too long, regime officials, particularly supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have enjoyed impunity for their crimes. They must face justice, Madam Rajavi stressed, and called on all countries to support the referral of the 1988 massacre dossier to the UN Security Council.
It has become clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the regime will never investigate its own crimes. Therefore, it is time for the international community and the UN to intervene and launch an independent international investigation into the 1988 massacre.
