Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, August 29, 2021—In an online conference on Friday August 28, the international experts and jurists called Iran’s 1988 massacre a genocide. The conference was attended by 1,000 former political prisoners from both dictatorships of the Shah and the mullahs. Many of them shared their shocking experience, in particular to what happen at the summer of 1988 where more than 30,000 political prisoners were executed. The vast majority of the victims were members and sympathizers of the Iranian opposition group the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
The conference also connected dozens of relatives of the victims of the 1988 massacre from across Iran. They shared their experience and what they have witnessed and went through as victims’ families. In their video messages they had to cover their faces to avoid being identified by security forces.
A woman from Tehran said in her message, “I was for three years in prison, and I lost my husband in the 1988.”
A man who bravely had recorded his video message in front of the Kachuyi Prison of Karaj said, “During the 80s I was in this very prison. In 1988 I witnessed how those who were standing beside me were massacred.”
The 1988 massacre was carried out based on a fatwa of the then supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini. Death commissions, groups of regime authorities that acted as judges, sent thousands of political prisoners who refused to disavow their support for the MEK to the gallows. As the deputy prosecutor of Tehran, current regime president Ebrahim Raisi was a key member of Tehran’s death commission in 1988.
In this regard, a young student from Isfahan said, “I’m the son of one those executed in the 1988. They also tortured my cousin to denounce the MEK and Massoud Rajavi but he bravely shouted ‘down with Khomeini.’”
These messages were sent by the MEK’s network known inside Iran, known as Resistance Units. The Resistance Units is a network of Iranians across the country who seek regime change and support the MEK. This network has widely expanded Since 2017 and has played a major role in organizing and leading protests across Iran.
During the last week, the Resistance Units also continued to carry out anti-regime activities across Iran by spreading slogans targeting regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the ‘butcher’ president Ebrahim Raisi.
The Resistance Units installed images of the Iranian opposition President Maryam Rajavi and took to graffiti in various cities with the slogan “Down with Khamenei and Raisi, hail to Rajavi, hail to freedom.”
In particular they spread the slogan, “The Iranian people are awake; they hate Shah and mullahs,” reflecting the Iranian people’s desire not to return to the era of the Shah dictatorship despite various propaganda efforts by the regime’s intelligence service to mislead Iran protests.
These activities were carried out in cities such as Tehran, Tabriz, Saveh, Varamin, Shahriar, Ardakan, Fouladshahr, Yazdanshahr, Sanandaj, and Shahrekord.
