Political prisoners in Iran have called on UN to investigate rights abuses in the country

A number of Iranian political prisoners in the notorious Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran have written to António Guterres, the newly-elected next United Nations Secretary General, and Asma Jahangir, the new UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, complaining of appalling human rights abuses and political violence by the mullahs’ regime in Iran.
“What is in particular of concern is the worsening and worrisome situation of human rights in Iran which is being violated blatantly by the Iranian regime,” said the letter by the political prisoners, which added that the regime is undermining and disregarding recognized international conventions which guarantee human dignity.
The letter added that the Iranian regime is also carrying out human rights abuses and meddling in the internal affairs of regional countries including Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.
“In Iran both in previous decades and at the present time human rights have been systematically and despicably abused, and this situation is continuing.”
The letter went on saying that in the past year the mullahs’ regime has carried out dozens of political executions and those responsible for these executions are the same perpetrators of the 1988 massacre of some 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. Political prisoners who remained loyal to their beliefs were executed during that massacre despite having already been sentenced to prison terms by the regime’s Judiciary, the letter said.
The political prisoners pointed out that the human rights abuses by the mullahs’ regime included suppressing ethnic and religious minorities and women, extra-judicial executions, and arrest and torture of political dissidents, workers’ rights activists, teachers and journalists.
The political prisoners urged the UN officials to call for a halt to executions in Iran, the release of civil activists from the regime’s jails, an end to pressures on opponents of the regime and further to demand the publication of the full names and sites of mass graves of the 30,000 victims of the 1988 massacre in Iran.
The signatories included Ali Moezzi, Saeid Massouri, Ass’ad (Behnam) Ebrahimzadeh, Saleh Kohandel, Hossein Gholami-Azar, Hassan Sadeqi, Reza Akbari Monfared, Soheil Babai, Ibrahim Firouzi, Hossein Kakavand, Amir Hassanvand-Seyyar, Alireza Nasseri and Assad Mohammadi.