Iran’s 1988 massacre: End the 30-year injustice

Iran’s 1988 massacre: End the 30-year injustice

30,000 pol. prisoners massacred in the summer of 1988

August 24, 2018 - A tragedy unfortunately gone unnoticed by the international community is the massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners by the Iranian regime in the summer of 1988. A variety of victims included mostly members and supporters of the Iranian regime opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) sent to the gallows after two-minute kangaroo trials as the so-called judges only asked if they continue to pledge allegiance and/or support to the PMOI/MEK.

Ambassador Ken Blackwell, former U.S. envoy to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, serving from 1992 to 1993, shed light on the importance of this historic genocide.

The perpetrators of this inhumane crime, many serving in Iranian regime posts as we speak, should finally face justice. This is the least the families of these victims, the Iranian nation as a whole and the international community, deserves.

It is difficult to imagine the heartache of having a loved one taken from you only to then see the person or persons responsible escape justice. The lack of closure that results from an unsolved crime is surely made all the worse by the unique injustice of a perpetrator being identified and yet enjoying absolute impunity. Imagine being witness to such a thing, and then imagine how much worse it would be if your loved one’s killer was known to everyone but never faced a day in court, and instead went on to live high on the hog, ascending to greater levels of wealth and power in the society you both inhabit. Even more disturbing is to see that they take pride in the crimes they have committed, and that they continue their ruthlessness. Now imagine that experience stretching over 30 years, multiply it times 30,000, and you may begin to have a sense of what the families of murdered Iranian political activists are dealing with.

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of a massacre of political prisoners that has been widely described as one of the worst crimes against humanity to take place in the post-World War II era. Following a fatwa by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Iranian officials assembled three-person “death commissions” in cities throughout the country, which were tasked with interrogating dissidents over their political affiliations and their views regarding the theocratic system. The trials, such as they were, sometimes lasted as little as a minute, after which those who refused to renounce their political beliefs were summarily executed, usually in groups of several people and without regard for the prisoner’s age or any other mitigating factors, including pregnancy.

The main target of the massacre was the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which was then and still remains the leading voice for pro-democratic resistance to the government of the mullahs. Its membership makes up the vast majority of the 30,000 people who were hanged and quickly buried, in secret mass graves, over the course of a few months. As such, the MEK and its affiliates now count as their members, both within Iran and throughout the expatriate community, most of those who lost friends and family to the regime’s ruthless machinery. And these individuals and groups are leading the call for an international inquiry into the 1988 massacre, as a means to securing justice for its many victims.

This call is going to be reiterated on Saturday in the context of an event that is scheduled to take place simultaneously in nearly 30 cities across Europe and North America. The event will once again showcase the personal stories of the survivors and relatives of the victims. And given that the overlapping events will all be livestreamed to one another and to the global press, it may allow those stories to reach their largest audience to date.

Every defender of human rights should hope that the world is watching and that this commemoration of 30-year-old human rights violations finally spurs the international community to action. Some Western governments have passed resolutions over the years acknowledging the reality of this crime and formally condemning it. But few practical steps have been taken which might result in the United Nations identifying the perpetrators, clarifying the scope of the killings, and filing charges in the International Criminal Court. In absence of such steps, thousands of killings will continue to go unpunished, and so tens or even hundreds of thousands of people will be deprived of even the most basic sense of justice or closure.

After 30 years during which the Iranian regime has continued to perpetrate and defend its human rights abuses with impunity, this must be made a major priority for all the free, democratic nations of the world. As far as the United States is concerned, it is potentially significant that the 30th anniversary of the massacre coincides with the State Department’s creation of an Iran Action Group whose declared goal is to compel a serious alteration in the behavior of the Iranian regime.

That noble goal, which is a concrete step in the right direction under the leadership of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, cannot be accomplished as long as the people who are responsible for the very worst of that behavior continue to occupy some of the most influential positions in Iranian government and society, including, shockingly, the position of Justice Minister. These individuals must be removed and brought to justice if there is to be any hope of change. And it should be clear from the past 30 years of impunity and from the complete collapse of President Hassan Rouhani’s supposed reform initiative that the current institutions of Iranian government will never take action to remove them on their own.

The U.S. has already been reaching out to its European allies with a clear sense of purpose regarding Iran policy. Now, as the Iran Action Group works to move that strategy forward, it should recognize both the practical and symbolic importance of making human rights in general and the 1988 massacre in particular a major point of focus in that outreach. And if the international community truly values human rights, it cannot fail to follow the IAG’s lead.

MEK activists expose Iranian regime’s efforts to destroy evidence of mass executions

MEK activists expose Iranian regime’s efforts to destroy evidence of mass executions

Amnesty International: Iran Desecrating mass grave sites to destroy crucial forensic evidence

By PMOI/MEK staff writers

Iran, Aug. 8, 2018 - In 1988, under the order of Iranian regime supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian regime executed more than 30,000 political prisoners, the majority being members and supporters of PMOI/MEK.

At the time, the regime needed to eliminate the opposition to consolidate its power at one of its most critical moments. The victims were executed in the span of mere months and their bodies were tossed into mass graves scattered across Iran.

The regime thought it could keep the 1988 massacre silent. Since then, the MEK has tried to bring the world attention to this heinous crime, which the regime has constantly denied. But three decades later, its crimes are catching up with it. Since 2016, an international movement led by the MEK has been documenting and publishing details of the 1988 massacre and exposing the authorities who were involved in the crimes.

MEK activists and supporters inside Iran have been gathering information about the victims and the clandestine mass graves they’ve been interred and published them on social media and websites. As a result of the activism surrounding the 1988 massacre, the event has received international attention in the past year from prominent organizations and personalities such as Amnesty International and the UN Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.

Many politicians and lawmakers have described the event as a crime against humanity and called for the international prosecution of its perpetrators, most of whom still hold key positions of power in the Iranian regime.

The Iranian regime, fearing the consequences of the scale of the crime became known, has engaged in a widespread campaign to destroy evidence of its crimes, including destroying graves and carrying out construction projects on the mass burial sites.

Meanwhile, MEK activists have been documenting the regime’s activities and registering images of the graves to prevent the regime from destroying the evidence of the 1988 massacre. These activities expand to most provinces across Iran, including Tehran, Semnan, Khorasan, Qom, Qazvin, and Bushehr. Below are some of the videos recorded by MEK activists, in which they commemorate the memories of the victims of the 1988 massacre and document the destruction of the graves.

30 years after the 1988 massacre, the memory of those who gave their life for freedom still lives, and the Iranian regime fears that memory more than ever.

Maryam Rajavi calls for action to prevent Iran from destroying graves, removing traces of victims of 1988 massacre

Maryam Rajavi calls for action to prevent Iran from destroying graves, removing traces of victims of 1988 massacre

The Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

The President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, urged the UN Secretary-General, the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and international human rights organizations to immediately take action to prevent the Iranian regime’s systematic destruction of the graves of victims of the 1988 massacre in Iran and removal of the traces of this massacre throughout the country, particularly in Ahvaz.

As the clerical regime’s efforts to prevent the growth of the Call-for-Justice movement has failed and it has not managed to send the massacre of Iranian political prisoners into oblivion, the ruling mullahs are desperately trying to remove the traces for this massacre in a bid to evade the consequences of this genocide and great crime against humanity, Mrs. Rajavi added.

She warned that the destruction of the graves of the martyrs --whether aimed at inflicting a vicious psychological torture on their families or at removing the evidence of this crime against humanity-- is a major crime in itself whose masterminds and perpetrators must face justice and be held accountable.

The inhuman clerical regime has in recent weeks razed the graves of the victims of the 1988 massacre and other victims of execution in the 1980s in Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan Province (in southwestern Iran), and is constructing roads in their place in order to remove all traces of these graves.

In late June, the regime had demolished the graves of PMOI martyrs in Vadi-e Rahmat Cemetery in Tabriz, capital of East Azerbaijan Province (northwestern Iran). In the previous month, the mass graves of the martyrs of the 1988 massacre and other PMOI martyrs in Behesht-e Reza Cemetery in Mashhad, capital of Razavi Khorasan Province (northeastern Iran), had been destroyed on the orders of the clerical regime’s officials.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

July 27, 2018