Taking stock of Iran’s crimes against humanity 30 years after 1988 massacre
Taking stock of Iran’s crimes against humanity 30 years after 1988 massacre – On July 26, Amnesty International renewed its warning of many years that the theocratic regime in Iran …
On July 26, Amnesty International renewed its warning of many years that the theocratic regime in Iran is destroying all the evidence of 1988 massacre of political prisoners. Since the massacre the only visible proof of it are mass graves where bodies of the prisoners were piled up.
There is also a constant reminder for the rest of us that such heinous crime has not been thoroughly investigated by an independent international commission.
Amnesty International in its Urgent Action said: “ROAD TO BE BUILT OVER INDIVIDUAL AND MASS GRAVES. The families of political dissidents who were forcibly disappeared and extra-judicially killed in Ahvaz, southern Iran, in the 1980s are suffering untold mental anguish and distress as the authorities are destroying the individual and mass graves of their loved ones. They are afraid of facing further persecution if they speak out.”
Ahvaz is not an isolated incident, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) website: “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.”
Who were the prisoners and what happened
According to sources close to Iran’s main opposition, in the summer of 1988 political prisoners serving their sentences were mass executed. The order, according to them, came from the very top. It was written in a notorious fatwa (religious edict) that all those who still believe in People’s Mojahiden Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) must be killed.
In one summer around 30,000 political prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves in Iran. Khomeini and his cohorts knew that if the crime goes public it will be a major disaster. The so-called judges were strictly ordered to hide everything. Years later, it was revealed that all prisoners in that period were denied visitation rights for months.
Since the early days after 1988, The NCRI and MEK were tasked to expose the crime worldwide. Not a single international body was left out in this endeavor for past three decades. In the summer of 2016 and the 28th anniversary of the 1988 massacre, Maryam Rajavi President of the NCRI announced a major Seek-Justice campaign for the fallen prisoners.
A month later, an audio tape was leaked out by Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri’s son in August 2016. Montazeri, the handpicked successor of Khomeini, was sacked for his public objections to mass executions in 1988. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest and died in 2009.
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Read More: Al Arabiya
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights