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Iran’s leaders ‘are responsible’ for executing 30,000 political prisoners
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Accountability

For more than 30 years many of the families of the victims of the 1988 massacre, and the few like me who were lucky to survive, have sought UN accountability for the perpetrators of that atrocity, not least to help put an end to the regime’s current injustices.

In 2016, a group of human rights lawyers in London established Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI), an NGO dedicated to bringing justice at the UN.

Advocacy by groups like JVMI and Amnesty International has increased pressure on the UN to take belated action.

Last September, seven UN special rapporteurs sent a joint letter to the Iranian authorities, stating that the 1988 extrajudicial executions could amount to “crimes against humanity”.

In the letter, which was made public in December, the rapporteurs pointed out that the UN’s failure to hold Iranian officials accountable over the past three decades “had a devastating impact on the survivors and families” and “emboldened” the Iranian authorities to “conceal the fate of the victims and to maintain a strategy of deflection and denial”.

Today, the families of the victims inside Iran face harassment and imprisonment for doing simple things such as visiting the site of their loved ones’ mass grave, or requesting that the authorities admit to the killings and issuing death sentences to their loved ones.

In a 2018 report, Amnesty International concluded that the Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity by forcibly ordering the disappearance and extrajudicial execution of thousands of political dissidents in 1988. The report adds that the Iranian authorities are committing “ongoing crimes against humanity” by way of enforced disappearance, persecution, torture and other inhumane acts, including continuing to conceal the fate and whereabouts of the victims.

Protests and appeals

It’s high time the UN puts an end to the families’ suffering by holding the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre accountable.

In May 2021, more than 150 former UN officials and renowned international human rights and legal experts wrote to the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, calling for an international commission of inquiry into the 1988 mass extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances.

Dozens of international NGOs supported the open letter, including JVMI, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the World Organisation Against Torture, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

In response to the open letter, a spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Marta Hurtado, told the Agence France-Presse that “the establishment of an international commission of inquiry is a decision that [UN] member states take”.

The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, also sidestepped questions about an inquiry to national governments when questioned by journalists on 5 May, about the open letter, adding that, “the Human Rights Office and the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran have reported persistent immunity for grave violations of human rights in Iran”.

But what’s the use if the UN only ‘reports’ persistent immunity in Iran but fails to take action?

A chance to testify

In 2018, I appeared as a witness at a civil society hearing organised in Geneva and aimed at identifying the perpetrators and mobilising an official UN investigation.

After nearly 33 years, the UN has had enough time to deliberate on taking meaningful action. Its own Special Rapporteurs have appealed for an international investigation, as have dozens of former senior UN officials and the human rights community at large. Meanwhile, families of the victims continue to suffer the consequences.

Bachelet, the UN high commissioner, has a moral duty to establish a commission of inquiry into the 1988 massacre. How else can she respond to the families of the victims in her role as the UN’s highest official responsible for promoting and protecting human rights?

As a survivor of the 1988 massacre, I am ready to testify before any UN investigation about the horrors I witnessed in Iran’s prisons, and the identities of the perpetrators who ought to be held responsible. I appeal to Bachelet to give all the families, survivors and me an opportunity to testify before a UN tribunal.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/irans-leaders-are-responsible-for-executing-30000-political-prisoners/