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Stockholm rally: Iranians call on the UN to investigate the role of Ebrahim Raisi in 1988 massacre in Iran

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Iranians travelled from all parts of Sweden to Stockholm on Monday (23 August) to attend a rally on the 33rd anniversary of the massacre of 30 000 political prisoners in Iran.

The rally was held outside the Swedish Parliament and opposite the Swedish Foreign Ministry, and was followed by a march through central Stockholm commemorating those who were executed in prisons across Iran on the basis of a fatwa by the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini. More than 90 percent of the victims were members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

The rally’s participants honoured the victims by holding pictures of them during an exhibition which also highlighted the involvement of the current President Ebrahim Raisi and the Supreme Leader Khamenei in the extrajudicial executions.  

They called for a UN inquiry leading to the prosecution of Raisi and other regime officials responsible for the 1988 massacre, which UN Human Rights experts and Amnesty International have characterized as a crime against humanity. They urged the Swedish Government to lead the efforts to establish such an inquiry and to end Iran’s impunity in matters related to human rights.

The President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, addressed the rally live, by video and said:

“Ali Khamenei and his collaborators hanged thousands upon thousands of political prisoners in 1988 to preserve their rule. With the same ruthless brutality, they are killing hundreds of thousands of helpless people today in the inferno of the Coronavirus, again to protect their regime.  

“We therefore urge the international community to recognise the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 as genocide and a crime against humanity. It is imperative, particularly for the European governments, to revise their policy of turning a blind eye on the largest massacre of political prisoners since World War II. As it was recently stated in the letter by a group of members of the European Parliament to the E.U. foreign policy chief, appeasing and placating the Iranian regime ‘contradicts European commitments to uphold and stand up for human rights’.”

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In addition to a number of Swedish parliamentarians from various parties such as Magnus Oscarsson, Alexsandra Anstrell, Hans Eklind, and Kejll Arne Ottosson, other dignitaries including Ingrid Betancourt, the former Colombian presidential candidate, Patrick Kennedy, former member of the U.S. Congress, and Kimmo Sasi, Former Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland, addressed the rally virtually and backed the participants’ demands for an international investigation.

“Today the families of the 1988 victims are subject to persistent threats in Iran,” Betancourt said. “The UN human rights experts have also expressed their alarm on the destruction of the mass graves. The mullahs want to leave no evidence of the crimes for which we are seeking justice. And today the first position of power in Iran is occupied by a perpetrator of those crimes.”

“We said after the Holocaust that we shall never see these crimes against humanity again, and yet we have. The reason is that as an international community we have not stood up and condemned those crimes,” Patrick Kennedy affirmed.

In his remarks, Kimo Sassi said, “The 1988 massacre was one of the darkest moments in Iran’s history. 30,000 political prisoners were sentenced and killed and murdered. There are mass graves in 36 cities in Iran and there was no due process. The massacre was a decision by the supreme leader in Iran, a crime against humanity.”

A number of families of the victims and representatives of the Swedish-Iranian communities also addressed the rally.

The demonstration coincided with the trial of Hamid Noury, one of the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre, who is currently in jail in Stockholm. The trial, which started earlier this month, will continue until April next year with a number of former Iranian political prisoners and survivors testifying against the regime in court.

In 1988, Ruhollah Khomeini, then the supreme leader of the Iranian regime, issued a fatwa ordering the execution of all Mojahedin prisoners who refused to repent.  More than 30,000 political prisoners, the overwhelming majority of them from the MEK, were massacred in a few months. The victims were buried in secret mass graves.

Ebrahim Raisi, the current President of the Iranian regime was one of the four members of the “Death Commission” in Tehran. He sent thousands of the MEK to the gallows in 1988.

There has never been an independent UN inquiry on the massacre. Amnesty International’s secretary general said in a statement on 19 June: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.”

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