{"id":238088,"date":"2021-04-16T09:50:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T14:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=238088"},"modified":"2023-02-01T04:58:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T03:58:44","slug":"europe-takes-positive-step-with-sanctions-on-iran-but-must-now-avoid-backpedaling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/human-rights\/europe-takes-positive-step-with-sanctions-on-iran-but-must-now-avoid-backpedaling\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe Takes Positive Step With Sanctions on Iran, but Must Now Avoid Backpedaling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"European<\/p>\n

The European Union deserves praise for its latest sanctions on Iranian officials. But the purpose of that praise ought to be to encourage more of the same, not to give the impression that these measures are sufficient or that they justify offering new concessions to the regime in other areas. The new sanctions are the first in eight years to be imposed by the EU for Iranian human rights violations, and they come a year and a half after the inciting incident, a crackdown on dissent that rivals the scale of anything that has taken place in the Islamic Republic since the decade immediately following the 1979 revolution.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that nothing had happened in the years leading up to the new sanctions which would have justified more of the same. Quite to the contrary, there are still human rights issues from 2013 onward that demand more serious international attention, as well as unresolved issues from the entire history of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the November 2019 crackdown<\/a> that was cited in the EU\u2019s latest sanctions announcement was almost certainly motivated in part by the climate of impunity that had grown up in Tehran as a result of longstanding Western silence over those issues.<\/p>\n

An early and particularly egregious example of that impunity emerged in 1988 after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa declaring that domestic opponents of the theocratic system were guilty of \u201cenmity against God\u201d and therefore subject to summary execution. Judicial authorities responded by setting up \u201cdeath commissions\u201d in prisons throughout the country, tasked with the mission of interrogating political prisoners over their views and affiliations. After a period of several months, these tribunals had sent approximately 30,000 people<\/a> to the gallows and had faced little pushback from the international community, despite expatriate activists\u2019 efforts to bring attention to the killings.<\/p>\n

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VIDEO: The untold story of the 1988 Massacre in Iran<\/div><\/div>
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