{"id":243515,"date":"2021-07-20T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T13:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=243515"},"modified":"2023-01-31T04:54:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T03:54:39","slug":"irans-political-situation-points-to-further-expansion-cover-up-of-human-rights-abuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/human-rights\/irans-political-situation-points-to-further-expansion-cover-up-of-human-rights-abuses\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Political Situation Points to Further Expansion, Cover-up of Human Rights Abuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The 1988 massacre of political prisoners was carried out on orders from the regime\u2019s founder and first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini over 30,000 lives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The outcome of Iran\u2019s sham presidential election<\/a> should increase the sense of urgency for an international investigation into the clerical regime\u2019s single greater crime against humanity and human rights violation. The 1988 massacre<\/a> of political prisoners was carried out on orders from the regime\u2019s founder and first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini over 30,000 lives. The underlying fatwa primarily targeted Iran\u2019s leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK<\/a>), and was carried out by \u201cdeath commissions\u201d comprised of clerics and intelligence officials who continued to rise through the ranks of the regime for more than three decades afterward.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The June 18 \u201celection\u201d of\u00a0the regime\u2019s\u00a0President Ebrahim Raisi<\/a> is the latest example of this phenomenon.\u00a0On his way to becoming president, Raisi was appointed head of the judiciary in 2019 \u2013 a development that not only reaffirmed Khamenei\u2019s commitment to rewarding perpetrators of the 1988 massacre but also provided the former death commission prosecutor with an opportunity to expand upon his legacy via a crackdown on large-scale protests and other forms of popular dissent.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Raisi\u2019s appointment took effect about eight months before the outbreak of a nationwide anti-government protest movement in November 2019. That uprising<\/a> spanned nearly 200 localities and was widely recognized as a follow-up to a previous uprising in December 2017 and January 2018. In the earlier instance, Khamenei himself acknowledged that the unrest had been largely promoted and directed by the\u00a0MEK. His statements to this effect contradicted essential regime propaganda, the spread of which had been made possible by the 1988 massacre.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, regime officials and state media outlets have either avoided reference to the leading opposition group altogether or else referred to it as a \u201ccult\u201d or a \u201cgrouplet\u201d lacking in significant popular support and organizational strength. In effect, these claims promoted the idea that the 1988 massacre had been successful in accomplishing its goal, as stated in an August 6, 1988 letter from Khomeini to another leading official who had complained about the shocking scale of the killings. \u201cMay God obliterates every one of the hypocrites,\u201d Khomeini said, using a common derogatory term for members and supporters of the MEK.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As recently as 2016, Iran\u2019s Assembly of Experts praised the fatwa for bringing the MEK \u201cto the brink of annihilation.\u201d But in reality, it had only served to force the movement underground. The recipient of the August 6 letter, Hossein Ali Montazeri, rightly predicted that if the death commissions\u2019 actions continued along the path that had been set out the month before, it would only engender more opposition to the theocratic system, and thus support for the MEK as its democratic alternative.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This trend has continued ever since, driven by a wide range of factors including the regime\u2019s simultaneous commitment to covering up the details of its worst crime against humanity and justifying the political philosophy behind those killings. The January 2018 and November 2019 uprisings went a long way toward demonstrating the cumulative effects of three decades of government activity that prioritized the violent suppression of dissent. The second of these uprisings posed so great a challenge to the regime that it was compelled to further step up the\u00a0repression, killing\u00a0over\u00a01,500 peaceful protesters in shooting incidents over just a few days, then systematically torturing thousands of arrestees connected to the unrest.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the head of the judiciary at the time, Raisi played a leading role in this crackdown. His forthcoming ascension to the office of the president raises concerns about further crackdowns along these lines, especially now that it has been announced that Raisi is to be replaced as judiciary chief by another leading figure in the 1988\u00a0massacre, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei<\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The collective promotion of death commission members reinforces the culture of impunity surrounding the massacre and the regime\u2019s entire history of human rights abuses. But that impunity has been sustained in part by the regime\u2019s commitment to suppressing evidence about the scale of the massacre, and by the international community\u2019s failure to seriously pursue demands for transparency and accountability. Some political groups and human rights organizations have certainly made those demands known, but a tepid international response has given Tehran room to accelerate its obstructionism on a recurring basis.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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It stands to reason that\u00a0regime\u00a0authorities will have even more incentive to continue this pattern in the coming months, as the start of the Raisi era brings forth a new wave of public awareness about the massacre and its legacy. Thus, there is ample reason to be concerned that at the same time Tehran is using mass arrests and politically motivated executions to forestall another nationwide uprising, it will also be undertaking projects such as the destruction of gravesites where many victims of the 1988 massacre are interred.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the years, groups like Amnesty International have repeatedly pointed to reports of such desecration in order to show that vital evidence could be lost \u2013 potentially forever \u2013 if major world powers and the United Nations do not become more assertive in their dealings with Tehran\u2019s human rights record. Meanwhile, the\u00a0MEK\u00a0has attempted to help jump-start international investigations into the 1988 massacre by highlighting past and ongoing efforts by its intelligence network to identify the locations of mass graves.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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As Head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi has presided over a spiralling crackdown on human rights which has seen hundreds of peaceful dissidents, human rights defenders and members of persecuted minority groups arbitrarily detained. https:\/\/t.co\/Ry0F3vIkql<\/a><\/p>\n

— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) June 19, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n