Families of by the regime in 1988 have gathered outside a Tehran cemetery to commemorate their lost loved ones and call for accountability over the killings.
The cemetery in the neighborhood of Khavaran holds the unmarked mass graves of an unknown number of supporters of Iranian opposition groups.
On Thursday, families of slain members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) carried pictures of their murdered loved ones, laid flowers at the unmarked graves and chanted slogans against Ebrahim Raisi, head of the country’s judiciary.
In 1988, thousands of PMOI supporters were summarily executed by Tehran, in a mass killing that the UN and rights groups have said constituted crimes against humanity. Then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious edict ordering their execution.Tehran has been accused of trying to hide evidence of the killings, for example by repurposing mass graves used for execution victims and instead forcing ethnic minorities to bury their dead in them.Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI) also signed, along with 23 other major international NGOs.
“Iran’s judiciary is led by perpetrators of the 1988 massacre. While we always knew there was a culture of impunity in the Iranian government and judiciary, this reality was put on stark display with the cold-blooded murder of some 1,500 Iranians by the authorities in the course of the 2019 anti-government protests,” Tahar Boumedra, a former UN human rights official in Iraq and member of the JVMI’s board of advisors, told Arab News.
“Given the potential for another uprising by Iranian society, we strongly fear the risk of another crackdown,” he said.
“The 1988 massacre is an ongoing crime against humanity. The families of the victims continue to receive heavy sentences simply for asking the authorities where their loved ones have been buried,” he added.
“Seven UN special rapporteurs called on the Iranian authorities to account for the massacre last September. Given the Iranian authorities’ refusal to respond, it’s time the UN conducts its own investigation into these mass executions.”
However, momentum for accountability over the killings has been steadily growing. On May 4, more than 1,100 family members of those murdered penned an open letter urging the UN, US and EU to take urgent action to prevent the destruction of the graves and evidence of the killings, and to hold the regime accountable.
Furthermore, over 150 former UN officials, human rights and legal experts called on UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to open an independent inquiry into the killings.