Iran opposition leader launches ‘No to the Death Penalty’ campaign

In an international conference in Paris on Saturday, prominent former international judges, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and jurists warned about the spate of executions in Iran and called for holding the regime’s leaders to account for their crimes against humanity and ending the culture of impunity.
Many of the wide-ranging array of judges and jurists were directly involved in high stakes UN trials on cases regarding crimes against humanity and genocide. The panelists criticized the international community’s attitude vis-a vis the Iranian regime’s culture of impunity in its state policy of unabated flagrant violations of human rights throughout the past four decades. They stressed that lack of proper action by the international community has emboldened the ruling theocracy to continue perpetrating crimes against humanity in Iran.
Since Masoud Pezeshkian became president, Iran has witnessed a shocking spike in executions, as 126 have been hanged, 26 en masse on 7 August alone. The execution spree has alarmed international organizations and activists.
The conference was held in the wake of the landmark report by Professor Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran until July 31, 2024. In his report, Rehman described the mass killings of 1981-1982 and the 1988 massacre as crimes against humanity and genocide. “There is considerable evidence that mass killings, torture and other inhumane acts against members of PMOI were conducted with genocidal intent,” he wrote.
More than 30,000 political prisoners, 90% of whom were affiliated with the principal Iranian opposition movement the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) were massacrJustice movement for the victims of the 1988 massacre from… (maryam-rajavi.com)ed upon a decree by Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the theocratic regime.
The conference was held in the headquarters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris.
NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi (pictured), the keynote speaker of the event, declared the start of an international campaign to stop the executions in Iran. She said “Those who overlook the grave human rights catastrophe in Iran forget that the destruction of human rights on such a scale is no longer a matter for Iran. This is a part of the clerics’ brutal war for survival, which extends into warmongering in the Middle East and terrorism around the world. If this regime and its leaders did not enjoy impunity for their crimes within Iran, they would never have able to wreak such devastation in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, nor would they have been able to initiate this destructive war in the region last October.”
The NCRI President-elect noted that Prof. Rehman’s report “marks a pivotal development in this regard, providing the most fitting description of the savage crimes against humanity and genocide,” underscoring that “It is incumbent upon governments and the United Nations to continue criminal investigations, prioritize issuing arrest warrants, and pursue the regime’s leaders for committing atrocity crimes.”
Professor Javaid Rehman who attended the conference said: “An overwhelming majority of the executed persons (in 1988) were members and sympathizers of the PMOI, although hundreds of individuals belonging to leftist political groups and organizations were also forcibly disappeared and executed…There is considerable evidence that mass killings, torture and other inhumane acts against members of the PMOI were conducted with genocidal intent.”
“Notwithstanding the availability of overwhelming available evidence, to this day, those with criminal responsibility for these grave and most serious violations of human rights and crimes under international law remain in power and in control. The international community has been unable or unwilling to hold these individuals accountable,” Rehman added.
According to the former UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, “If the atrocity crimes of the 1980s and, in particular, the 1988 massacre [had] been prevented by timely intervention by the international community, we would not be witnessing the horrible crimes of today, in particular, the large-scale executions in Iran.”
Professor Rehman urged “the international community to establish an international investigative and accountability mechanism to conduct prompt, impartial, thorough, and transparent investigations into the crimes under international law, and together, consolidate and preserve evidence with a view towards future criminal prosecution of all the perpetrators. The international community must take concrete steps to end the continuing impunity within Iran, ensuring accountability, truth, justice, reparations, and remedies.”
According to Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, former President of the International Criminal Court (ICC), “Professor Rehman has done a magnificent job in his tenure as the Special Rapporteur. As was observed earlier, he had lifted the veil of silence on the discussion around what happened in 1988 in Iran and later. And his research and his writings, his reports have now given members of the international community the authority, the license to discuss these questions and what needs to be done about them.
“What he said happened in 1988 can be characterized as genocide. Some people have debated that question. My own view on the matter is that it is a very reasonable and credible analysis to make. It is possible to characterize that event as a genocide.”
Professor Leila Sadat, a former Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor on Crimes Against Humanity, stated: “It has taken some time to get the international community to sign on, although important reports and findings have been issued in 2017, 2020, 2022, and most recently, just last month by Special Rapporteur, Javaid Rehman, who published an admirable report calling for an international accountability mechanism that could address these crimes as well as others.”
According to Professor Claudio Grossman, another Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor: “It is difficult to think about the massacre of more than 30,000 people… It is simply something that defies our imagination… But it’s not only a question of defiance. It’s a call for action, for the need to struggle to achieve, among other things, accountability for this awful massacre that stand outs as one of the worst massacres committed by a government in the 20th century.”
Judge Wolfgang Schomburg, a former Judge of UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, underscored: “The link of the 1988 massacre to the executions of this year 2024 becomes more and more evident since the new President of Iran is in office. A moderate government? No way! On the contrary.” He called for establishment of “The National Council of Resistance’s Tribunal for the Prosecution of serious International Atrocity Crimes committed on the Territory of Iran since 1980 against Iranian People of other Political Opinions or Religious Believes.”
Dr. Mark Ellis, Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA); Professor Jeremy Sarkin, former Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID); Prof. William Schabas, UN expert on genocide; and Clement Voule, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, were among other speakers of the conference.
Steven M. Schneebaum, Adjunct Professor of law, School of Advanced and International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, pointed out the regime’s sham trials in absentia of 104 veteran members of the Iranian resistance and said: “The fake legal drapery is designed to camouflage a new campaign of terrorism against the MEK and other regime opponents abroad…Our role – our duty – is now to ensure that the regime’s gambit does not work….Not only must the events of 1988 not be forgotten, but what the regime is attempting to do right now must also be in the public eye.”
Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., former US Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, said, “When we see defamatory media stories about the PMOI expelling their children from Iraq in 1991 – when in fact these Gulf War evacuation were no different from many children leaving Ukraine after Russia’s invasion; or we read disturbing accounts of life inside the resistance by former PMOI members – only to find that they are on the Iranian intelligence payroll, we can see who in the Western media are functioning as Tehran’s agents of influence. We must not fail in pursuing accountability for the crimes of Iran’s clerics against citizens who died standing for the same principles we hold dear.”
Kenneth Lewis, lead lawyer in the trial of Iranian prison official Hamid Noury in Sweden who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1988 massacre, said: “We know that the regime spends millions of dollars every year to plant propaganda to discredit the PMOI in western countries. And in addition, we know something worse, and that is that the regime has even organized terrorist attacks on persons supporting the PMOI in the west and on meetings. You all remember the attempt to bomb the 2018 meeting in Paris. So, we’re dealing with a regime of terrorists, and what we can hope is that the perpetrators of these crimes will one day soon be held accountable for their crimes, and hopefully, that would be in the international criminal court.”
https://www.eureporter.co/world/iran/2024/08/30/iran-opposition-leader-launches-no-to-the-death-penalty-campaign/