NCRI Staff
NCRI – Iranians and supporters of the Iranian resistance held an elaborate street display and exhibition depicting the appalling state of human rights in Iran in front of the Palais des Nations, the United Nations European Headquarters in Geneva on Friday, September 15.
The exhibition highlighted the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, overwhelming majority of them activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), in summer of 1988 on the basis of a fatwa issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.
The exhibition and display included a 14 meters long wall containing pictures of thousands of the victims of the 1988 massacre that was set up in front of the UN European headquarters. Hundreds of shoes, decorated with flowers, symbolizing the shoes of the victims subsequent to their executions, covered the expansive area in front of the UN building.
Iranian opposition, human rights organizations, and jurists have been demanding the UN conduct an independent international investigation of the 1988 massacre. There has never been an independent international investigation of the massacre, which according to many legal experts constitutes one of the biggest crimes against humanity since World War II.
The protestors stressing that an independent investigation by the UN on the 1988 massacre is way overdue, carried the emblem of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and the Iranian flag.
A number of survivors and relatives of the victims will take part in the exhibition that last for several hours.
After a 28-year silence, Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran in her report to the UN Secretary General, which was put out in September addressed the massacre and stated that some of the most senior current Iranian officials were implicated in this massacre.
Between July and August 1988, thousands of political prisoners, men, women and teen-agers, were reportedly executed pursuant to a fatwa issued by the then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. A three-man commission was reportedly created with a view to determining who should be executed. The bodies of the victims were reportedly buried in unmarked graves and their families never informed of their whereabouts. These events, known as the 1988 massacres, have never been officially acknowledged,” wrote the UN Rapporteur.
