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Showing posts with the label #1988Massacre

When the Supreme Leader Speaks, Who Still Listens?

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  By: Struan Stevenson Mojtaba Khamenei inherited the most powerful office in the Islamic Republic. Yet six months into his tenure, a question once considered unthinkable is surfacing in Tehran. When the Supreme Leader speaks, who still listens? For almost five decades, the answer was obvious. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini created a system in which factional warfare could rage beneath the surface, provided everyone ultimately bowed to the Supreme Leader. Ali Khamenei preserved that arrangement for more than three decades. Presidents came and went. Clerics competed. The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) accumulated power. Yet one principle remained sacrosanct. The Supreme Leader had the final word. Today that principle is under strain. On August 28, Mojtaba Khamenei warned officials against creating false choices between war and negotiation, compromise and confrontation. He urged them to avoid publicizing weaknesses and declared that anything damaging social cohesion was forbidden. The mess...
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The mullahs’ regime’s failure to annihilate the Iranian Resistance through genocide and massacre

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  By Matin Karim A few weeks before the Free Iran 2024 Summit, Mr. Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, presented a  new report  describing the execution of political prisoners in the 1980s and the 1988 massacre as crimes against humanity and genocide. On July 1, the  third day of the Free Iran 2024 World Summit , titled “Iran: “Crimes Against Humanity and Accountability for Perpetrators,” many participants endorsed Mr. Javaid Rehman’s report and emphasized the need to pursue and punish the perpetrators of this “genocide.” Ambassador Joachim Rueker, President of the UN Human Rights Council until 2015, said, ” Professor Javaid Rehman published or talked about a new landmark report in which he, according to reports, concluded that the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners in Iran amounted to crimes against humanity, and it is reported that he also mentioned genocide. I think this report needs to be out there for the public to se...
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Int’l Community Must Not Embrace Raisi and a Regime Rejected by Iran’s People

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 Written by Mansoureh Galestan The Iranian people boycotted the regime’s sham presidential election. Nevertheless, the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, pulled  Ebrahim Raisi  out of the ballot box despite the massive boycott of the Iranian people. Ebrahim Raisi’s designation as the next president was met with public protests which condemned him as the “ henchman of 1988 ” and also highlighted his more recent contribution to the regime’s record of human rights abuses when he served as head of the judiciary from March 2019 until after his presidential “selection.” Chief among those recent abuses was the crackdown on a nationwide uprising that broke out in  November 2019  and revived anti-regime slogans like “death to the dictator” which had defined a prior uprising in January 2018. Panicked by the persistent signs of popular support for regime change, Iranian authorities opened fire on crowds of protesters at the outset of the latter uprising. According to t...
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Iran: Whether International or Unilateral, Ebrahim Raisi Must Face Prosecution for Genocide

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 Written by Mahmoud Hakamia When Ebrahim Raisi was  inaugurated  as the next president on August 5, it was the culmination of more than 30 years of impunity for both him and the regime as a whole. In 1988, while serving as Tehran’s deputy prosecutor, Raisi became one of four figures in charge of a massacre of political prisoners that went on for three months and claimed at least 30,000 lives. Various legal scholars have called this massacre one of the late 20th century’s worst crimes against humanity, with many say that it fits the criteria to be prosecuted as an instance of genocide. Yet no one has ever faced accountability for the killings, and this has emboldened the regime to reward the perpetrators with ever more powerful and influential positions. With Raisi’s appointment to the presidency, that process has very nearly reached its apex. His June 18 “election” was orchestrated by the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who tasked the Guardian Council to exercise it...
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