Asma Jahangir, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, has in her latest report to the Human Rights Council included references to Iran’s 1988 massacre of political prisoners and human rights abuses towards campaigners demanding justice over the massacre.

Her report (A/HRC/34/65) distributed on 17 March 2017 to member states at the Human Rights Council’s thirty-fourth session includes the following paragraphs related to the 1988 massacre:

31. In a report published in July 2016, a non-governmental source highlighted 18 cases of denial of medical treatment(21) and indicated that the objective of this practice was to intimidate and punish political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. More than half of the 16 communications sent by the mandate to the State authorities during the second half of 2016 concern allegations of denial of medical treatment.

32. In the case of Akbari Monfared who was serving a 15-year prison sentence in relation to her membership in the banned opposition group known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the denial of medical treatment reportedly took place after she had published a letter demanding justice for her brothers and sisters who were reportedly executed in 1988. The Government responded to most of the communications indicating that prisoners were in good health and were benefiting from proper health and medical facilities.

…

58. In November 2016, Ahmad Montazeri, a cleric and son of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, was sentenced to several years in prison after he released a decades-old audio tape in which his father denounced the mass execution of political prisoners during the summer of 1988. Ahmad Montazeri was arrested on charges of “acting against the national security”, “releasing a classified audio file” and “propaganda against the system”. Ahmad Montazeri’s father was one of few Iranian leaders to voice opposition to the reported execution of thousands of political dissidents in 1988, who had already been tried and sentenced to prison in detention facilities throughout the country.(50)

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Footnotes:

21  See www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/mde_13.4196.2016_health_taken_hostage_-_cruel_denial_of_medical_care_in_irans_prisons_final.pdf.

50  See www.isna.ir/news/95090704435/ (in Persian).

The full text of the Asma Jahangir’s report to the Human Rights Council is available on the UN website via the following link:

https://undocs.org/A/HRC/34/65