United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has in a new 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.
His report “Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (A/HRC/34/40) distributed on 30 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 October, Akbari Monfared, who was serving a 15-year prison sentence in relation to her alleged membership of the banned opposition group known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, was reportedly denied medical treatment after publishing a letter demanding justice for her brothers and sisters who were reportedly executed in 1988.
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62. In November, Ahmad Montazeri, a 60-year-old cleric, was sentenced to seven years in prison by a clerical court in the city of Qom on charges of acting against national security and releasing a classified audio file, and for propaganda against the system. In August, he had released an audio recording of a discussion dating back to 1988 in which his father, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, reportedly argued with leaders of the judiciary and condemned the execution of thousands of prisoners in 1988. The trial of Mr. Montazeri was reportedly held behind closed doors and he was prevented from choosing his own lawyer. The Secretary-General’s predecessor expressed deep concern over the imprisonment of Mr. Montazeri and the apparent lack of investigation into the revelations contained in the audio recording.(27)
Footnotes:
27 During the last months of 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights received copies of 31 letters addressed to the High Commissioner and to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The letters were complaints from families of persons killed in the mass executions which reportedly took place in 1988.
The full text of the Secretary General’s report to the Human Rights Council is available on the UN’s website via the following link:
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