Judgement day – Iran Tribunal exposes mass massacres of the 1980s

 

Family members of political prisoners executed during mass massacres of the 1980s and the summer of 1988, gather at Tehran’s Khavaran cemetery to commemorate their loved ones/ Iran Tribunal 
 

Following a harrowing three-day hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Iran Tribunal, a tribunal of conscience, delivered its interim judgement on October 27^th.  According to the tribunal, the Islamic Republic of Iran committed crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights against its citizens committed during “the bloody decade” of 1980s.

This is a monumental achievement for the survivors and families of the victims of the mass massacres of political prisoners in the 1980s. The Tribunal has allowed their voices to be officially recorded and heard in court for the first time in 25 years. Unlike atrocities in Rwanda, Srebrenica and General Pinochet's Chile, they never had any opportunity for justice and legal redress.

"The consequences of this judgment are profound,” says Prof John Cooper QC, the lead prosecutor at the tribunal. “It finally provides an independent and authoritative finding that the Islamic Republic of Iran [was] responsible for murdering and torturing [its] citizens on a staggering scale. This judgment, along with the carefully documented evidence from over 100 victims can now be presented to the international community as part of the victim's fight for justice.”

When the judgment was announced, the courtroom fell quiet.  The silence was thick with emotions held back for 25 years. Then the people in the assembly slowly stood up and held pictures of their loved ones killed by the Iranian regime in the purges of the 1980s.  All were weeping.

For me, it was an emotional moment as well as I have come to know many survivors and bereaved over the many years I’ve been trying to report the story. I’ve followed the making of the Iran Tribunal - a grassroots movement created by survivors and families of victims because no official bodies would investigate their complaints.  It is a testament to their determination and resilience that they’ve managed to put the truth out there after all these years. The process also exposes shortcomings of the UN and other international bodies, which were supposed to investigate these atrocities. For information about the Truth Commission, the first stage of the Iran Tribunal, click here.

Read my blog in the Economist about the Iran Tribunal’s judgement here.http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/10/iran-1988

Iran Tribunal to Uncover Iran's Srebrenica

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This picture is part of Prison Memoir in Painting by Iranian artist Soudabeh Ardavan. She spent eight years in Iranian prisons and survived the 1988 massacre. She painted this and many other prison's paintings by using her hair as a brush and toothpaste or tea as paint. She now lives in exile in Sweden.

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A People’s Tribunal will sit at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London on June 18-22 to unearth secrets the Iranian regime have managed to keep buried for more than two decades.  Survivors of torture and families of murder victims have managed against all odds to set up this international court to investigate the Iranian regime’s biggest state crime.

“When they took me to the death committee in Gohardasht prison, the lobby was piled high with sandals, glasses and blindfolds. That’s all that was left of our friends. They are all gone and I am alive. I am alive to tell their story. That’s my only goal,” says Mehdi Aslani, 53, who survived a mass massacre of political prisoners in Iran the summer of 1988.

Aslani and thousands of other victims have waited 24 years for this, but now they will finally have their day in court.

“The Tribunal’s main purpose is allowing evidence to be heard and allowing the world to find out what really happened in the 1980s in Iran,” says John Cooper, QC, chair of the Iran Tribunal’s steering committee. “It is incredible that torture survivors and families of murder victims have managed to achieve this on their own - and it is shocking they had to do this all on their own – that the UN did nothing.”

In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed in secret an estimated 5000 political prisoners across the country. The killing, ordered by an extraordinary fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, was relentless and efficient. Prisoners, including women and teenagers, were loaded on forklift trucks and hanged from cranes and beams in groups of five or six at a time in half-hourly intervals all day-long. The victims were intellectuals, students, leftists, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities. Many were jailed for no more than distributing leaflets, having a banned book or being accused by “a trusted friend of the regime,” according to Amnesty International.

The massacre was the climax of a massive elimination campaign conducted by the regime from 1981 to 1989: during that bloody decade around 20,000 political prisoners were executed across Iran.

“It is what I would term (based on my past work with the UN in Bosnia) ‘Iran’s Srebrenica’: a monumental atrocity that cannot remain unanswered,” says Payam Akhavan, professor of International Law at McGill University, first UN war crime prosecutor at The Hague and member of the Iran Tribunal.

The deliberate and systematic manner in which these executions took place constitutes a crime against humanity under international law, according to many human rights lawyers. (Widespread and systematic executions of a civilian population across the country, planned and ordered by the highest ranks of the Iranian government.)

Yet, to date, more than two decades after the massacre, there are still no investigation into this crime, no international pressure on the Iranian government to do so, and no recognition from Iran or the international community. In fact, many of the perpetrators are still in power and the international media seem to deliberately avoid covering this issue.

Over the past decades, survivors and families of the victims – many are mothers because the majority of the victims were very young - have campaigned for justice.  They have sent petitions to the UN, organized rallies and seminars and disseminated information on the Internet – but no one is listening.

After the massacre/ Soudabeth Ardavan

 “We are in the information age: with a click of a mouse, you can know what is happening in the far corners of the world. Yet more than 5,000 people were killed in two months in Iran and no one knows about it. It’s like nothing happened,” says Aslani, who lives in exile in Germany.

So the survivors and families of the victims have taken the matter into their own hands.   In 2007, they have come together to form the Iran Tribunal, modeled on the Russell Tribunal set up by British philosopher Bertrand Russelland French writer Jean-Paul Sartre in 1966 to examine American intervention in Vietnam, and the subsequent Russell Tribunals on Chile, Iraq and Argentine. Like these tribunals, the Iran Tribunal won’t have any legal status, but will act as a tribunal of conscience to deal with violations of international law that have not been recognized nor dealt with by existing international jurisdictions.

After five years of fundraising, outreach and assembling a team of prominent lawyers, the People’s Tribunal is now ready to proceed. It is organized in two parts: a Truth Commission and a Tribunal.  The Truth Commission, during which the court will hear and examine oral and written evidence from dozens of witnesses, is held at AI’s headquarters in London on June 18-22.  The Tribunal will then meet on October 25-27 in The Hague to issue a verdict.

Attendance is free, but you need to register. For more information, click here. To follow the proceedings live, click here.

The Tree That Remembers

This weekend I went to “Iran – 21^st Anniversary Seminar” in London, a seminar commemorating the thousands of political prisoners executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the summer of 1988 and the 72 or more young people killed during the uprising following the June 12 election.

During the seminar, Masoud Raouf, an Iran-born painter and film director/producer who has lived in Canada since 1988, presented “The Tree That Remembers.” In this poignant documentary, he tries to understand what led to the suicide of an Iranian student who was living in Canada as a refugee. The film won the Silver Award for Best Canadian Documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, the Golden Sheaf Ward for Best Social Documentary at Yorkton and the Bronze Plaque at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival.

In 1992, a young Iranian student hanged himself from a tree on the outskirts of a small Ontario town. He had escaped the Ayatollahs' regime, but he could not escape his past. News of the young stranger's death hit home with filmmaker Masoud Raouf. He too is part of the generation of Iranians who rose up against the Shah's despotic rule during the 1979 revolution, but their hope quickly turned into despair as the equally murderous new regime persecuted them too. Thousands of political prisoners were executed by the Islamic regime in the 1980s in order to eliminate any opposition to the regime. This culminated in the mass massacre of more than 3,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

In the Tree that Remembers, Raouf assembles a group of Iranians - all former political prisoners like himself who were active in the democratic movement. The ex-political prisoners who have been tortured in prison, explain they have to build walls around themselves in order to survive. Their eyes have been opened to the capability of all mankind to inflict the most terrible evil. And this remains imprinted in them for ever. The only way to go on living with this unbearable burden is by sharing their stories, and that’s what they are doing. And that's what a growing number of filmmakers, artists, writers and ordinary people are doing.

The 21st Anniversary Seminar was organized by the Association of Iranian Political Prisoners (in exile) and and Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund

"I want the world to know" - 21st anniversary of the 1988 massacre in Iran

In the coming days, families will gather on a derelict plot next to the cemetery of religious minorities in the district of Khavaran, in south-east Tehran. They call it ‘the rose garden of Khavaran’ – for a rose, in a culture where it is often safer to use poetry, represents a fallen freedom fighter. The Iranian leadership calls it the ‘place of the damned’ or the ‘cemetery of the infidels’. There, in unmarked mass graves, lie thousands of political prisoners killed by the Islamic regime.

Their families have been coming there early September – and at other times - for the past 20 years to commemorate what they call “the national catastrophe” - the biggest and most under-reported state crime in Iran’s modern history. Braving military harassment and sometimes arrest, they return to Khavaran again and again.

In July and August 1988, the Islamic regime had executed in secret thousands of political prisoners throughout the country – men, women and teenagers. They were intellectuals, students, leftists, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities. Many were jailed for no more than distributing leaflets, having a banned book or being accused by ‘a trusted friend of the regime’.

The slaughter was efficient and relentless. All day long, prisoners were loaded on forklift trucks and hanged from cranes and beams in groups of six at half-hourly intervals. Others were killed by firing squad. Those not executed were subjected to horrific torture. The killing was ‘an act of violence unprecedented in Iranian history, unprecedented in form, content and intensity,’ wrote the US historian Ervand Abrahamian in his book on Iranian prisons Tortured Confessions.

‘When they took me to the death committee in (Tehran’s) Gohardasht prison, the lobby was piled high with sandals, glasses and blindfolds. That’s all that was left of our friends. They are all gone and I am alive. Iam alive to tell their story. That is my only goal,’ says Mehdi Aslani, 52, who survived the massacre and now lives in exile in Germany.

The regime has never acknowledged the massacre, revealed how many were executed, nor why. Amnesty International has recorded the names of 2,800 victims, but survivors believe it was probably between 5,000 and 10,000. The execution of such a large number of people within such a short time, without any due process, violates many international human rights treaties to which Iran is signatory; yet the world has remained largely silent. Most of the perpetrators are still in power today. ‘Nobody has been brought to justice’ says Drewery Dyke, Amnesty’s Iran researcher. ‘Impunity for such appalling crimes only leads to further human rights abuses.’

The husband and two brothers of Rakhshndeh Hosseinpoor, now 56, were killed by the Islamic regime. She now lives in Germany with her son. ‘They have ruined so many lives. I’ve lost three members of my family, but some families have lost six or seven. So many children are without fathers and mothers, so many young widows, so much pain that never goes away... We need justice.’

‘We need people to know about the massacre of 1988 because it isn’t just the problem of the survivors and their families,’ says Reza Moini, another survivor, who works as a human rights activist in Paris. ‘It was a political act, a social act, not a private one. We need the truth for tomorrow’s youth.’

This post is based on an article I have written on the massacre for the New Internationalist. I have researched this topic for many years, gathered lots of evidence and documents, and interviewed a dozen survivors in Germany, the UK, Belgium, France and the US. I have yet to find a mainstream publication willing to run an in-depth article on the 88 massacre.

Berlin - Hunger strike for release of detainees in Iran

Ex-political prisoners of the Islamic Republic of Iran are staging a 48-hour hunger strike tomorrow in Berlin to request the release of all political prisoners in Iran – particularly those arrested in the aftermath of the elections, including human rights activist Shadi Sadr.

Eighty-four former political prisoners will start their hunger strike tomorrow morning, Friday July 24, at 9am in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. They’ll conduct a press conference at 11 am.

Here is an edited version of their statement:

We, ex- political prisoners of the Islamic Republic, stand in solidarity with the people struggling for basic human rights in Iran, in demanding the release of all political prisoners, in particular those who have been arrested in recent weeks, including human rights activist Shadi Sadr.

The recent peaceful demonstrations by the Iranian people following the rigged elections have been met by cruelty and violence at the hands the police and security forces in Iran.

So far dozens of people have been killed, many have been injured and 3,000 to 5,000 have been arrested or have simply vanished.

The attacks on the university dormitory by the police, the raids to the homes of families of students and journalists, the increase in arbitrary arrests, abduction and disappearances are alarming, and once again bring back the memory of the bloody 1980's.

We demand: Immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Iran,

We demand: The abolition of capital punishment in Iran.

Signed by 84 participants, 697 supporters and 108 organisations/NGO’s/societies/ foundations

Amir Atiabi, a former political prisoner and survivor of the 1988 massacre in Iran, says ex-prisoners will do whatever they can to free the detainees because they know the terrible conditions they are facing in prison.

We are all very concerned about the conditions of the detainees based on our knowledge and own experience on what’s going on behind the walls of the Islamic Republic’s prisons. The level of torture and violence against the detainees is beyond imagination.

Those who work for the system can do anything they like without questioning. There are no laws and no rules. The country is filled with lies, propaganda, horror, terror, threats, tapping phone calls, monitoring Internet activities, censorship, daily arrests and crimes against any active opponent and journalists.

We have to act now. Tomorrow will be too late.

Free Aung San Suu Kyi

From Avaaz:

After 13 years of detention, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been jailed again on trumped up charges by the brutal Burmese regime. Call on UN Secretary General to secure her and all political prisoners' release:

We have just six days to get a flood of petition signatures to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon calling on him to make their release a top priority -- he can make this a condition for renewed international engagement. Follow the link to sign the petition, and forward this email on to friends to ensure Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners are freed. Burmese activists will present the global petition to the media on May 26th:

Sources say that the military regime is fearful of this unified and massive online call to the UN -- over 160 Burma exile and solidarity groups in 24 countries are participating in the campaign. And the Secretary General and key regional players that are looking to re-engage with the Burmese regime, can influence the fate of these prisoners. Last week Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said: 'Aung San Suu Kyi and all those that have a contribution to make to the future of their country must be free'. Let's overwhelm him with a global call to urgently act on his words and stop the arrests and brutality:

Find out more about Aung San Suu Kyi: