For
the past 4 decades Iran has been one of the worst violators of Human
Rights in the world. Since the 1979 revolution Iranian regime has been
condemned 63 times by the UN bodies for violation of Human Rights.
Given
the articles of the new bill about violation of human rights, and based
on the actions of Iranian authorities in the past 4 decades, all the
Iranian officials must be sanctioned.
One case in point is the massacre of MEK* members and other political prisoners which all of Iranian officials were involved. In 1988, the Iranian regime massacred more
than 30,000 political prisoners, most of whom were members and
supporters of the main opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin
Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK). All the current and previous
officials of the regime were directly involved in the massacre.
Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iranian regime issued a religious decreeordering
the massacre. His intention was to purge the country of any opposition,
notably the MEK. Khomeini's decree set up a committee of four men which
were tasked with vetting the ideological standing of prisoners. Many
prisoners were only questioned for a few minutes by the committee. Those
refusing to renounce their affiliation with the MEK were sent to the
gallows.
“Whoever
at any stage continues to belong to the MEK must be executed.
Annihilate the enemies of Islam immediately!…Those who are in prisons
throughout the country and remain steadfast in their support for the MEK
are waging war on God, and are condemned to execution … It is naive to
show mercy to those who wage war on God,” reads part of the decree.
For more than three decades, Iran ignored the slaughter, until this year in the presidential election when
Ebrahim Raisie one
of the perpetrators of the massacre and a member of death committee,
was selected as one of the main candidates. MEK supporters inside Iran
carried out widespread campaigns revealing Raisie and his role in the
massacre.
Immediately, the issue of massacre of MEK
members surfaced, forcing regime officials, one after another, to
confess to the bloodbath.
“Regarding
MEK and all the militant groups, the ruling is the death sentence …
Imam (Khomeini) has said this … their verdict is death sentence …” Ali
Fallahian, the former Iranian intelligence Minister, confessed in an
interview.
“First,
you should bear in mind that their (MEK’s) ruling was death punishment;
and if the religious judge did not sentence them (MEK) to death, his
ruling has been illegal … so all of us should acknowledge that the
verdict for a Monafeq [the term used by the regime to call a MEK member
or sympathizer] is death sentence, this was both Imam’s fatwa and his
verdict …” Fallahian said in the interview.
Last August an
audio tape of a meeting between the late
Ayatollah Montazeri,
the former successor to Khomeini, and the death committee was revealed
and shed light to the carnage. The news of the revelation was covered in
the international media.
“The
publication for the first time in Iran of an audio recording from
nearly three decades ago has reopened old wounds from the darkest period
in the Islamic Republic. In the summer of 1988, thousands of leftists
and supporters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organisation were executed
in a
massacre of political prisoners.” The
Guardian reported.
“I
urge the UN High Commissioner on human rights to immediately set up an
independent committee to investigate the 1988 massacre and subsequently
put those in charge before justice. I urge the UN Security Council to
make the arrangements for prosecution of the regime’s leaders for
committing crime against humanity.” said Mrs.
Maryam Rajavi, the president elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in her
message on the 29th anniversary of the massacre.
With adoption of the new bill the time has come to hold the mullah’s regime accountable for crimes against humanity.
“Full
implementation of these sanctions against the Iranian regime must be
completed with urgent actions against officials in charge of executions,
torture and particularly the massacre of political prisoners in 1988.
Topping the list is Ali Khamenei, the mullahs’ supreme leader.” Said
Maryam Rajavi in
another message.
More about MEK:
A Long Conflict between the Clerical Regime and the MEK
The
origins of the MEK date back to before the 1979 Iranian Revolution.,
the MEK helped to overthrow the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlavi, but
it quickly became a bitter enemy of the emerging the religious fascism
under the pretext of Islamic Republic. To this day, the MEK and NCRI
describe Ruhollah Khomenei and his associates as having co-opted a
popular revolution in order to empower themselves while imposing a
fundamentalist view of Islam onto the people of Iran.
Under
the Islamic Republic, the MEK was quickly marginalized and affiliation
with it was criminalized. Much of the organization’s leadership went to
neighboring Iraq and built an exile community called Camp Ashraf, from
which the MEK organized activities aimed at ousting the clerical regime
and bringing the Iranian Revolution back in line with its pro-democratic
origins. But the persistence of these efforts also prompted the
struggling regime to crack down with extreme violence on the MEK and
other opponents of theocratic rule.
The
crackdowns culminated in the massacre of political prisoners in the
summer of 1988, as the Iran-Iraq War was coming to a close. Thousands of
political prisoners were held in Iranian jails at that time, many of
them having already served out their assigned prison sentences. And with
the MEK already serving as the main voice of opposition to the regime
at that time, its members and supporters naturally made up the vast
majority of the population of such prisoners.
As
the result of a fatwa handed down by Khomeini, the regime convened what
came to be known as the Death Commission, assigning three judges the
task of briefly interviewing prisoners to determine whether they
retained any sympathy for the MEK or harbored any resentment toward the
existing government. Those who were deemed to have shown any sign of
continued opposition were sentenced to be hanged. After a period of
about three months, an estimated 30,000 people had been put to death.
Many other killings of MEK members preceded and followed that incident,
so that today the Free Iran rally includes an annual memorial for
approximately 120,000 martyrs from the People’s Mojahedin Organization
of Iran.
The
obvious motive behind the 1988 massacre and other such killings was the
destruction of the MEK. And yet it has not only survived but thrived,
gaining allies to form the NCRI and acquiring the widespread support
that is put on display at each year’s Free Iran rally. In the previous
events, the keynote speech was delivered by Maryam Rajavi, who has been
known to receive several minutes of applause from the massive crowd as
she takes the stage. Her speeches provide concrete examples of the
vulnerability of the clerical regime and emphasize the ever-improving
prospects for the MEK to lead the way in bringing about regime change.
The
recipients of that message are diverse and they include more than just
the assembled crowd of MEK members and supporters. The expectation is
that the international dignitaries at each year’s event will carry the
message of the MEK back to their own governments and help to encourage
more policymakers to recognize the role of the Iranian Resistance in the
potential creation of a free and democratic Iranian nation. It is also
expected that the event will inspire millions of Iranians to plan for
the eventual removal of the clerical regime. And indeed, the MEK
broadcasts the event via its own satellite television network, to
millions of Iranian households with illegal hookups.
MEK’s Domestic Activism and Intelligence Network
What’s
more, the MEK retains a solid base of activists inside its Iranian
homeland. In the run-up to this year’s Free Iran rally the role of those
activists was particularly evident, since the event comes just a month
and a half after the latest Iranian presidential elections, in which
heavily stage-managed elections resulted in the supposedly moderate
incumbent Hassan Rouhani securing reelection. His initial election in
2013 was embraced by some Western policymakers as a possible sign of
progress inside the Islamic Republic, but aside from the 2015 nuclear
agreement with six world powers, none of his progressive-sounding
campaign promises have seen the light of day.
Rouhani’s
poor record has provided additional fertile ground for the message of
the MEK and Maryam Rajavi. The Iranian Resistance has long argued that
change from within the regime is impossible, and this was strongly
reiterated against the backdrop of the presidential elections, when MEK
activists used graffiti, banners, and other communications to describe
the sitting president as an “imposter.” Many of those same
communications decried Rouhani’s leading challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, as a
“murderer,” owing to his leading role in the massacre of MEK supporters
in 1988.
That
fact helped to underscore the domestic support for the People’s
Mojahedin Organization of Iran, insofar as many people who participated
in the election said they recognized Raisi as the worst the regime had
to offer, and that they were eager to prevent him from taking office.
But this is not to say that voters saw Rouhani in a positive light,
especially where the MEK is concerned. Under the Rouhani administration,
the Justice Minister is headed by Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who also
served on the Death Commission and declared as recently as last year
that he was proud of himself for having carried out what he described as
God’s command of death for MEK supporters.
With
this and other aspects of the Islamic Republic’s record, the MEK’s
pre-election activism was mainly focused on encouraging Iranians to
boycott the polls. The publicly displayed banners and posters urged a
“vote for regime change,” and many of them included the likeness of
Maryam Rajavi, suggesting that her return to Iran from France would
signify a meaningful alternative to the hardline servants of the
clerical regime who are currently the only option in any Iranian
national election.
Naturally,
this direct impact on Iranian politics is the ultimate goal of MEK
activism. But it performs other recognizable roles from its position in
exile, not just limited to the motivational and organization role of the
Free Iran rally and other, smaller gatherings. In fact, the MEK rose to
particular international prominence in 2005 when it released
information that had been kept secret by the Iranian regime about its
nuclear program. These revelations included the locations of two secret
nuclear sites: a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water
plant at Arak, capable of producing enriched plutonium.
As
well as having a substantial impact on the status of international
policy regarding the Iranian nuclear program, the revelations also
highlighted the MEK’s popular support and strong network inside Iran.
Although Maryam Rajavi and the rest of the leadership of the People’s
Mojahedin Organization of Iran reside outside of the country, MEK
affiliates are scattered throughout Iranian society with some even
holding positions within hardline government and military institutions,
including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Drawing
upon the resources of that intelligence network, the MEK has continued
to share crucial information with Western governments in recent years,
some of it related to the nuclear program and some of it related to
other matters including terrorist training, military development, and
the misappropriation of financial resources. The MEK has variously
pointed out that the Revolutionary Guard controls well over half of
Iran’s gross domestic product, both directly and through a series of
front companies and close affiliates in all manner of Iranian
industries.
In
February of this year, the Washington, D.C. office of the National
Council of Resistance of Iran held press conferences to detail MEK
intelligence regarding the expansion of terrorist training programs
being carried out across Iran by the Revolutionary Guards. The growth of
these programs reportedly followed upon direct orders from Iranian
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and coincided with increased recruitment of
foreign nationals to fight on Tehran’s behalf in regional conflicts
including the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars.
In
the weeks following that press conference, the MEK’s parent
organization also prepared documents and held other talks explaining the
source of some of the Revolutionary Guards’ power and wealth. Notably,
this series of revelations reflected upon trends in American policy
toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. And other revelations continue to
do so, even now.
MEK Intelligence Bolstering US Policy Shifts
Soon
after taking office, and around the time the MEK identified a series of
Revolutionary Guard training camps, US President Donald Trump directed
the State Department to review the possibility of designating Iran’s
hardline paramilitary as a foreign terrorist organization. Doing so
would open the Revolutionary Guards up to dramatically increased
sanctions – a strategy that the MEK prominently supports as a means of
weakening the barriers to regime change within Iran.
The
recent revelations of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran have
gone a long way toward illustrating both the reasons for giving this
designation to the Revolutionary Guards and the potential impact of
doing so. Since then, the MEK has also used its intelligence gathering
to highlight the ways in which further sanctioning the Guards could
result in improved regional security, regardless of the specific impact
on terrorist financing.
For
example, in June the NCRI’s Washington, D.C. office held yet another
press conference wherein it explained that MEK operatives had become
aware of another order for escalation that had been given by Supreme
Leader Khamenei, this one related to the Iranian ballistic missile
program. This had also been a longstanding point of contention for the
Trump administration and the rest of the US government, in light of
several ballistic missile launches that have been carried out since the
conclusion of nuclear negotiations, including an actual strike on
eastern Syria.
That
strike was widely viewed as a threatening gesture toward the US. And
the MEK has helped to clarify the extent of the threat by identifying 42
separate missile sites scattered throughout Iran, including one that
was working closely with the Iranian institution that had previously
been tasked with weaponizing aspects of the Iranian nuclear program.
The
National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) led by Maryam Rajavi is
thus going to great lengths to encourage the current trend in US policy,
which is pointing to more assertiveness and possibly even to the
ultimate goal of regime change. The MEK is also striving to move Europe
in a similar direction, and the July 1 gathering is likely to show
further progress toward that goal. This is because hundreds of American
and European politicians and scholars have already declared support for
the NCRI and MEK and the platform of Maryam Rajavi. The number grows
every year, while the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran continues
to collect intelligence that promises to clarify the need for regime
change and the practicality of their strategy for achieving it.
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