The Iranian regime appointed noted criminal Ebrahim Raisi as president earlier this month; a man best known for his role on the death commissions in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and his violent crackdown on the November 2019 uprising where 1,500 protesters were shot dead in the streets.
While most people would have been ashamed of their crimes against humanity, Raisi has expressed his pride in these killings and everything else he has done to serve the regime. He wrongly claimed that his crimes somehow defended human rights, as if massacres and extrajudicial killings don’t violate the most basic of all rights; the right to life. While there is no need to respond to this, we do need to point out that, as the regime will never hold itself accountable, the international community must bring the mullahs to justice.
Ali Safavi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI) Foreign Affairs Committee, moderated a panel on the response that is required to Raisi’s election. The participants, including British human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson, US ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, and former United Nations human rights official Tahar Boumedra, urged the UN to launch a formal investigation into the 1988 massacre and other crimes, with diplomatic isolation and sanctions used to punish the mullahs.
Next month, the Free Iran World Summit will also highlight Raisi’s crimes in the three-day annual virtual conference that brings together Iranian expatriate communities. Therefrom July 10-12, Iranian activists will shed light on his crimes and the resistance to them. This is vital for the international community to hear with the hope that they will not support Raisi’s rule.
The Iranian Resistance wrote: “One way or another, Western powers must respond to the regime’s decision to elevate Raisi’s legacy. The proper response may be made easier by knowing that the Iranian people have already condemned Raisi on their own, both through protests branding him the “henchman of 1988” and through an electoral boycott that resulted in the lowest electoral turnout ever for this month’s presidential election. Western isolation and sanction of the Iranian regime’s president-elect would only reinforce the message already delivered by the Iranian people, and in so doing it would finally make clear to them that in a conflict between those people and the clerical regime, the international community will stand firmly on the side of freedom.”
