Three hundred prominent political and legal figures, along with Nobel Prize laureates, have called for global efforts to prevent a repeat of the 1988 massacre in Iran.
These 301 international figures include:
Former world leaders, heads of state, ministers, and ambassadors, former UN officials and rapporteurs, and distinguished legal experts, lawmakers and leading human rights advocates, and Nobel Prize winners.
The statement by the 301 international figures reads:
We call on the global community to urgently confront the escalating wave of political executions and entrenched impunity in Iran. The risk of another mass atrocity, reminiscent of the 1988 massacre, is alarmingly real.
On 12 July 2025, three opposition activists—Farshad Etemadi-Far, Masoud Jamei, and Alireza Mardasi—were sentenced to death by Branch 1 of the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court after two years of torture, accused of ‘waging war on God’ (moharebeh) over their support for the opposition PMOI (MEK). In July 2025, the Supreme Court rejected a fourth request for judicial review for political prisoners Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, leaving them at imminent risk on death row.
There are currently dozens of political prisoners on death row on similar charges.
Since President Masoud Pezeshkian took office, executions have surged—with over 1,300 carried out, some 650 in 2025 alone.
These incitements and executions echo the horrors of 1988, when a fatwa from then-Supreme Leader Khomeini led to mass executions targeting PMOI members and other dissidents.
309 Experts Urges UN Action to Prevent Repeat of Iran’s 1988 Massacre of Political Prisoners
The July 2024 report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran described those extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances as ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide.
Warning signs are mounting. On 4 July 2025, ten UN Special Procedures expressed alarm over the crackdown since hostilities began on 13 June 2025 and the subsequent ceasefire, noting that state-media rhetoric, including calls for ‘surveillance’ and ‘killings’, echoes the ‘1988 atrocities.
Political prisoner Saeed Masouri, a key figure in the ‘No To Executions Tuesdays’ campaign, recently smuggled out a letter from Qezel Hesar Prison after an attempt to forcibly transfer him. He warns that his removal is a prelude to executing others on death row and that, just as in 1988, ‘a crime is in progress’. We must not repeat the silence of 1988. We urge the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Dr Mai Sato, her colleagues in the Special Procedures, and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (FFMI) to condemn these incitements and executions. We call on UN High Commissioner Volker Türk to speak out unequivocally against Iran’s systematic human rights violations.
We further call on Canada and other co-sponsors of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee resolution on Iran to include an explicit reference to the 1988 massacre in this year’s resolution.
The international experts, spanning over 60 countries, warn that “the risk of another mass atrocity, reminiscent of the 1988 massacre, is alarmingly real” and urge UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Dr. Mai Sato, High Commissioner Volker Türk, and member states to condemn these incitements.
