Two important human rights issues have happened this week in Iran. One of them was the Iranian regime’s decision to construct walls around the Khavaran mass graves of the victims of the 1988 Massacre. On September 13, Amnesty International stated that the regime, in favor of hiding its crimes and human rights violations, is “concealing the mass graves of the victims of the 1988 ‘prison massacre’.”
Amnesty requested for country members of the UN to force the regime to stop hiding the mass graves of the victims of the massacre from the public.
Amnesty added that “for 34 years, the authorities have systematically and deliberately concealed and destroyed key evidence that could be used to establish the truth about the scale of the extrajudicial executions carried out in 1988.”
The second issues in recent weeks were the great increase in the number of executions by the regime. In the past 20 days alone, the regime has executed 57 prisoners. In a rare event, the families of the death row inmates are protesting outside the regime’s judiciary in Tehran in a week-long vigil. They are asking the regime’s authorities to halt all executions, and are holding placards and chanting the slogans, “Don’t execute” and “No to executions.”
The regime’s ever-growing fear over the people’s increasing rage is palpable. Coincident with the protests by the families of the victims, political prisoners of the Gohardasht prison in Karaj have expressed their support to the families and condemned the regime’s atrocity.
On September 13, freedom-loving Iranians around the world expressed their solidarity with the families of the victims in a Twitter campaign. They demanded the end of the death penalty in Iran.
In an open letter, the political prisoners emphasized, “There is no doubt that the families of the victims must endure thousands of times the nightmare of the execution of their beloved even before its implementation.”
It should be noted that the regime’s brutal convictions are only ever applied to the poor people of Iran, while the regime’s corrupt officials have never faced any fair judgment.
In an interview published by the state-run daily Khabar online on September 1, Ali Najafi Nia, a lawyer, and professor of criminology spoke about the regime’s injustice, stating, “Did you have seen ever that one of the children of the officials has been degraded in public? Do you have ever seen a corrupt official being punished? We are now facing a crisis of public trust.”
The regime’s increasing cruelty has inflamed international condemnation. Gerald K Folkvord, a political adviser at Amnesty International Norway, said in a tweet, “I stand in solidarity with relatives of death row prisoners in Iran who are protesting bravely to stop the execution of their loved ones. Iran’s authorities must abolish the death penalty, which is the ultimate cruel and inhumane punishment.”
Wies De Graeve, the director of Amnesty International Belgium, also wrote a message in a tweet, saying, “We stand in solidarity with anguished relatives of death row prisoners in Iran who are protesting bravely to stop the execution of their loved ones. Iran’s authorities must abolish the death penalty, which is the ultimate cruel and inhumane punishment.”
Source » irannewsupdate