Iranian Human Rights Violations

                                             While Saudi Arabia Human Rights violations were discussed and condemned world wide specially after its coronation as head of Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) , the Iranian were at the forefront of attacking and mocking Saudi Arabia credentials to head the prestigious panel. The recent bitterness among two neighbors over executions of religious and political figures have soared diplomatic relationship tremendously. Lots has been said and written about archaic laws and brutality of Saudi law enforcement in this article i am shedding some light on Iranian past Human Rights violation records that are no less then genocide on hapless political party workers(Tudeh Party, a secular Marxist party) after 1979 revolution.

                                         In late July 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran began summarily interrogating, torturing and executing thousands of political prisoners throughout the country(30,000). The massacre continued into the fall. Well planned and deliberately accomplished in secret, the massacre effectively eliminated any remaining political opposition to then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime. Although the exact number of victims is not known, thousands of prisoners were tortured and executed over the course of only a few months (30,000).

                                        The victims included prisoners who had served their sentences but had refused to recant their political beliefs, prisoners who were serving sentences of imprisonment, people who had been detained for lengthy periods but had not been convicted, and former prisoners who were rearrested. Many had been arrested when they were teenagers for commission of low-level offenses such as distribution of pamphlets. The political views of the victims stretched from support for the Mojahedin-e Khalq (Mojahedin), a Marxist- Islamic Party that had engaged in violence in an effort to overthrow Khomeini, to support for the Tudeh Party, a secular Marxist party that until 1983, supported the regime.

                                       This was not the first time the Islamic Republic had executed thousands of its political opponents or even the first time the regime had executed its opponents en masse. However, the 1988 massacre stands out for the systematic way in which it was planned and carried out, the short time period in which it took place throughout the country.The executions began pursuant to a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini immediately following Iran’s announcement that it had agreed to a cease-fire in the devastating eight-year Iran-Iraq war.The questioning was brief, not public, there were no appeals, and prisoners were executed the same day or soon thereafter. Many who were not executed immediately were tortured.

                                     The Iranian government has never identified those who were secretly executed and tortured, and has never issued an official explanation for why political prisoners of different beliefs, many of whom had been imprisoned for years, were suddenly executed in the summer of 1988. Tudeh and other leftist parties had basically ceased to exist in Iran. Many of those executed had been convicted of relatively minor offenses—the more serious offenders had been executed in prior purges.The interrogations, killings, torture, and forced disappearances of prisoners violated and continue to violate Iran’s obligations under international human rights law.