Prominent Politicians and lawmakers urge Canadian Government to demand UN inquiry into hideous massacre of political prisoners in Iran in 1988

Prominent Politicians and lawmakers in canada

NCRI - In a press conference at the Canadian Parliament on October 6, Members of Parliament, representative of the Iranian-Canadian community, and eyewitnesses to the 1988 massacre urged the government of Canada to implement a motion adopted by parliament in 2013. That document condemned the massacre of political prisoners and expressed solidarity with political prisoners being held in Iranian jails today. Also, ever since 2003, Canada has sponsored an annual United Nations resolution denouncing Iran’s ongoing human rights violations. The October 6 press conference urged the Canadian government to mention the 1988 massacre in this year’s resolution.

Speaking at the House of Commons, the speakers called on the Canadian government to play a leading role in demanding a UN commission of inquiry on this crime against humanity, thereby sending a clear message that Iran faces consequences for human rights abuses.

In the summer of 1988, based on a fatwa decreed by the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Khomeini, some 30,000 political prisoners were massacred in the space of a few months and buried secretly in mass graves. The overwhelming majority of them were affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, which remains the principal opposition movement to this day.                                                                                                                 

In August 2016 an audio file surfaced of Khomeini's then-heir as the supreme leader Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri speaking about the massacre, which triggered a crisis in Tehran. In the recording, dated August 15, 1988, Montazeri can be heard harshly criticizing members of Tehran's "Death Commission" who were appointed by Khomeini.  
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