Many are shocked that despite the regime’s history of oppression, torture, and executions, it was given such a prestigious position by the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year.
During a press conference in Geneva today, Tahar Boumedra, former Chief of the UN Human Rights Office in Iraq, and Behzad Naziri, the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in international organizations, denounced the appointment.
“This disgraceful decision is an insult to the Iranian people, whose human rights have been flagrantly violated by the regime over the past 44 years, and it makes a mockery of the principles upon which the UN is founded,” said Mr. Boumedra.
It was also announced that 180 human rights experts, jurists, lawmakers, Nobel laureates including current and former UN officials, and NGOs had written to Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressing outrage at the appointment and highlighting its alarming implications.
“Allowing a regime notorious for committing the 1988 massacre, daily executions, and warmongering to take over a prestigious UN platform is a dagger to the heart of human rights, fuels terrorism, and endangers regional and global peace. It egregiously violates the very principles upon which the United Nations has been founded and for which millions of people have sacrificed their lives. This represents a dark stain in the history of the United Nations,” the letter said.
Of particular concern to the signatories was the 1988 massacre of approximately 30,000 political prisoners, predominantly members of the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK). The current Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, at the time a deputy prosecutor, was a member of the ‘death commission’ in Tehran, which sent thousands of prisoners of conscience to the gallows.