Underscore Need To End Culture Of Impunity
Human rights experts, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran and a member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), joined Justice for the Victims of the 1988 Massacre in Iran (JVMI) at a side event on the sidelines of the 78th UN General Assembly in New York on 27 October 2023, urging UN Member States to oppose impunity in Iran and to support accountability for the perpetrators of the 1988 extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances of political prisoners.
Speakers at the side event, held at 777 UN Plaza, included Prof. Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Dr. Grazyna Baranowska, Member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID); Amb. Stephen Rapp, former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice; Prof. Melanie O’Brien, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS); and Ana Sami, US Representative of JVMI. Representatives of several Permanent Missions and the New York City Bar also attended the event.
Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman, the event’s keynote speaker, said: “The gravest tragedy which we have witnessed since the Islamic revolution – the most painful one – remains that of the enforced disappearances and the summary and arbitrary executions of thousands of individuals in 1988.”