The U.N. Failed to Address Iran's Crimes Against Humanity, It's Time For Western Democracies to Step In

"U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on July 17 called on the international community to conduct independent investigations into the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran, and to provide accountability and justice.

Following a fatwa handed down by Ayatollah Khomeini, then the regime's supreme leader, in mid-July 1988, over several months more than 30,000 political prisoners, primarily affiliated with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), were secretly mass executed after mock trials that lasted just five minutes. Their corpses were doused with disinfectant, packed in refrigerated trucks, and buried at night in mass graves across the country.

That summer, the United Nations was given credible information that a massacre was taking place secretly in Iran's prisons. The UN did nothing to stop it.

Afterwards, when Amnesty International and other human rights groups documented thousands of executions of political prisoners that had taken place, the UN still failed to act.

Even when a 1988 audio tape of members of the 'Death Commissions' and top officials discussing the massacre surfaced in 2016, the UN still refused to hold Iranian officials accountable.

The UN's silence has only bred impunity in Tehran. Today one of those Death Commission members whose voice could be heard on the tape, Ebrahim Raisi, is Iran's Judiciary Chief. Another Death Commission member, Alireza Avaie, is Iran's Justice Minister.

These same officials are responsible for the numerous death sentences handed down in recent months to Iranians for taking part in the nationwide anti-regime Iran protests last November...

In truth, the UN fears taking any action that would upset the regime in Tehran..."