A conference was held in Paris, District 1 City Hall, on August 3, 2018 to commemorate the memory of the victims of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran. The conference was accompanied by a photo exhibition of some of the victims and the mass graves where they are buried by the Iranian regime.
During the conference, Jean Francois Legaret, mayor of Paris’ 1st District, and other speakers underscored the necessity to conduct international investigation into this crime against humanity and to try the perpetrators of this crime in an international court of law.
In a message to the conference, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance (NCRI), thanked the attendants for helping keep the memory of the murdered political prisoners alive.
“Thirty years are gone but not their memories. The memories of the victims of the 1988 massacre continue to awaken the conscience of Iranian society and inspire them to rise. Those prisoners are continuing to have their impact,” Mrs. Rajavi said.
That impact can be seen in an international movement for bringing the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre to justice, Mrs. Rajavi said. Since 2016, the “Call for Justice” movement has been carrying out activities to raise awareness about this unpunished crime. At the same time, MEK activists and supporters inside Iran have been gathering evidence and new information about the victims of the crime and their places of interment.
The uptick of activism surrounding the 1988 massacre has put immense pressure on the Iranian regime.
“Under such pressures, at least 20 senior officials of the regime were forced to defend this crime,” Mrs. Rajavi said. “The mullahs’ supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, expressed anger over why the 1988 massacre is being surrounded by an aura of innocence. These confessions are new documents on the ruling mullahs’ crime against humanity.”
Mrs. Rajavi also drew a direct connection between the sacrifice of the political prisoners who were executed in 1988 and the ongoing protests in Iran. “In the past eight months, Iranian protesters have been remembering the steadfast political prisoners in their cities and how they were massacred for freedom. They remember their cause, what they sacrificed their lives for, and what their message is for today,” she said.
In retaliation, the Iranian regime has tried to carry out a terrorist plot against the Iranian resistance during the Free Iran Gathering which took place in Villepinte, Paris, on June 30, 2018. The terrorists, which involved an Iranian regime diplomat, were arrested before they could carry out their attack.
“The terrorist operation failed to reach its goal but showed that the murderers of those 30,000 political prisoners stop at nothing to physically eliminate their opposition,” Mrs. Rajavi said.
Mrs. Rajavi berated the West for having remained silent on the Iranian regime’s terrorism and the 1988 massacre in the past 30 years, which has given the mullahs a free pass to continue their crimes against the Iranian people. “The time has come to end such immunity,” Mrs. Rajavi said.
Source: Report by PMOI/MEK
