Four international human rights organizations referred to the mass executions that took place last week in Iran, and in a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, on Monday, called for the establishment of an independent UN investigation mechanism to hold the Iranian regime accountable for executing citizens.
The organizations emphasized in their letter that Iran is the largest executor of death sentences in the world, citing the execution of protester Reza Rasayi and the execution of another 29 people in a single day, describing this as an "unprecedented measure in Iran."
Iranian authorities executed 29 people collectively at dawn last Wednesday in the "Qazal Hisar" and "Karaj" central prisons. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, described the mass executions in Iran as "atrocious."
The four human rights organizations criticized in their letter the "silence and indifference of the international community in the face of executions, enforced disappearances, and repression of protests since 2017 in Iran." They warned that the Iranian authorities are attempting to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in society through these executions.
The letter was signed by the Justice for Victims of the 1988 Executions in Iran (England - JVMI), the New Human Rights Organization (France - NDH), the Coalition Against the Death Penalty (Germany - GCADP), and the International Federation for Human Rights (Italy - FIDU). A copy of this letter was sent to Maïssa Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, and Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.
According to the human rights organizations, more than 348 individuals have been executed in various prisons in Iran since the beginning of this year.
Pointing out that the mass execution of 26 prisoners in one day and in one prison is unprecedented in the last two decades, the Iranian Human Rights Organization noted that the last mass execution of this scale occurred on July 3, 2009, following the Green Movement protests, when 20 prisoners were executed on drug-related charges at the "Rajai Shahr" prison in Karaj.
The organization again warned of the unprecedented executions of prisoners amidst tensions between Iran and Israel, urging the international community to pay immediate attention to the killing machine in Iran.
Mahamood Amiri Moghaddam, the director of this organization, said, "Tehran is executing prisoners en masse, exacerbating the atmosphere of suffocation in the country, while exploiting the international community's focus on tensions between Iran and Israel."
Amiri Moghaddam noted that "in the absence of an immediate response from the international community, hundreds of people could fall victim to the killing machine employed by the Iranian regime in the coming months," calling on all countries with diplomatic relations with Tehran to apply pressure to prevent further crimes.
