Don’t recognise Iran’s mass murderer president and regime!
As you are aware, following an “election” circus, boycotted by the vast majority of the people in Iran as a travesty, the Islamic Republic has appointed one of its murderous officials, Ebrahim Raisi, to the post of president. The appointment of Raisi has rightly been met with outrage by international human rights organisations, large sections of the world media and the general public around the world.
Raisi is a wanted criminal. In the summer of 1988, as a member of a ‘death commission’, formed on the orders of Khomeini, he ordered the secret, summary and mass execution of thousands of political prisoners and the dumping of their bodies in unmarked mass graves. Also, since 1989 to the present, he has in his various leading roles as prosecutor general and in the judiciary, including as the head of the judiciary, been responsible for the arrest, torture, flogging and execution of hundreds of prisoners who had no guilt other than protesting against poverty and oppression. Raisi’s crimes, while he was the head of the judiciary, also include granting immunity to government officials and security forces responsible for the killing of 1,500 young protesters during the mass uprising in November 2019 and imprisoning thousands more, many of whom are still in prison. In addition, as a member of the Supreme National Security Council of the Islamic Republic, Raisi has taken part in the decision to intentionally shoot down Ukrainian flight PS752 on 8th January 2020, which resulted in the killing of all 176 people onboard. Raisi has defended the 1988 prison massacre as “one of the proud achievements of the system”, and, last week, at his first press conference as president, he shamelessly described his blood-soaked record in office as “defending human rights”.
What the people of Iran expect from the world community is not to recognise the recent election farce and its result. That such a mass murderer can be appointed to the post of president, attests before anything else to the murderous nature of the Islamic Republic itself and its lack of legitimacy. What the people of Iran want is not the bestowing of diplomatic recognition and political legitimacy to this monstrous regime; not negotiation with this regime and its mass murderer president, but its boycott and expulsion from the world community. Rather than continuing their links with this regime, the world’s states must now take concrete steps to help bring Raisi and the other leaders of the Islamic Republic to justice. An example which other states could follow is the ruling by a court in Ontario, Canada, in May this year, following a class-action lawsuit by several grieving families of the victims of flight PS752, that the Iranian regime’s downing of that flight was intentional and an act of terrorism. The court further condemned the leader of the Islamic Republic Khamenei and several commanders of the Sepah force (IRGC) as directly responsible for this massacre.
We call on you not to grant diplomatic recognition to Ebrahim Raisi and his regime, but to place him and his regime under political boycott and isolation. We call on you to exercise the legal instrument of “universal jurisdiction” to indict and prosecute Ebrahim Raisi for crimes against humanity, albeit in abstentia. However, if Raisi does set foot on the soil of any country outside Iran, we urge the authorities in those states to swiftly arrest him and bring him to justice.
Sincerely,
Bahram Soroush
Secretary, Worker-communist Party of Iran – International Office
25 June 2021
International.office@wpiran.org
Resources for the media
- Blood-soaked secrets: Why Iran’s 1988 prison massacres are ongoing crimes against humanity (Amnesty International, December 2018) https://bit.ly/3ddzuQ3
- Universal Jurisdiction (International Justice Resource Center) https://bit.ly/3df19jQ
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