More than 230 current and former United Nations officials, judges, human rights experts, Nobel laureates, and NGOs have published an open letter calling on world leaders to step up pressure on Iran to halt the execution of anti-government protesters, including by imposing sanctions on its officials for human rights abuses, expelling Iranian ambassadors and blacklisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Read the full text of the letter.
The JVMI issued a press release about the open letter on 21 December 2022. Read our statement here.
OPEN LETTER
To: Joe Biden, President of the United States
Charles Michel, President of the European Council
Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
Copy: Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
21 December 2022
Excellencies,
We write to request that your nations set up a joint accountability mechanism for rapid collective action to help halt the execution of detained protesters in Iran.
The brave young men and women of Iran who are continuing to courageously take to the streets demanding an end to political oppression deserve our full support and admiration.
Since popular protests began in Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the authorities have murdered as many as 700 protesters, including dozens of children, on the streets or in prison. As many as 30,000 protesters have been arrested, with dozens receiving the death sentence for ‘moharebeh’ (waging war on God) in fast-track sham trials without the right to due process.
In recent days, despite a global outcry, the authorities have begun executing protesters, including in public. Mohsen Shekari was executed on 8 December, less than three weeks after he was convicted and sentenced to death for taking part in the protests. In a separate case, Majidreza Rahnavard was hanged in public in the city of Mashhad on 12 December, less than three weeks after he was arrested, in an attempt by the authorities to intimidate the brave young Iranians and quell the popular uprising that seeks an end to the clerical dictatorship.
Decades of apparent silence and inaction by the international community have helped fuel a culture of impunity in Iran. Since the 1980s, the authorities in Iran have extra-judicially executed tens of thousands of dissident protesters and political prisoners, some as young as 13. As many as 30,000 political prisoners, mostly MEK members, were extra-legally executed or forcibly disappeared during the 1988 massacre.
Today, as brave young Iranians continue their defiant protests to end decades of tyranny, it is imperative that the world’s leading democratic nations act urgently to prevent the Iranian authorities in their attempts to quell the ongoing protests through the use of the death penalty in contravention of international law.
We urge you to hold the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran to account for committing crimes against humanity, for acts including the killing of children and the public hanging of protesters, and to use all internationally available means to bring them to justice.
While we welcome the Fact-finding Mission recently commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in relation to the crackdown on the ongoing protests, we note that that mission has a more long-term agenda, whereas it is critical to take urgent action now to stop the unlawful use of the death penalty against protesters.
As such, we propose that your nations set up a joint mechanism to rapidly identify and impose joint sanctions against the individual masterminds and perpetrators of the ongoing crackdown on the protesters.
We furthermore ask that your countries consider imposing more targeted economic sanctions that would help cut off funds to the state’s machinery of suppression and in particular blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its affiliated entities that are leading the crackdown.
Finally, we request that, where applicable, your nations downgrade diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, including by withdrawing your ambassadors and likewise expelling the representatives of what is in fact a murderous government.