White House Rally to Celebrate International Human Rights Day and Call for Release of All Political Prisoners in Iran

Washington, DC: Saturday, December 10, 2016-The Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC-US) has called for a White House rally to celebrate International Human Rights Day and call for the release of all political prisoners in Iran. The rally is on Saturday, December 10, 2016 from 3 to 4 pm across from the White House.

There has been a rise in the number of executions in Iran under Hassan Rouhani and there is continued imprisonment and torture of political prisoners in Iran. The political prisoner Arash Sadeghi is in his 47th day of hunger strike in protest against the inhuman prison conditions and arrest of his wife without reason. He has lost nearly 20 kg since the start of his hunger strike and his blood pressure has dropped drastically.

On November 3, 2016, Amnesty International reported, “Prisoner of conscience Maryam Akbari Monfared, who is serving a 15-year sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison, is being denied access to medical treatment. She is facing reprisals after filing a formal complaint that seeks an official investigation into the mass killings of political prisoners, including her siblings, in the summer of 1988.”

H.Con.Res.159, co-sponsored by some 50 bi-partisan House members, urges the United Nations “to create a Commission of Inquiry to fully investigate the massacre and to gather evidence and identify the names and roles of specific perpetrators with a view towards bringing them to justice.”

This legislation emphasized that “the massacre was carried out pursuant to a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that targeted…the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK).”

While stressing, “the majority of those killed were supporters of the PMOI [MEK],” the resolution emphasizes that “in a recently disclosed audiotape, the late Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah who served as Khomeini’s chief deputy, noted the regime’s efforts to target the MEK and said that the 1988 mass killings were ‘the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us.’”

On November 27, 2016, the Iranian regime sentenced a cleric, Ahmad Montazeri, the 60-year-old son of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri to 21 years in prison for releasing the tapes of his late father who strongly protested the 1988 massacre.

Contact: Majid Sadeghpour (majid.sadeghpour@oiac.org):