The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council must launch an investigation into the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, Members of Parliament announced on Monday.

In a crime against humanity, at least 30,000 political prisoners, mainly affiliated to the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), were massacred within weeks, 25 years ago, after a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini.

A death commission tasked with implementing the fatwa put a simple question to all prisoners: Are you prepared to denounce the PMOI? If the response was negative, the prisoner received an automatic death sentence. In some prisons not a single prisoner survived.

The 1988 massacre was an act of genocide since the regime intended to exterminate all members and supporters of the PMOI as a political and social entity with a specific belief in a democratic and tolerant Islam.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many current Iranian judicial officials are among those who ordered or perpetrated the 1988 massacre and are now issuing death sentences for political prisoners and those arrested in anti-regime uprisings charged with “moharebeh” (waging war against God).

The ongoing international silence against this crime is an affront to humanity. Political considerations must be set aside. It is now time for action.

We call on High Commissioner Navi Pillay, the Human Rights Council and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran Mr. Ahmed Shaheed to form a commission of inquiry into the 1988 prison massacre in Iran. We urge the UK government and our international partners to refer this dossier to the UN Security Council to set up an international tribunal bringing the officials responsible for this crime to justice. The UN ought to recognise a day in the month of August in memory of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran.

British Parliamentary Committee of Iran Freedom

6 August 2013