Dear President Ambar, We the undersigned are a group of former political prisoners in Iran, families of executed political prisoners, human rights activists who work for justice and accountability, and international jurists who have examined the record of Iran’s gross human rights abuses. We were deeply disturbed to recently learn that Mr. Mohammad Jafar Mahallati serves as the Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College. We believe, based on the information set forth below and available through the links below, that his appointment to this role is at fundamental odds with the values of Oberlin. As you may know, Mr. Mahallati was Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1987 and 1989. During that time, we believe the evidence linked below demonstrates that his role was to obfuscate and lie to the international community about mass crimes perpetrated by the Iranian regime. While Iran’s regime has committed numerous human rights violations in its forty-year history, its mass killing of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 stands out for its depravity and cruelty. Over the span of three months, Iran’s regime, based on a Fatwa (Islamic Decree) issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, subjected thousands of political prisoners across the country to minutes-long “re-trials” (which failed to meet all international standards of due process) presided over by what the prisoners came to call “Death Commissions.” Based on no more than a few questions about their political or religious beliefs, prisoners who had already faced (albeit inadequate) trials and sentencing, who had served several years in prison, and who had been subjected to gruesome torture were sent by the Death Commission to hang. Ayatollah Montazeri, the cleric who served as Iran’s second-in-command at the time, estimated that at least 3,800 prisoners were killed that summer. Others believe the number was considerably higher. The 1988 massacre is now well-documented. Amnesty International calls the killings “ongoing crimes against humanity.” Human Rights Watch agrees with this legal assessment. In 2012, The Iran Tribunal, a one-of-a-kind grassroots movement modelled on the famous Russell Tribunal of the 1960s came together to document the atrocities of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) during the 1980s. The presiding volunteer international judges, who are some of the highest human rights academics and jurists in the world, unanimously concluded that the IRI’s crimes fit the definition of crimes against humanity, as described in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In 2013, Canada’s parliament recognized the massacre as constituting crimes against humanity. According to the detailed report of Amnesty International, the agency issued at least sixteen (16) Urgent Action notices between August and December 1988, mobilizing their activists to send letters to Iranian authorities to call for an end the extrajudicial killings of political prisoners immediately (P.65). The first one of these Urgent Actions was issued on August 16, 1988, after the mass execution of supporters of a militant opposition group named the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and about eleven days before the mass execution of about one thousand leftist prisoners. Amnesty activists sent thousands of telegrams, telexes, and letters to the head of Iran’s Supreme Court, the Minister of Justice, and the diplomatic representatives of Iran in their respective countries urging “the condemnation of all outstanding death sentences and an end to executions in Iran.” As such, we submit that it would be impossible to believe that any senior leader in Iran, and certainly not its UN Ambassador, was unaware of the atrocity unfolding across that country. Regrettably, the historic record shows that Mr. Mahallati did not use his unique position at the United Nations to draw public attention to these crimes, nor did he publicly implore Iran’s government to end this criminal activity. Instead, he issued statements and delivered speeches denying these crimes, refuting the extent of the executions, and disputing the validity of the names provided in the reports. Amnesty International writes: For example, on 29 November 1988, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN in New York, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, denied the mass executions in a meeting with the UN Special Representative on the situation of human rights in Iran, and claimed that “many killings had in fact occurred on the battlefield, in the context of the war, following the invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran by [the PMOI, a militant opposition group]”. (p.13) This claim, it is worth noting, has been proved categorically false again and again. As noted earlier, many of the men, and women executed in 1988 had been in prison for years for non-violent political activity. In some cases, the prisoners had already completed their sentences, but the government still refused to release them. Many of those executed belonged to leftist political organizations that never engaged in an armed uprising against Iran’s government. As noted in UN records, Mr. Mahallati continued to perpetrate this falsehood by claiming that broadcasts by opposition groups to Iran “discredited the information provided by [the PMOI] to the” UN Special Representative on Iran (P. 5). He then called the allegations about the mass executions “political propaganda against the Islamic Republic” (P. 77). When the United Nations passed a resolution expressing “grave concern” about the mass executions, Mr. Mohammad Mahallati called the resolution “unjust” and said “a terrorist organization based in Iraq” was the main source of the “fake information” included in it (P. 70). Based on this information, Geoffrey Robertson, a leading international human rights barrister has argued: In considering the complicity of professionals in crimes against humanity, there is no good reason to exclude diplomats who, knowing the truth, nonetheless lie about them to UN bodies to whom they owe a duty of frankness. Iran’s UN ambassador, Jafar Mahallati, consistently denied the massacres and claimed the allegations were propaganda;… Mahallati is said to be living in the US, where he may be liable to civil action for aiding and abetting torture under the Alien Tort Claim Act.(p. 119) ItContinue reading “Our First Letter to Oberlin College”
