by Harvey Oberfeld
June 21, 2021
So what’s the United Nations’ Human Rights Organization going to do now? How will the United Nations’ International Court of Justice react?
After all, UN member state the Islamic Republic of Iran has just “elected” a President nicknamed “the Executioner” and who Amnesty International says should answer for the disappearance of thousands of people, torture and murder!
“Ebrahim Raisi must be investigated for crimes against humanity” read the headline Sunday on Amnesty International’s official site.
It’s bad enough that Raisi was one of only seven candidates … all varying degree hardliners …. who were even allowed to run for Iran’s top political office by the country’s Guardian Council, a panel of twelve unelected jurists and Islamic “scholars”, who report to the REAL leader of Iran, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Dozens of others … more moderate, more progressive or even centrists … were “disqualified” from running and allowing the population to even consider them.
Some election!
Raisi is so scary that, during the last televised debate, one candidate challenging him for the office asked “If you win, can you assure me I will not be jailed?”
He may soon regret asking that!
Maybe the candidate had been reading Amnesty’s reports:
“In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the ‘death commission’ which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity,” Amnesty said.
Read the entire chllling Amnesty International document here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/iran-ebrahim-raisi-must-be-investigated-for-crimes-against-humanity/.
As recently as 2019, Raisi had blood on his hands …
“As Head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi has presided over a spiralling crackdown on human rights which has seen hundreds of peaceful dissidents, human rights defenders and members of persecuted minority groups arbitrarily detained. Under his watch, the judiciary has also granted blanket impunity to government officials and security forces responsible for unlawfully killing hundreds of men, women and children and subjecting thousands of protesters to mass arrests and at least hundreds to enforced disappearance, and torture and other ill-treatment during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests of November 2019,” according to Amnesty.
Think about that.
We’re not talking about national leaders who wage conflict or even war with their foes (there are LOTS of those in the UN!).
We’re talking about a gang of brutal thugs … wearing religious garb, dark suits and military uniforms …who rounded up thousands of civilians (students, activists, teachers, journalists, minorities, fathers, brothers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles and grandparents), hauled them to prisons … and without even a Court appearance, had them tortured, to name other anti-Islamic-state “conspirators” and just plain frighten the public, and then were summarily executed.
“Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini‘s deputy, Hussein-Ali Montazeri put the number between 2,800 and 3,800 in his memoirs,[41] but an alternative estimation suggests that the number exceeded 30,000.[42] Because of the large number, prisoners were loaded into forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hour intervals,” according to Wikipedia.
And Raisi was reportedly one of the organizers/architects of the massacres.
So what is the UN going to do?
After all, it’s farcical “Human Rights Council” has passed more than 80 Resolutions condemning the State of Israel for alleged violations of human rights and in May voted to ” urgently establish a commission to investigate all “violations”, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel.”
And that has all been during various wars or as an occupying power, without any accusations or even suggestions by Israel’s enemies of extra-judicial executions like happened to those thousands in Iran.
So what is the UN going to do?
It SHOULD follow Amnesty’s advice and refer Iran/Raisi to the UN World Court for investigation and prosecution , to the UN Human Rights Council for condemnation and to the UN General Assembly for censure.
But it won’t.
UN Officials will be all smiles and handshakes (bumping elbows?) if the murderous new Iran President shows up in New York or at any worldwide UN office or receives any UN delegations in Tehran.
Perhaps he can invite them to attend the execution of that political opponent who embarrassed him on national television?
Sadly, that is the state of the world today … and the United Nations … and there are no signs it’s getting better.
Harv Oberfeld
