The Iranian authorities held their rigged election to appoint Ebrahim Raisi, who has been implicated in mass executions, as the next President of Iran. The European Union and the Biden administration must now put an end to the culture of impunity.
Widespread voter apathy
The government in Iran encouraged citizens to vote, presumably to demonstrate its legitimacy; yet, it was met with widespread voter apathy and a record low voter participation. Most people boycotted the polls, and demonstrators urged US President Joe Biden to abandon his efforts to salvage the nuclear agreement.
We are not going to vote
“The government is telling people to vote. But I see voting as an insult. We are not going to vote in order to show the world that we Iranians are frustrated with this clerical establishment.
We do not support a government that shoots down a passenger plane [Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, downed by the IRGC in January 2020], that lies repeatedly, and that kills and tortures its own citizens.
We do not support a government that steals the nation’s resources and spends them on its militias. The old game of moderate or hard-liner is over. They are all the same.” Soraya, a Tehran University student, told Gatestone.
Death Commission
Raisi was named deputy prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court at the age of 24. He is recognized for his involvement in one of the world’s largest mass executions, in which more than 30,000 people were executed, including children and pregnant women, as a member of the “Death Commission”. According to a resolution passed by the US House of Representatives:
“… over a 4-month period in 1988, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners and many unrelated political groups… according to a report by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the massacre was carried out pursuant to a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini…” The statement read.
Hussein-Ali Montazeri
Regarding the massacre, the late Hussein-Ali Montazeri — one of the Islamic Republic’s founding fathers, as well as a human rights activist, an Islamic theologian, and the intended successor to the Islamic revolution’s Supreme Leader Khomeini until Khomeini’s death said:
“I believe this is the greatest crime committed in the Islamic Republic since the [1979] revolution and history will condemn us for it… History will write you down as criminals.”
The regime’s notorious judiciary system
Khamenei finally selected Raisi as the head of the regime’s notorious judiciary system after overseeing mass executions and mercilessly cracking down on opposition and dissidents.
“We will not cut the fingers of those who are corrupt; we will cut off their entire hand,” Raisi said after his appointment at the 23rd National Assembly of Revolutionary Guards Commanders and Officials in 2019.
Raisi was added to the US Treasury Department’s blacklist on November 5, 2019.
The international community must stand by the Iranian people, who have been victims of Iran’s ruthless and predatory regime for decades.
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