According to the Iranian opposition group The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran), the Oberlin College gave cover to a former Iranian diplomat who called for Israel’s destruction at the United Nations and, according to Amnesty International, worked to conceal a series of mass killings committed in 1988.
Mahallati, the lecturer in question
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, the lecturer in question, is now preaching a message of “friendship” to his Oberlin students as if he never stated the vile things he said about Israel or covered up mass murder.
Mahallati is the Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in the Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory in Ohio, where he also teaches religion. As per his faculty biography, he served as Iran’s UN ambassador from 1987 to 1989.
During his tenure at the UN, Mahallati railed against Israel, openly stating his desire to see it destroyed. The First Intifada “will continue unabated until the goal of freedom and liberation of the entire land of Palestine is achieved,” Mahallati announced in February 1989.
#Oberlin Religion Professor Mohammad Jafar #Mahallati has denied recent allegations claiming that he participated in covering up the #Iranian regime's 1988 mass killing of political prisoners. https://t.co/zcS5SwIL7s pic.twitter.com/si7v8BPR9G
— ABA International Criminal Law (@ABA_ICLC) October 10, 2020
Mahallati called for the destruction of Israel
In the name of Islam, Mahallati called for the destruction of Israel. “Palestine is an Islamic territory with an Islamic heritage and an Islamic identity….” Its occupation by Zionist usurpers is a violation against all Muslims around the world, and its liberation is thus a major Islamic duty and commitment,” he stated.
In addition to his anti-Israel rhetoric, Mahallati is accused of aiding in the cover-up of the Iranian regime’s massacre of hundreds of political detainees in 1988. In a 2018 report, Amnesty International summarised the killings as follows:
“Between July and September 1988, Iranian authorities forcibly disappeared and executed thousands of imprisoned political dissidents in secret, most of whom were buried in unmarked mass graves.” Since then, the government has regarded the murders as state secrets, torturing relatives by refusing to inform them how and why their loved ones were killed, as well as where they are buried. “No official has been brought to justice, and those involved in some cases hold or have held positions of power in Iran,” the report read.
#Oberlin Religion Professor Mohammad Jafar #Mahallati has denied recent allegations claiming that he participated in covering up the #Iranian regime's 1988 mass killing of political prisoners. https://t.co/zcS5SwIL7s pic.twitter.com/si7v8BPR9G
— ABA International Criminal Law (@ABA_ICLC) October 10, 2020
Mahallati, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN in New York
“On 29 November 1988, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, 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],” per the Amnesty International’s 2018 report.
These allegations were brought to Oberlin’s attention in 2020, prompting Mahallati to claim that he had no knowledge of the assassinations carried out by the government for which he worked and that his critics overlook his role in ending the Iran-Iraq War, which he describes as “the most prolonged and devastating war in modern history.”
Extraordinary: #Iran's former Ambassador to #Germany during the Mykonos killings Hossein Mousavian is at Princeton. Now we learn Iran's former Ambassador to the UN during the 1988 massacres Mohammad Jafar Mahallati is teaching at Oberlin.https://t.co/txZx2PUE7s
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) October 8, 2020
Iran’s UN envoy, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati
“During his time as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s UN envoy, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati was complicit in the international coverup of the massacre of thousands of political detainees in 1988. Despite refusing to accept responsibility for his past actions, Mahallati now preaches peace as a professor of Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College,” according to a human rights organization campaigning for the rights of minorities in Iran.
If the murderous regime that came to power in Iran in 1979 is ever investigated for crimes against humanity, Mahallati will almost certainly be a prosecution witness, if not a suspect, in the following trial.
Here's a petition directed at @oberlincollege to investigate why Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, formerly Iran's UN Ambassador and responsible for coverup of the 1988 crimes against humanity, was hired as the 'professor of peace'.
PLEASE SIGN / SHARE / RT.https://t.co/mM7IesauDV
— Kaveh Shahrooz کاوه شهروز (@kshahrooz) October 14, 2020
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