They also called for the United Nations to take charge of instigating an investigation into the 1988 massacre which ended with the brutal execution of around 30,000 political prisoners.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the biggest coalition of opposition groups, addressed those that participated in the gathering.

She thanked them for their perseverance and solidarity with the people of Iran. Mrs. Rajavi said that this gathering serves as a voice for those who have been silenced by the Iranian regime.

For the first time, she highlighted, the report by the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran focused on the 1988 massacre. The release of this report coincides with Rouhani’s participation in the General Assembly, she noted.

Mrs. Rajavi said that the report “challenges admission of the regime’s president to the United Nations”. “Our demand, which is the demand of our oppressed nation, is the expulsion of the president of the regime of massacre from the United Nations.”

She said that it was essential that the United Nations does not become a “pulpit for defending a state-sponsor of terrorism and its brutal tyrannical regime”. We do not need any reminder that the Iranian regime has violated all international laws and UN covenants and has totally disregarded the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The regime has refused to welcome UN rapporteurs and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Iran. So it is only logical that the United Nations refuses “Iran’s ruling religious fascism”. Why should a regime that has executed and tortured its people for almost four decades be accepted by the United Nations?

Mrs. Rajavi emphasised: “More than 3,000 people were executed during Rouhani’s first term. Over the same period, the regime’s war budget exceeded those of all the previous years. Every year, Rouhani wasted a major portion of the country’s revenues on the slaughter of the people of Syria and the regime’s destructive interventions in Iraq and Syria.”

Now, Rouhani’s government includes people who were on the death commissions or were high-ranking officials that were in charge of executing and torturing political prisoners.

“I must reiterate that as long as the international community, including the United Nations, keeps its doors open to the murderers of the people of Iran, the latter will continue their rights abuses and warmongering. The time has come for the international community, particularly the Western governments, to stop being lenient and making concessions to the religious dictatorship in Iran and remain silent and passive towards their crimes in Iran and abroad.”

Mrs. Rajavi emphasised that the international community has a responsibility to compel the regime to stop supressing the people of Iran and to stop terrorising its neighbours.