Members of the Swedish-Iranian communities came together in large numbers on Saturday, August 27, to also remember the anniversary of the summer of 1988, when some 30,000 political prisoners were massacred. 

A recently released audio tape, published for the first time, Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s former heir, canoe heard speaking out against the scope and the pace of the killings.

The majority of those executed were activists of the main opposition, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK).  The Death Committees, who decided the fate of these prisoners, was appointed by Khomeini, and many of it’s members are still active in, and hold senior positions in the  Rouhani government.

Dozens of executions have be carried out over the past few weeks.  The regime held a mass hanging of 25 Sunni political prisoners on 2nd August, an act condemned by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Evidence shows that the Sunni victims were also subjected to torture, prior to their execution.

Estimates say that as many as 2,600 executions have been held in Iran during Hassan Rouhani’s three-year tenure.

The protestors in Stockholm pled for the UN Security Council to form an international court mete out justice to those responsible for the 1988 massacre in Iran. On August 24, Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), stressed that it’s time that the UN to adopt a resolution, to condemn this crime. 

Further, the protestors asked the Swedish government to condemn the ongoing executions in Iran and join with its allies to call for a halt to executions and torture in Iran. They recommended that relations with the Iranian regime should be conditioned on human rights improvements, and a halt to executions in Iran. 

Similar protests to the Stockholm rally have been held in other major European cities including London, The Hague, and Oslo this August, as part of an international campaign to bring the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre before justice.