Executions in Iran

I read this morning of the involvement of the new President Elect of Iran in mass executions in 1988, that is to say more than thirty years ago. So how bad is he? 

Poking around a bit, relying mainly on various entries in Wikipedia, I find that these executions took place in the closing stages of the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980’s: a savage war between two unpleasant regimes resulting in perhaps 500,000 deaths (for uncertainty of which see reference 1). At that time, not caring for the regime in Iran, I think we backed that in Iraq, that is to say Saddam Hussein.

Towards the end of the war, exiles from the Iranian group called MEK took part, with support from Iraq, in an attempted invasion of Iran. An attempt which the Iranians crushed in short order, but which they went on to use as an excuse for a bloody purge of men and women already in their badly overcrowded prisons, a purge mainly but not exclusively directed against the MEK, formerly a respected opposition party. Again, numbers very uncertain, but perhaps in the range 5,000-15,000. Few of them could have had anything to do with the invasion, being in prison at the time. A purge, which, rather oddly, was conducted in the ‘In the Name of God, The Compassionate, The Merciful…’. Notwithstanding all of which, the MEK lives on, not least at reference 3. 

It appears that the President Elect, then a much younger man in his late twenties, both cleric and lawyer, deputy prosecutor general, was a member of the commission which oversaw the purge, erecting and then running the rather thin judicial veil thrown over it. I dare say he kept a decent distance from the actual killings.

So not good, despite the exceptional circumstances. A war like that between Iran and Iraq is not going to bring out the best in people.

All of which brings the rather larger purges of Stalin to mind – his, I suppose conducted ‘In the Name of the Party…’.  And the roughly contemporary purges of opponents by South American dictatorships in the 1970’s and 1980’s. 

Furthermore, our own record is not that clever. What about, for example, the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya? For which see reference 4. Which we should remember when having a go at the President Elect, unpleasant piece of work though he may be.

References

Reference 1: https://kurzman.unc.edu/death-tolls-of-the-iran-iraq-war. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_political_prisoners. 

Reference 3: https://english.mojahedin.org/about-iranian-opposition-pmoi-mek. 

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/07/elkins-and-out.html. 

Reference 5: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-to-parliament-on-settlement-of-mau-mau-claims. A government version of the Mau Mau story, published, as it happens, a few weeks before reference 4.