Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will keep my remarks brief. I want to highlight a massacre that occurred in Iran in 1988, when tens of thousands of people were summarily and extrajudicially executed because of their political or religious beliefs. Approximately 30,000 people, including women and children, were murdered under the fatwa or leadership of the supreme leader of the time.The vast majority of the victims were members and supporters of the main Iranian opposition party, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, PMOI, and their family members. Death commissions in more than 70 towns and cities approved all the death sentences.

On 9 August of this year an audio tape was published for the first time, made by Khomeini’s former deputy supreme leader, confirming that the massacres took place and had been ordered at the highest level within the political and religious regime of the country.

What happened in 1988 was catastrophic. That summer, when the European championships in soccer were taking place, people were being herded into towns to be murdered and buried in mass graves. The people responsible for those atrocities remain to this very day at the highest level of political and administrative office in Iran.

Amnesty International has continually raised this issue but there is a requirement for international recognition within every state, including Ireland, to condemn the brutal massacre in 1988 as a crime against humanity. The Government should call on the High Commissioner of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Security Council to order an investigation into the massacre that took place at the time.