Around a dozen exiled Iranians gathered on Place Clairefontaine in Luxembourg City on Saturday afternoon to commemorate the 1988 massacres and, at the same time, to draw attention to the current human rights abuses in Iran.
It is a memorial for victims of a kind that, as the organisers point out, still exist in Iran today: Young people, students, university professors and ordinary citizens, who stood up against the regime. The photographs put up on Place Clairefontaine by the Humanist Association for Human Rights and Democracy in Iran and the Association of Young Iranians in Luxembourg show their faces.
Demonstrations are currently being held in many European cities to mark the thousands of victims of the 1988 massacre. The executions were carried out by so-called death commissions, following a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the months after the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Amnesty International now estimates that up to 5,000 victims were killed. Exile organisations put the figure considerably higher, at up to 30,000.
At the commemoration on Place Clairefontaine, where a dozen or so demonstrators gathered, Aysan Saber of the Association of Young Iranians in Luxembourg said: "Despite the time that has passed, the regime is continuing with its strategy", executing innocent people who opposed it and dared to protest. Pointing to the colourful photographs, she said these were people who had been executed in recent months.
The demonstrators' main aim is to draw attention to the human rights situation in Iran. They expect Luxembourg and the European Union to consistently condemn the executions and to step up the pressure on Iran, including by cutting off trade relations. The EU's economic ties with Iran have already thinned considerably as a result of sanctions.
The protesters know from personal experience how the Iranian regime cracks down on opposition. Majid Aghasani, the association's treasurer, said he had been arrested in 1982 as a 19-year-old student for political activity after handing out leaflets. " Six years I spent in political prison", he explained, including two years in the waiting room for his own execution. He had only managed to escape thanks to a family member with contacts to a judge. He has lived in Luxembourg since 2003.
Farideh Absalan, the association's president, shared a personal story of her own. Two of her brothers, she said, had been killed by the regime. One had been arrested at the age of 16 as a secondary school pupil, spent five years in prison and had later been executed. The other brother was 20 when he was killed by the regime. The family had been targeted, she said, because they had supported the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, an Iranian opposition organisation in exile that campaigns for regime change in Iran.
A portrait of Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), was also displayed on Place Clairefontaine. The NCRI is regarded as the political arm of the People's Mojahedin. The protesters believe that their opposition movement may play a role in rebuilding the country in the event of a regime change. It is an organisation that also remains controversial within the Iranian exile community.
At the same time, the protesters argue that the future of the country should be decided through free and democratic elections. Their central slogan, according to Majid Aghasani, is "no Shah and no Mullah". They oppose the old monarchs, he said, who had themselves run a dictatorship, and they oppose the current regime because it is a religious dictatorship. There are, in his view, more than enough intellectuals in Iran to rebuild the country.
According to the demonstrators, the recent war has made the situation inside Iran considerably worse. On top of high inflation, economic difficulties and a precarious supply of water and electricity, it has become even harder for many people to organise or take to the streets. As Farideh Absalan put it, the Iranian people are, for those reasons, unable to respond.
For the organisers, then, the commemoration is not only about the victims of 1988 but also about the people who are still being persecuted and killed in Iran today because of their political stance.
