In this excellent blog post, R0ya Boroumand shows the statement by Sadeq Larijani – Head of the Judiciary and Iran official spokesperson on human rights – to be nonsense. Even more she reflects how the death of her own father (stabbed to death in Paris in 1991) has motivated her to continue documenting human rights violations in Iran. And she draws the conclusion that it must have helped:
“Perhaps Larijani’s denial of political executions is not meant for the Iranian people or the human rights community, but rather for a poorly informed and supportive constituency outside Iran that is too willing to accept the Islamic Republic’s habit of blaming others for its shortcomings. But we should appreciate Larijani’s unease, even if it is expressed in the form of a blatant lie. The fact that the number of reported executions in Iran has been trending downward — from 817 in 2010 and 652 in 2011 to 385 so far in 2012 — may well have to do with the active presence and reporting of the UN special rapporteurs and others who are focused on safeguarding human rights.
Through my work toward documenting the stories of all the Islamic Republic’s victims, I have found the best answers I can to the questions that obsessed in 1991. I have also found some relief from the consuming anguish and frustration that decades of untold stories and anonymous suffering by thousands of victims and victims’ loved ones have brought in their train.
The painstaking task of documenting thousands of executions to which my colleagues and I have devoted our lives for the past ten years, added to the efforts of other human rights organizations, has helped to protect people who dare to speak up. Perhaps, and in spite of the limited means at our disposal, we have made the regime worry that if it kills them they will not be forgotten, and so stayed the executioner’s hand. Larijani’s absurd claim that “there are absolutely no political executions in Iran” did not make me smile, but it did reinforce my conviction that truth telling is the most effective tool we have to make tyrants uneasy and slower to unleash their violence.”
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 