Mrs. Rajavi spoke out while touring of an exhibition of photos depicting the massacred political prisoners, in the Paris Municipality 2nd District.

Mayor of Paris’s 2nd District, Mr. Jacques Boutault, the Mayor of Paris’s 1st District, Jean Francois Legaret, and several French personalities, such as Rama Yade, former Minister of Human Rights, also addressed the exhibition. Ingrid Betancourt, former Columbian presidential candidate, spoke at the event, as well.   

A statement issued by the Paris Municipality 2nd District regarding the exhibition and the visit, read in part: “This exhibition especially commemorates the sad anniversary of the massacre of some 30,000 political prisoners during the summer of 1988 in Iran. This terrible episode in modern history is now back on the front burner with the revelation a few days ago of an audiotape recounting conversations that occurred at the highest level with those directly responsible for the killings.”

Jacques Boutault, mayor of the 2nd district, stated the urgency to put pressure on the Iranian regime to stop executions in Iran. He recommended that relations with that country be conditioned upon significant improvement in human rights, including at the end of the death penalty. Jacques Boutault said that the acceleration of recent executions in Iran are an extension of the 1988 massacre.

Mrs. Rajavi also paid tribute to those who fought in the French Resistance, as well as the to the victims of the Nazi occupation.

She said the exhibition displays the terrors experienced by prisoners,and denounced the ‘conspiracy of silence’ hanging over these crimes. She called it a ‘painful silence’ for the Iranian people, especially for the families who lost loved ones in the massacre. She urged the international community, including the UN, to bring Iran’s ruling mullahs to justice. 

During the exhibition, witnesses of the crimes, and former political prisoners, shared their stories, and stories about the courage of the Iranian Resistance, with visitors.

Jacques Boutault said, “Our borough today commemorates the liberation of Paris, which ended four years of occupation by Nazi Germany. If European countries were able to sustain the end to the dictatorship, it is because they have the ability to remember the past so it would not be repeated. This unspeakable episode in Iranian history would only result in continuation of what is unspeakable. That is why the town hall of the 2nd District is honored to host this exhibition and listen to the witnesses of this inhuman episode in Iranian history. “