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When international law fails to address episodes of immense violence, actors are compelled to create their own justice without the assistance of states and international judicial institutions. Such is the case for those who survived Iran’s ‘bloody decade’ during the 1980s, in which the Islamic Republic, having recently assumed power, waged a largely indiscriminate, decade-long assault on its opposition. This particularly furious decade-long attack largely set the scene for the oppressive governance that currently characterises their rule.
In 2012, after over five years of planning, The Iran Tribunal held a truth commission at Amnesty International’s Headquarters in London, followed by a tribunal in October 2013 based on the model of the famous Russell Tribunals of the 1960s. But there was one very crucial difference between them. The Iran Tribunal was not a product of intellectual outcry and organization and unlike the Russell Tribunal the panel did not consist of foreign intellectuals. This was an exercise of justice from within the survivors’ communities themselves.
