A German-Iranian activist, Gazelle Sharmahd, called for the establishment of a “ZAKA for Iran” in a passionate plea in honor of the United Nations’ International Human Rights Day on Wednesday.
Sharmahd dedicated the appeal to her father, Jamshid Sharmahd, a United States-based Iranian-German software engineer who was kidnapped by the Iranian regime in 2020 before being executed by the Iranian Regime in 2024.
“When we finally retrieved my father, we couldn't even recognize him. His heart gone, his tongue cut out, his teeth ripped out, his throat carved open, entire body parts stolen,” Sharmahd explained.
Sharmahd drew attention to other Iranian Regime executions, including the 1,728 executions that have occurred over the past year, “that's 10 people a day,” She said.
“Most of these families don't even get their loved ones' bodies back. Or they get them back in pieces. Or they're told, your son is buried somewhere, don't ask questions, or you're gonna be next. This regime doesn't just kill, it weaponizes death.”
UN fact-finding time is 'over'
She declared that “fact-finding time is over” for the UN, which, according to the UN itself, has been conducting a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged Regime-perpetrated human rights violations since 2022.
Sharmahd demanded that the UN create “an international body that will oversee the rights of the dead,” advising that a mandate for such an international body to enter Iran be issued “ now, not when the regime falls.”
“We need our own Zaka, who will fight for our people when the UN is entertaining our killers,” Sharmahd continued, “whoever is holding parts of my father's body, his heart, his tongue, and whatever else he took, I want them back.”
ZAKA Search, Rescue, and Recovery is an Israeli-based volunteer emergency response organization that largely works to retrieve and forensically identify the remains of individuals killed during terrorist attacks, murders, and other situations.
Sharmahd emphasized that ZAKA is an observer organization at the UN and that a relationship already exists between the two organizations.
“Learn from [ZAKA], model it, deploy it,” she urged. “If Israel honors its dead and fights for everybody, the world can do the same for the people of Iran who were abandoned.”
“Every day we wait, more families lose their loved ones, and even the chance to bury them whole,” Shamad concluded, ending her plea with a call to make the UN “answer for their silence and complicity.”