Angelika Beer in Iran
On December 2007, a European delegation, comprised of a number of well-known supporters of the Iranian mullahs headed by Ms. Angelika Beer, traveled to Iran in an apparent attempt to review and assess human rights violations in Iran. These violations include the clamp down on civil society, university students’ movement, and other suppressive policies.
When Ms. Beer and her colleagues were busy performing their prearranged meetings with the regime’s Majlis speaker, Foreign Minister, and associations run by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the mullahs hanged six prisoners in Bojnourd, Kermanshah, and Shiraz. In an unprecedented measure, the images of four prisoners being hanged in Bojnourd were beamed on Iran’s state-run TV (AFP, December 11, 2007). During the same period, a 20-year-old man, identified as Makvan Alizadeh, was hanged in Kermanshah. He was 13 at the time of committing the crime attributed to him, and moreover, the plaintiffs had withdrawn their complaint against Makvan.
Angelika Beer in Iran
On December 2007, a European delegation, comprised of a number of well-known supporters of the Iranian mullahs headed by Ms. Angelika Beer, traveled to Iran in an apparent attempt to review and assess human rights violations in Iran. These violations include the clamp down on civil society, university students’ movement, and other suppressive policies.
When Ms. Beer and her colleagues were busy performing their prearranged meetings with the regime’s Majlis speaker, Foreign Minister, and associations run by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the mullahs hanged six prisoners in Bojnourd, Kermanshah, and Shiraz. In an unprecedented measure, the images of four prisoners being hanged in Bojnourd were beamed on Iran’s state-run TV (AFP, December 11, 2007). During the same period, a 20-year-old man, identified as Makvan Alizadeh, was hanged in Kermanshah. He was 13 at the time of committing the crime attributed to him, and moreover, the plaintiffs had withdrawn their complaint against Makvan.
When the hangings were taking place, Ms. Beer, in an interview with the BBC Radio’s Persian service, startled the Iranian community and international human rights figures by claiming that, “the delegation found that because of foreign pressure, the political and social situation in Iran has worsened, and human rights are being violated in this country more than they were in the past.” In another interview with Deutsche Welle radio on December 12, 2007, Ms. Beer made a similar remark, stating, “The UN Security Council sanctions have caused the intensification of the policy of harassing the Iranian people by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Such claims serve to justify boundless crimes committed by the mullahs and Ahmadinejad’s government against Iranian women, university students, teachers, workers, and other sectors of society. As part and parcel of pursuing the policy of appeasement under the guise of “supporting civil society” or “peace movement,” such claims arise from a reprehensible and shameful scheme to advance lucrative trade deals with the ruling mullahs in Iran.
Based on news reports by the state-run media in Iran, during its Iran visit, the EP delegation met with Haddad Adel, the regime’s Majlis speaker. Headlines plastered all over state-run media outlets on December 9th and 10th, 2007, including IRNA, provided coverage of this meeting. On December 10, IRNA reported,
“Angelika Beer: Mojahedin Khalq Organisation illegal outfit in UK, US and EU
Angelika Beer also asserted that the MKO [term used by the Iranian regime for the PMOI] grouplet is recognized as an illegal outfit by European Parliament, European Union and also US and British services, adding that the policy of European Parliament toward MKO is to reject and avoid contacts with it.”
Haddad Adel in other parts of his speech while criticizing the hypocritical behavior of Europe with respect to terrorism and terrorist groups such as the Monafeqin (Mojahedin) Khalq said: "the problem of the European Union and the European Parliament is that on one hand they claim fighting against terrorism and on the other hand they obtain some of their false information from Monafeqin who have a hand in the blood of Iranian people. If the intelligence sources of the EU and EP are corrected, most of the misunderstanding automatically will disappear …
The Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) took Ms. Beer and those accompanying her to the office of one of its associations called “Edalat,” in a futile bid to upend the evidence and documents of the regime’s crimes, which have so far been used to condemn the regime on 52 occasions at various UN organs, against the Iranian Resistance and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in particular.
“Members of the Edalat Association recently held a meeting with a European Parliament delegation visiting their office, and expressed concern about the recurrence of a humanitarian tragedy by the MKO [term used by the regime for the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)]. Ms. Angelika Beer and Baroness Nicholson who had attended the meeting conveyed their sympathy to the victims of terror and reminded that the inclusion of the PMOI in the EU terrorist lists was done precisely because of the EU governments’ knowledge of terrorism and this terrorist organization” (IRNA, December 26, 2007).
The December 18th Press Conference at the European Parliament
At a press conference on December 18, 2007, held at the European Parliament, a number of MEPs strongly criticized the above delegation’s visit to Iran and the mullahs’ exploitation of the event. Struan Stevenson, Vice President of the largest EP group, said at this conference,
“… There has been ruling by POAC last November on the justification of PMOI being on the terror list. POAC ruled that there is no justification and actually called the British government as having perverse decision to put the PMOI on the terror list. The British government inevitably would seek appeal. The court ruled that there is no ground for appeal and rejected the demand.
This followed a decision a year ago by the first instance court of Europe, as the highest court in EU, which also ruled that PMOI should be removed from the EU terror list.
Despite that ruling, the Council Administration decided to ignore the law. We should remember that they were placed in the list, in the first instance, by the distinct request by the fascist regime ruling in Iran from Jack Straw, who was the foreign secretary of UK at that time. He even admitted that he had received the request from the mullahs, who greatly fear the PMOI as a significant opposition to their brutal regime and think it should be placed on the UK terror list. And it was only at the request of the UK that the Council Administration subsequently admitted to place the PMOI in the EU terror list. So we have the UK at the very core of this injustice. We have Britain ignoring the rule of law with yet again with a senior minister last week saying they will seek to appeal the POAC decision to the court of appeal. So we have the politicians in the British government who overturn the rule of law.
At the same time that all the vicious acts were going on, a delegation from the European Parliament visited Iran, led by Angelika Beer. On the day that the EU delegation led by Angelika Beer were sitting in Tehran with the representatives of the mullahs’ regime, six people were hanged in Iran. Three of them were in public to terrorize the people and one of the victims was a 20-year-old man whose alleged crime was committed when he was only 13. If you wish a better example of how the attempts to appease mullahs are bound to fail, then you don’t have to look more than that example. I was amazed to see that Mrs. Beer has told the BBC Persian service that Western countries’ policy of increasing sanction had more negative results, since it has not given positive results. In other words the leader of our Iranian delegation blames the West for further brutality for the execution, floggings, amputations and oppression in Iran. It is all our fault according to this “pathetic appeaser” who led our delegation there. In the first week in December, there had been 10 executions. One of them was a 28-year-old woman who received 100 lashes after her sentence of being stoned to death.
This is the kind of regime that we are dealing with. And this is why I wrote a declaration with my colleagues from the Friend of Free Iran Group which was signed by the senior members of the EPP-ED group, 34 of them together with myself signed it, including 3 vice presidents of the European Parliament, 19 heads of national delegations, 6 vice presidents of the EPP-ED group itself. That declaration calls for EU for the Council of Administration to respect the rule of law and to take the PMOI off the EU terror list. We hope now that the judgment in UK will lead to the rule of law being upheld. We as politicians rely on the rule of law to underline the work that we do. If we seek to usurp the power of the courts then we would become no better than Ahmadinejad and his thugs who are ruling in Iran at the present time.”
Clearly, then, the mullahs’ apologists and lobbyists at the European Parliament, in blatant contradiction of the official resolutions adopted and endorsed by the EP, Council of Europe, and the UN, all of which have called for the cessation of the executions, human rights abuses, and uranium enrichment by the mullahs, blame the European governments, the U.S., and the UN Security Council for the mullahs’ brutal executions and inhumane policies.
The Iranian regime pursues two objectives from inviting MEPs to Iran. First, it wants to carry out its plots and vilification campaign against the legitimate opposition to it. And, second, it wants to justify its inhumane crime in Iran. Experience has shown that such fabrications and designs by the mullahs have given way to unintended consequences. As a result of such activities, the members of visiting delegations clearly realize that the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance are the existential threat to the mullahs’ rule and remain to be their Achilles’ heel. They soon become conscious of the fact that the regime’s main goal for extending such invitations is to taint the image of the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance in foreign eyes.
Ms. Angelika Beer and other apologists and lobbyists of the regime at the EP, resort to precisely identical methods for demonizing the Iranian Resistance. For example, when the recent resolution condemning the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses and continuation of uranium enrichment was being debated at the EP, Ms. Beer, in contrast to the opinion of at least 90 percent of the MEPs, intended to propose a resolution, which in addition to justifying the regime’s uranium enrichment efforts, levied accusations and lies against the main opposition to the mullahs. Article 22 of this resolution (as proposed by Ms. Beer) stated,
“22-Takes note of the British court ruling stipulating that the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) organisation has to be removed from the UK list of terrorist organisations; underlines, independently of that fact, that the internal human rights violations and the authoritarian and sect-like nature of the organisation rule out official contacts between the European Parliament and the MKO” (MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION, by Angelika Beer, Monica Frassoni, Hélène Flautre and Cem Özdemir on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group on Iran, 23.1.2008)
In the course of the trip by the parliamentary delegation from the EU parliament despite MOIS’s attempts to advance its demonizing campaign against the PMOI, some members of the same delegation which had gone to Iran to pursue the appeasement policy toward the regime, upon their return, revealed the mullahs’ true intentions of the campaign against its main opposition. Some of the members of the delegation led by Ms. Beer to Iran, later remarked about the visit,
“…We were confronted with an amazing phenomenon in Iran. In meetings with almost everybody, including ministers and Majlis deputies, their first and last words revolved around the PMOI. The personnel guarding us, who were from the MOIS and other security services, demanded that we refrain from doing what they forbid us to do. They took us to associations and individuals who claimed that they are former PMOI members. Such scenes soon made us realize what the true story was. They spoke about the PMOI in a hysteric fashion. One of the delegation members and I, broke away from the guards and visited the city. A taxi driver expressed overwhelming anger at the mullahs, saying that the people hate them. In front of the university campus, students shouted chants against the regime, and the situation was uncontrollable.”
To be continued
Iran: Mullahs’ pathetic appeasers in the European Parliament – Part I
Iran: Mullahs’ pathetic appeasers in the European Parliament – Part II
