HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN
Seminar – The European Parliament, Brussels
Wednesday 9th April 2014
13.00-15.30 hrs
Room: ASP – 5E-2
Catherine Ashton’s ill-judged visit to Tehran last month to appease the mullahs, fell apart almost before she stepped off the plane, as news emerged of Israel intercepting a ship from Iran carrying dozens of long-range surface-to-surface rockets, assault weapons and hundreds of thousands of bullets, destined for terrorists linked with the Iranian regime in Gaza. Iran is the world’s leading exporter and bankroller of terrorists and their cat and mouse attempts to persuade Ashton and others that they have no intention of producing nuclear weapons is farcical.
It was even more ironic that Baroness Ashton set foot on Iranian soil on Saturday 8 March – International Women’s Day! Iran’s repression of women is globally renowned. In fact, on 4 March, the regime hanged a 25-year-old woman who had been held in prison since she was a teenager. She left behind a 10 year-old daughter. Another young woman of 26 who has been in prison for the past 7 years is about to be hanged because she resisted being raped. Indeed the mullahs’ main target of repression for many years has been women, many of whom are systematically raped, tortured and executed in Iranian prisons. You should understand that Mrs Rajavi’s own sister was executed, along with her husband, when she was pregnant. An Iranian woman has half the value of a man according to the medieval Sharia laws of the mullahs in Tehran. Her evidence in a Sharia court only counts as half that of a man’s evidence!
But it is not only women who suffer. Iran is a serial abuser of basic human rights and one of the leading proponents of the death penalty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us10TaSpvgs
In addition, Iran is the key supporter of the brutal Assad regime in Syria and regularly exports arms and military personnel through Iraq, to bolster Assad’s genocidal war against his own people. Iran has also started exporting arms to its neighbouring Shia puppet-state of Iraq, where the viciously sectarian and corrupt prime minister – Nouri al-Maliki – uses them in bloody attacks on the predominantly Sunni population of Fallujah and Ramadi, where hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed.
As Baroness Ashton sat in negotiations with the new, smiling and apparently moderate President Rouhani of Iran, perhaps she may have reflected on the fact that at least 600 people have been hanged, many in public, since he came to power less than 9 months ago. A few weeks ago, the mullahs’ Supreme Court approved a sentence to blind a man and cut off his ear and nose. 150 people have been hanged in Iran since the beginning of this year. Perhaps Baroness Ashton was able to ask how President Rouhani reconciles his ‘moderation’ with such barbarities.
Ashton’s visit will inevitably be used as a propaganda tool by the mullahs, who will assume that her presence denotes that the EU is not too concerned about these barbaric hangings and serial abuse of human rights. Indeed their contempt for the West was well illustrated last week when they appointed a known assassin as their new ambassador to the UN.
Sadly the EU High Representative’s visit will have brought no comfort to the oppressed masses of Iranian citizens, nor will it have in any way helped to promote our core European values of freedom, democracy, human rights, women’s rights, or law and justice to the evil mullah regime. The prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran are zero and Baroness Ashton’s attempts to wave a bit of paper in Brussels while declaring ‘Peace in our time’ are at best fatuous and at worst a dangerous illusion.
Last week a resolution on Iran was passed in the European Parliament which was much weaker than it should have been, however the Iranian authorities, from the President of the Majlis and the Foreign Minister, to Tehran’s Friday prayer leader, took turns in attacking the European parliament and EU for passing this resolution. They became quite hysterical and in fact have now cancelled a proposed visit by Iranian politicians to Strasbourg in protest. Every cloud has a silver lining!
Indeed the Brigadier-General who commands the Basij – the mullah’s Gestapo thugs – declared that MEPs were worse than 4-legged animals and demanded to know how we can dare to call for an end to executions in Iran. He told us to mind our own “damned business!” This clearly shows: first the vulnerability of the regime and their unwillingness to listen when it comes to human rights. They are afraid that the climate of fear may be lifted. Second it shows the regime’s complete lack of tolerance. It is obvious that if we had stood firm from the outset they would have retreated on many fronts.
Nor will Ashton’s visit to Tehran have stopped the mullahs from piling pressure on Nouri al-Maliki to kill or hand over the 3000 Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty. Since the Americans reneged on their pledge to guarantee the safety of these defenceless refugees, they have been harassed, psychologically tortured, deprived of food, medicines and basic necessities, bombed, shot, handcuffed and executed. We have seen endless hand-wringing in the West and pathetic calls for Maliki to hold those responsible to account. That’s like asking King Herod to take charge of the nursery! We have witnessed innumerable ambassadors and special envoys appointed by the US, UN and EU with a remit to resolve the Ashraf/Liberty problem. They come and go with tedious regularity and achieve nothing.
It seems now that the West has washed its hands of the bloodbath in Iraq. Distracted by Syria and Crimea, they no longer care that the Shiite fundamentalist sectarian government run by Nouri al Maliki is reducing the predominantly Sunni cities of Fallujah and Ramadi to rubble, killing and maiming hundreds of men, women and children daily, under the pretext that they are terrorists. Indeed America is even providing Maliki with the weapons to carry out these atrocities.
But I have a message for Ashton and for the 28 Foreign Ministers of the EU. You have failed to stop the mullahs from building a nuclear missile. You have failed to stop Bashir al Assad from massacring tens of thousands of his own citizens. You have failed even to prevent the annexation of Crimea by Vladimir Putin. Don’t you think that after this catalogue of failures it would be nice to score a major victory by rescuing the 3000 refugees in Camp Liberty? Would you not sleep more soundly in your beds at night knowing you had saved 3000 lives, rather than abandoning them to their inevitable fate? Think about it? You can achieve this breakthrough at the stroke of a pen. All it takes is courage. The world is watching you to see if you are mice or lions.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have led the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup for many years. It has been a great privilege to work with people of the magnitude of Mrs Rajavi, who embodies all of the characteristics of sound leadership, boundless energy and great courage. But it has also been a privilege to work with all of you, the supporters and friends of our movement who seek nothing more than the restoration of democracy, freedom, justice and respect for human rights in Iran.
Let me close by remembering the words of Victor Hugo:
“Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”
Iran has suffered a long period of darkness. The light of liberty has truly been eclipsed. But the mullahs’ days are numbered. The reappearance of the light is imminent; in fact we can see the first faint glimmers of dawn breaking through the blackness and the torch-bearers are the PMOI in Camp Liberty and their supporters around the world. I count myself privileged to say I am with them every step of the way. I am Ashrafi.