NCRI – The President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz has announced on his Twitter account that he has postponed his trip to Iran which had originally been scheduled for Tuesday.
A group of 18 prominent Iranian political prisoners had written to Mr. Schulz last week criticizing the lack of attention by European officials to the appalling state of human rights in Iran.
“As political prisoners in Iran’s prisons, we urge you not to victimize human rights of the political prisoners and those executed for trade and economic deals. Your relations with Iran without taking into account and condemning the grave human rights violations in Iran would make the sword of the regime’s executioners sharper over our head and would encourage the mullahs to increase the daily executions of the youth in this country,” the political prisoners said.
“As political prisoners, we wouldn’t welcome you shaking hands with the dictatorship ruling our homeland. However, if this is your decision to come to Iran, would you be kind enough to come to the prisons and torture chambers of this regime and visit us too so that we could inform you of the latest appalling situation of human rights violations in this land? We call on you to condemn the blatant human rights violations and arbitrary executions in Iran in your press conferences,” they added.
Also last week a group of 115 Members of the European Parliament wrote to Mr. Schulz urging him to denounce human rights abuses in Iran and call for an end to public executions.
The October 8 letter said in part: “It is regrettable that while the EU and the world powers were negotiating over a nuclear deal with Iran, the government of the ‘moderate’ President Hassan Rouhani was busy hanging hundreds of its citizens, many of them in public. Amnesty International released a shocking report that 700 executions took place in Iran only during the first six months of this year.”
“Rouhani himself has defended these executions and has stated clearly on Iranian TV that death sentences ‘are the law of God’ and must be implemented. Nearly all of the opposition activists in prison before he was elected are still in prison and some have been executed,” the MEPs said.
“While Iran is boasting about improved ties with the west, the European Parliament which represents half a billion European citizens with common democratic values has a duty to put human rights as a top priority for any expansion of relationship with this regime, setting an example for our EU governments,” the letter added.