NCRI – Members of the European Parliament last week lambasted European Union foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini for the lack of EU responsiveness to the appalling human rights situation in Iran.
Tunne Kelam, an MEP from Estonia and a longtime member of the Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI) intergroup at the European Parliament, told Ms. Mogherini during a debate on Iran that under Hassan Rouhani more than 2000 prisoners have been executed in Iran.
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The following is the text of the remarks by Mr. Tunne Kelam MEP on September 9, 2015:
Mr President, Madam Mogherini’s personal contribution and dedication is to be appreciated. However, the overall result of the [nuclear] deal has not been so convincing, because the Iranian nuclear programme has not been cancelled, just postponed, in the best case for 15 years. The result has been buying time. The question is, who is going to use this time more efficiently? It is up to us now to answer. The essence of the Iranian regime has not changed; the same undemocratic leaders have a notorious track record of broken commitments.
As there is no confidence, as Ms Mogherini admitted, the question is: will these leaders benefit from the new situation more than their partners? Asking for more concessions is impossible, because unfrozen assets will provide money for supporting Iranian proxies in the Middle East; the missile programme has been left out of the deal; part of the advanced centrifuges will be retained. But I think the central issue is our clear commitment to human and minority rights situations there. It is a basis of trust and any real progress. What alarms me most is that the human rights situation in the meantime has worsened, not improved. Under President Rouhani, there have been 2000 executions, many of them for political motives.
The European Parliament’s position has been very clear: in dealing with undemocratic partners, we have insisted that human rights should be mainstreamed in all agreements and be conducted parallel to economic and security deals, and I hope that it will be so.