Britain’s vandalized embassy in Iran reopened on Sunday – with graffiti still daubed above a portrait of the Queen saying “Death to England,” The Telegraph reported.
The graffiti, one of numerous slogans sprayed across the embassy in Tehran when it was ransacked by a mob four years ago, had not been removed for the grand-reopening of the embassy, despite the attendance of VIPs including British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.
The Iranian regime’s officials claimed that removing the graffiti without damaging the building’s elegant Victorian walls required specialists who had not yet been brought in. “But there was surprise that the offending graffiti, which was written in Persian, had not been covered up in anyway prior to Mr Hammond’s visit. There were other signs of damage as well, including mirrors that were still broken,” The Telegraph added.
Britain’s embassy in Iran
Paying the first visit to Iran by a UK Foreign Secretary for almost 12 years, Mr. Hammond declared on Sunday there “should be no limit” to what Britain and Iran could achieve together when he reopened the UK Embassy in Tehran.
Britain has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds repairing the damage caused by the Iranian regime’s demonstrators almost four years ago. Even today, orange graffiti in the drawing room of the Ambassador’s residence reads: “Death to England.”
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran on Saturday said the British minister’s visit to Tehran amid mass executions would encourage more executions and betrays human rights and democratic values.
“The visit of Mr. Philip Hammond, the British foreign minister, to Tehran and his meeting with leaders of the religious fascism ruling Iran encourages the clerical regime to continue and intensify torture and killing and export of terrorism and fundamentalism. This visit and similar ones are against the national interests and the will of the Iranian people to overthrow the regime and establish democracy and popular sovereignty in Iran,” the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee said in a statement.
“The clerical regime leaders whom Philip Hammond will meet are among the officials responsible for 120,000 political executions including the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988 and the execution of more than 2000 prisoners during Rouhani’s tenure. During this period, in addition to the increase of executions, repression of and discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities has been intensified in an unprecedented way,” it added.
Graffiti in Persian reads ‘Death to England’ is seen above a picture of the Queen at the British Embassy in Tehran
Graffiti in Persian reads ‘Death to England’
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