In a conference in Berlin on February 3, it was announced that 6,500 European jurists and lawyers, including 1,000 from Germany, signed a declaration which called on the European Union to remove the PMOI from its terror list. It was also announced that 1,300 parliamentarians from Europe have made the same demand which 200 of which were from Germany, an unprecedented support for the Iranian Resistance by the parliamentarians in that country.
German parliamentarians from different political parties also supported democratic change in Iran relying on people and their Resistance as proposed by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Several folders containing signatures of the parliamentarians and the jurists were displayed before the press in the conference.
Supporting this latest initiative a number of German personalities addressed the conference which was chaired by Bernd Haeusler, a distinguished lawyer from Berlin, deputy chair and spokesman on human rights at the Berlin Bar Association.
Ingrid Holzhuter, former Social Democratic member of the German Bundstag, spoke of her long standing relationship with the Iranian Resistance and many of its members and testified that people in the resistance are fully devoted to the cause of a free Iran. She regretted that the movement to liberate Iran led by the People’s Mojahedin Organization was not widely known by the German public but she was pleased to say that a large number of her group in the Bundestag were signatories to the statement in support of the PMOI.
Frank Hammer, PDS member of the Bundstag, also expressed his satisfaction for the high number of support from his group for the statement and said it was time for Europe to change its policy on Iranian regime and described the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the PMOI as reliable allies in future Iran.
Briefing the conference, Javad Dabiran, press spokesman of the NCRI in Germany, said that the high number of support for the statement on Iran and the Resistance was the result of three weeks of activities by Iranian and German supporters of the NCRI. He presented a declaration signed by 12,000 Iraqi jurists and lawyers which expressed full support for the PMOI rejecting all allegations of its involvement in suppression of Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite minorities.
Other speakers at the conference included, Prof. Wilkens, a Christian theologian with an in-depth knowledge of Judaism and Islam, made a clear distinction between mullahs’ fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and that of the PMOI.
Prof. Brocke, former head of the Political Science and Economics Department of Berlin University made an emotional address on the damages suffered by the PMOI and the democratic movement in Iran by the unjust terrorist designation by the EU and called for its immediate removal.
The conference ended with messages of solidarity from various Iranian and German groups and personalities.