- (i) adhere to internationally accepted norms of human rights
- (ii) comply with its nuclear obligations
- (iii) refrain from its continued sponsorship of terrorism
- (iv) refrain from its active interference and opposition to the Middle East peace process.
Yet despite the fact that Iran had failed to adhere to any of these preconditions, in their desperate lust for short term trade gains, the EU ignored its own preconditions and appeased the Iranian regime by entering into the Trade & Cooperation Agreement, supporting Iran’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation
Masoud Zabeti, President of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers – UK
The issue of human rights violations in Iran and proscription of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) were among the main topics discussed at the quarterly meeting of the British Bar Human Rights Committee on Wednesday, July 20.
Speakers at this meeting included Masoud Zabeti, President of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers, Dr May Dabbagh, on the rights of women in Saudi Arabia; and a Kurdish lawyer on human rights situation in Turkey.
Masoud Zabeti began by drawing the attention of the audience to the ever worsening situation of human rights in Iran. He quoted recent reports by Amnesty International, the European Parliament and the UN General Assembly, all strongly condemning the human rights situation in Iran, including the continued crackdown on dissidents, use of inhuman punishments and execution, and widespread and systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities. Zabeti stressed that various organs within the UN had condemned the mullahs’ human rights record on no less than 50 occasions.
By giving examples of cases, such as that of the execution of 30,000 political prisoners (mainly supporters and sympathisers of the PMOI) in 1988, the murder of Zahra Kazemi, the public hanging of 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi, the flogging to death of a 14-year-old boy for eating in public during the holly month of Ramadan, the 62 residents killed and over 1,000 arrested in Khuzistan province during the uprising in April and the case of two boys under the age of 18 executed on July 19, Zabeti highlighted the fact that the human rights situation in Iran had drastically deteriorated over the past 10 years. It was no coincidence that this worsening human rights situation had occurred at a time when appeasement of the Iranian regime has been the policy of the EU and the U.S.
Zabeti pointed out that a few years ago the EU had set four preconditions for improved relations with the Iranian regime and the signing of a Trade & Cooperation Agreement. These included the need for Iran to (i) adhere to internationally accepted norms of human rights, (ii) comply with its nuclear obligations, (iii) refrain from its continued sponsorship of terrorism, and (iv) refrain from its active interference and opposition to the Middle East peace process. Yet despite the fact that Iran had failed to adhere to any of these preconditions, in their desperate lust for short term trade gains, the EU ignored its own preconditions and appeased the Iranian regime by entering into the Trade & Cooperation Agreement, supporting Iran’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation and improving ties generally with Iran.
In such circumstances, the Iranian people had a right to be angered by EU policy, which has included turning a blind eye on daily suffering of Iranian people. Zabeti then went on to described what he called, “one of the worst acts of appeasement in the world since the Second World War”, the proscription of the PMOI. He stated that the PMOI had been warning for two decades about the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorism emanating from it. The heart of this ominous phenomenon beats in Tehran.
The President of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers expressed his shock and horror at the recent cowardly terrorist attacks in London. He stated that there was a need for effective and lawful measures against the scourge of terrorism, but that the fight against terrorism must be directed at real terrorists and their sponsors, not legitimate resistance movements. He also expressed regret that many countries are now using terrorist lists as a tool of foreign policy and as part of trade negotiations. In recent years there has been much talk of ‘regime change’. Well now terrorist lists are in some cases being used to ensure ‘no regime change’. In other words, for foreign policy reasons and in the desperate lust for short-term trade gains, certain Western countries have conspired with oppressive regimes to proscribe and place restrictions on the activities of their opposition movements, thereby prolonging the oppressive rule of such regimes.
Whilst the theocratic rulers of Iran have for many years been recognized as “the most active state sponsor of terrorism” and have sponsored and carried out over 450 terrorist acts around the world, from large-scale bombings to the assassination of their dissidents in Europe, in contrast, the main opposition to the Iranian regime, the PMOI, aims to establish a secular democracy in Iran, in which there exists a separation of church and state and a respect for human rights.
Further, (i) the PMOI ceased all military activities in June 2001, (ii) prior to June 2001, the PMOI’s military activities were confined to its own country and carried out against an indisputably repressive regime’s military and security apparatus in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, (iii) the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the recourse to armed opposition, as a last resort, as an inalienable right of any mass movement that reflects the will of the nation, (iv) in the Order before Parliament containing the list of terrorist organizations, the Secretary of State accepted that the PMOI had not “attacked UK or Western interests” and therefore it poses no threat to the UK, as its activities are confined to Iran, (v) after a 16-month investigation the Coalition recognized the status of members of the PMOI based along the Iraqi side of the Iran-Iraq border as “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention and they further recognized that they had found no evidence to link the PMOI to terrorism.
Zabeti further explained the origins of the terror label against the PMOI – i.e. the Irangate fiasco in the US. He quoted Martin Indyk, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs at the time of the PMOI designation, to Newsweek on 26 September 2002 in which he said, “[There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. At the time, President Khatami had recently been elected and was seen as a moderate. Top administration officials saw cracking down on the [PMOI], which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.”
Even more shocking, Zabeti pointed out that on October 21, 2004, AFP news agency reported that as part of the incentives/concessions to the Iranian regime in order to convince it to put an end to its uranium enrichment activities, the EU-3 pledge that “if Iran complies, we would continue to regard the MEK (PMOI) as a terrorist organisation.” Zabeti then quoted the words of Lord Slynn of Hadley in the European Parliament on December 15, 2005, when he said, “either the PMOI is a terrorist organisation or it is not. It cannot be a terrorist organization if the Iranian regime complies with its nuclear obligations and not a terrorist organisation if it does not.”
Zabeti concluded that these examples displayed clearly the political nature of the proscription of the PMOI. In this regard he also referred to various international legal conferences which had taken place in particular the conference in Paris on November 10, 2004, at which nine legal opinions by some of the world’s most renowned international legal experts all came to the conclusion that there was no legal basis for the inclusion of the PMOI in any terrorist list.