NCRI – Supporters of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) in Finland rallied in Helsinki on Tuesday to protest the presence of the Iranian regime’s foreign minister Javad Zarif.
The Iranian protesters urged the Finnish government to focus on human rights in its relationship with Iran.
The PMOI (MEK) supporters reiterated that any improvement in ties between Finland and Iran’s regime should be based upon an improvement in human rights in Iran and in particular a halt to executions.
Some 2,400 executions have been carried out in Iran in the three years that Hassan Rouhani has been in office at the President of the mullahs’ regime.
Victims include political dissidents like Gholamreza Khosravi, a PMOI activist who was hanged solely for providing financial assistance to a satellite television station supporting the opposition.
On April 20, 2014 Rouhani described executions as the enforcement of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that belongs to the people.”
On March 10, 2016, Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council that executions in Iran surged to nearly 1,000 in 2015, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. The number of executions in 2015 was roughly double the number in 2010 and 10 times as many as in 2005.