STATEMENT BY LORD CORBETT,
Chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom on the POAC decision that the government’s refusal to lift the ban on the PMOI is “perverse” and that the ban should be removed.
This is an historic day on the road to freedom and democracy for the Iranian people.
It signals that they do not stand alone and that we are on their side rather than on the side of those who have stolen freedom from them in the name of menacing Islamic fundamentalism.
It also signals an end to attempts by our government and others in the EU to persuade the
mullahs to abandon their bid for nuclear weapons and their role in killing British and other troops in Iraq. The last thing our world needs is the mullahs’ lethal mix of violent
fundamentalism and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
Iran will be free. This decision brings that day nearer and makes the mullahs no more than an historic nightmare.
This is also a landmark day for the majority of Members of Parliament and more than 200
members of the House of Lords – that is at least half of those who regularly attend – for their support for the Iranian Resistance who offer the chance of democracy and respect for human rights for both men and women. I want especially to thank them from all parties and the cross-benchers in the House of Lords for their consistent support. The fact that the mullahs use a Saudi diplomat as its agent in the UK to denigrate the Resistance is tribute enough to how effective your support has been.
The decision also signals that the Iranian Resistance – demonised, vilified, unjustly labeled terrorist – wants no more than to help the people of Iran to rid themselves of the misrule of the mullahs and the economic chaos which marks their time. There must be many who wonder why money can be found to develop nuclear weapons but people cannot get the petrol they need for their cars in an oil‐rich country.
This signal marks the end of attempts to appeal to a supposed better nature of the mullahs. The only result of that policy is that they are now much nearer to building nuclear weapons in their bid to spread militant Islamic fundamentalism around the region. This is the largest current and growing threat to peace and stability in our world.
I now invite the former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to apologise for the hurt and harm he has done to the Iranian Resistance by his supine agreement to the demands of the mullahs to proscribe the PMOI. He acknowledged when he banned them that they had no presence in the UK not any record of damage to UK or Western interests in the Middle East – a novel definition of terrorism.
This judgment will help the people of Iran to build a new country. The pledge of Mrs
Maryam Rajavi, President‐elect of the coalition NCRI which includes the PMOI, is for
freedom, democracy and social justice which ensures women have an equal share in the
nation’s affairs in an Iran which separates religion and State – a new Iran that can take its
place in the international community rather than being a loathed and dangerous pariah.
Iran will be free. This welcome judgment serves notice on the mullahs to step aside and let the people speak and decide on the democracy, freedom and human rights which, in their millions, they demand.
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
30 November 2007
Note to editors:
The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom is comprised of over 50 Members of
Parliament and Peers from across the political spectrum. It has the backing of the majority of MPs and more than 200 Peers in its endeavours for human rights and democracy in Iran.
The PMOI – Iran’s principal opposition force – is a member organisation in the main opposition
coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran. Some 120,000 of its members and sympathisers have been executed by the mullahs’ regime on political grounds. The NCRI was the first to alert the
international community to the regime’s secret nuclear projects in August 2002.
The PMOI were proscribed in the UK by then -Home Secretary Jack Straw MP in 2001. The same
proscription was used as the basis of the group’s inclusion in the EU’s terrorist list. On 12 December2006, however, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities in a landmark verdict “annulled” the EU’s decision to place the group in the terrorist list. At the UK Government’s bidding, the EU announced in June 2007 that it would maintain the PMOI in the list.
