MEPs outline support for Iranian resistance and Iranian protesters to whom the West is ‘indebted’
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday (6 October) urging a broadly co-ordinated international response to the domestic unrest and the associated crackdowns on dissent in Iran.
In advance of the resolution, more than 130 MEPs also signed their names to a statement that expressed support for the “Iranian people’s uprising” and condemned the “brutal suppression of protesters”.
In addition, the vote came one day after the Iranian Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi addressed the Friends of Free Iran intergroup at the European Parliament.
According to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, which maintains an extensive network inside the Islamic Republic, that suppression has claimed more than 400 lives since the uprising began in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s arrest and subsequent death at the hands of Tehran’s “morality police”. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman was visiting family in the capital on September 13 when she was accused of violating the Islamic dress code by wearing her hijab too loosely. She was then ushered into a van and beaten in transit to a police station, whereupon she fell into a coma and died three days later in hospital.
The incident immediately sparked massive popular outrage against the regime with crowds of of protesters chanting slogans like “death to the dictator”, “death to Khamenei,” the supreme leader. Many view the current uprising as a sea change in Iranian society and also a likely precursor to regime change.
“Today, Iran is on the brink of change, and women play a major role in the current uprising against this misogynist regime that denies women’s basic rights,” Mrs. Rajavi said in her remarks to members of the European Parliament. “The true objective of the men and women in Iran is regime change and the establishment of a free and democratic republic, based on separation of religion and state,” she added.
Mrs. Rajavi went on to emphasize that the Iranian people both expect and deserve international support in pursuit of that goal, That message was echoed in MEP’s accompanying statement, which said, “The prospect of change in Iran has never been this accessible. It is time to recognize the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves and to overthrow this regime and to establish a free and democratic Iran.”
In the interim, the statement by the MEPs underscored that “Resistance Units and the organized opposition are taking serious risks to play a vital role in organizing and sustaining these protests while putting up a resistance front against repression.”
According to the MEPs “the prospect of change in Iran has never been this accessible”. MEPs also stated “It is time to recognize the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves and to overthrow this regime and to establish a free and democratic Iran.”
The MEPs who were from from all political groups recommended taking concrete steps to minimize the Iranian regime’s repression of those democratic aspirations, as by referring its past and ongoing human rights abuses to the United Nations Security Council and making all future relations with the regime “contingent upon the halt of executions, domestic repression and crackdown on protests and dissent and a release of all those arrested during the recent uprising.”
These points were roughly echoed in Thursday’s formal resolution, which called upon the UN, “particularly its Human Rights Council, to launch without delay a comprehensive investigation into the events that have taken place in recent weeks, led by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The resolution also calls for an expansion in sanctions on human right abusers and “asks the EU and its Member States to use all engagements with the Iranian authorities to demand an immediate end to the violent crackdown against protests and the unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”
Both the resolution and the underlying statement highlight the importance of adopting any available measures that might guarantee the Iranian people access to the internet, which has been almost entirely cut off by authorities. Many citizens have managed to evade some of the regime’s restrictions using virtual private networks and other workarounds, thereby allowing information about the protests and crackdowns to continue leaking to the wider world. However, this represents a constant battle between the technical capabilities of civilians and the government, and there is widespread fear that more effective restrictions could lead to more aggressive crackdowns, as they did in November 2019.
On that occasion, a nationwide uprising broke out spontaneously in the wake of sharp increases to government-set gasoline prices, but authorities almost immediately shut down the internet and then began carrying out mass shootings of protesters in various localities. Within a matter of days, upward of 1,500 people were killed, and thousands of others were taken to detention facilities where a campaign of torture carried on for several months.
Retrospective accounts of those killings and that torture underscore what Javier Zarzalejos, co-chair of the Friends of Free Iran intergroup, called the Iranian people’s “long-term resilience against this regime” in his own remarks at the time if Mrs. Rajavi’s address to the European Parliament. “We are surprised by the courage of the Iranian people, especially women, during the demonstrations that are going on in Iran these days,” he said.
Zarzalejos stated that the European Union is “indebted” to the Iranian people for their efforts at standing up to the Islamist dictatorship. Thursday’s resolution arguably strives to pay that debt but demanding specific accountability for the acts of violent repression that have been carried out both during and prior to the current uprising.
According Jan Zahradil, a MEP from Czech Republic, the violence carried out by the regime these days was the last straw for those who still thought that it was possible to negotiate with this regime and that peaceful change was possible. Change is possible in Iran, there is only one precondition, and that is to stop concessions and negotiations with this regime and to stop appeasement. This policy has not worked, and it will not work.
The resolution by the European parliament urges the UN Human Rights Council to “establish an international investigative and accountability mechanism for human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian Government,” and also recommends that the EU and its member states “use all engagements with the Iranian authorities to demand an immediate end to the violent crackdown against protests and the unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”
Such recommendations closely parallel those which the Friend of Free Iran and other supporters of the Iranian Resistance have made with respect to a range of other unresolved human rights issues, including the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.
- Tags: Free Iran, mullahs' regime, Uprising
