“The people of Iran are demanding what Mrs Rajavi has stood for, for decades”, MEP Stevenson

Stevenson“The people of Iran are well aware of the risk to their lives when they take to the streets to protest and to demand their basic rights. Their demands are not for the election of Moussavi, an issue which has long disappeared. They are demanding freedom. They are demanding democracy. They are demanding all of the things that Mrs Rajavi, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the PMOI have stood for, for decades,” said Struan Stevenson, MEP, in the European Parliament in Brussels on November 11.

The President of the delegation for relations with Iraq was speaking in a meeting organized by the parliamentary intergroup «Friends of a Free Iran» with Alejo-Vidal Quadras, EP Vice-President. Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Iranian Resistance, was the special guest.

Here are excerpts from Mr. Stevenson’s speech:

It is always a great pleasure to share a platform with Madame Rajavi at the European Parliament.

We have seen in video footage of the Iraqi attack on Camp Ashraf, the bravery of the Iranian opposition. On the 4th of November 2009, the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets of Iran risked their lives to protest against the regime. They were risking their lives, because that is literally what they are doing when they tore down posters of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and trampled upon those posters. They tore down posters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and trampled on them.

Ali Khamenei used to pretend and the regime used to support the pretence that he was all powerful because he had a direct link with God. We now know that he is all powerful over the people of Iran only through the barrel of a gun, brutality, and the suppression of the forces of good within Iran.

The people of Iran are well aware of the risk to their lives when they take to the streets to protest and to demand their basic rights. Their demands are not for the election of Moussavi, an issue which has long disappeared. They are demanding freedom. They are demanding democracy. They are demanding human rights. They are demanding respect for women’s rights. They are demanding all of the things that Mrs Rajavi, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the PMOI have stood for, for decades.

This is the manifesto of the PMOI and this is what the opposition to the mullahs’ offers as an alternative to the brutal oppression that we see. We here in the European Parliament, pride ourselves at being at the heart of democracy in Europe. We pride ourselves in supporting these freedoms, freedoms such as human rights, women’s rights, an end to the death penalty and a ban on nuclear weapons. We pride ourselves in pushing forward this agenda, but what do we do in the case of Iran and this naked aggression.

Where we see daily the Iranian regime’s race towards procuring nuclear warheads, we see this only as a result of intelligence provided to us by the PMOI. It was the PMOI that brought to the world’s attention Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. The western intelligence agencies had failed to discover this for themselves and the PMOI still risk their lives on a day to day basis to bring us updated intelligence. However, instead of embracing the opposition, we first of all put them on the EU terror list while they still remain on the US terror list. The governments who colluded in order to place the PMOI on the EU terror list fought through repeated court battles in order to preserve this illegitimate ban.

However with massive support from the forces of good on our side we prevailed and we now have some justice in Europe with the removal of the PMOI from the EU terror list, but we must still bring about the removal of the PMOI from the terror list in the US.

We have followed the path of appeasement. While the people of Iran, the young people take to the streets and show no fear, our government trembles in fear when they deal with the mullah’s regime. They fear losing their lucrative contracts. They fear losing commercial interests and they fear upsetting a government run even by oppressive dictators.

We follow the road of appeasement, a road that we have been down before. We went down that road in the 1930s when we confronted a similar brutal regime in Hitler’s Germany. Some of the sights that I have seen in the films of the Camp Ashraf attacks are just as reminiscent of films taken in the 1930s.

The attack on Camp Ashraf on the 28th of July 2009 involved armoured vehicles running down innocent unarmed civilians, who were then beaten to the ground while others were shot down, leaving 11 people killed. This occurred after months of us in this parliament and supporters of the NCRI warning that this would happen.

However, did the European Commission take action? No. Did Javier Solana take action? Did Ms Ferrero Walden take action? Did the UN step in? No! We were ignored. Eleven people lost their lives! 500 people were injured and 36 held hostage illegally in defiance of the justice system in Iraq itself.

The threat now is that Camp Ashraf will be forcibly closed down and the 3400 people who live there forcibly displaced to a desert area in southern Iraq. I have little doubt that if this occurs there will be a massacre. If 11 people were killed when Iraqi authorities forcibly moved into Camp Ashraf against an unarmed civilian refugee population, there will be a massacre if all 3400 people are forcibly moved and we will all of us collectively have the responsibility of blood on our hands. Is that what Europe wants? Why will the commission not take action? Why is the Red Cross not shouting from the rooftops that these people must be protected? What harm have they done? The Camp Ashraf residents have lived there for 23 years. They are unarmed and they are a threat to no one.

I am very happy to see the huge weight of support that the NCRI and the PMOI have within this parliament. Surely, collectively, all of our voices will be heard and all of our voices will make a difference. I have always believed that evil cannot prevail, especially for a regime that not only oppresses its own people but exports terror across the Middle East to all of its neighbours. This regime now threatens the entire stability of the Middle East and even beyond threatens the stability of global peace. Evil will not prevail and good will always win and I have seen today in this room the forces of good. Mrs Rajavi you have our pledge of support as you always have had in the past and I know one day all of us here will walk with you in a free Tehran.