Iran Focus
London, 13 Dec – Money poured into Iranian businesses will fund human rights abuses and terrorism, according to a British MEP.
Anthea McIntyre, MEP for the West Midlands, was one of the politicians invited to speak at a European Parliament conference regarding human rights in Iran last week.
She said: “[EU lawmakers are] advocating more trade and more business deals with this regime. Let us not forget that most of Iran’s economy is run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards not by ordinary Iranian businessmen. So, the EU policy has encouraged the mullahs to continue their internal repression and to carry on crimes in Syria in support of Bashar Assad.”
The Iranian regime has been bolstering the Syrian Regime by sending their own troops to help the dictator stay in power against the democratic resistance, since 2011.
The conference, held on the eve of the UN’s Human Rights Day, condemned the violations of human rights in Iran and urged the EU High Representative, Federica Mogherini and EU member states to condition their relations with Iran on a halt to executions.
McIntyre highlighted that the West has been told for years that there are moderates within the Iranian Regime but moderates do not execute over 1,000 people in a year.
She said: “More people have been hanged under the so-called “moderate” Rouhani than during the time of Ahmadinejad. Rouhani has not said a word against these executions. Indeed, he defends the death sentences as the rule of God. Religious and ethnic minorities are suppressed more than ever before.”
She noted that we were promised that improvements to this would come with the 2015 nuclear deal but they have not emerged.
McIntyre praised the Iranian opposition leader, Maryam Rajavi who is President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Rajavi, who leads the anti-fundamentalist movement, has a strong belief in a secular democracy and opposes the death penalty.
McIntyre said that the mass execution of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 represents a failure on the part of the international community to bring the mullahs to task over the barbarity. The very idea that the people who committed such an atrocity could still be in power brought shame on the free world.
She urged Mogherini to condemn the 1988 massacre as a crime against humanity.
She said: “We must demand a stop to the executions of children. We must demand justice for women. We must demand respect for human rights. The people of Iran expect us from Europe to stand up for them, and not to ignore their suffering. We should side with the people of Iran and not with the brutal dictators in Iran.”
The meeting held on Wednesday, December 7, was organised by the Friends of a Free Iran within the European Parliament; this is a bipartisan group with the support of 300 MEPs.
Other speakers at the event included the former Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and a political prisoner who was imprisoned in Iran.
