Berlin convention demands new Iran policy

Iran Focus: Berlin, May 09 – Thousands of Iranians from
across Germany held their first-ever major convention in Berlin this afternoon, in which they rejected the policy of appeasement and a foreign war in dealing with the Tehran regime. The participants, who represented various Iranian communities throughout the country, declared their support for the “Third Option”, introduced by Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of
the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Iran Focus

Berlin, May 09 – Thousands of Iranians from across Germany held their first-ever major convention in Berlin this afternoon, in which they rejected the policy of appeasement and a foreign war in dealing with the Tehran regime. The participants, who represented various Iranian communities throughout the country, declared their support for the “Third Option”, introduced by Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Rajavi has called for democratic change, brought about by the Iranian people and their Resistance.

The Convention also called for the immediate removal of the terror label against the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), describing the label as “a serious obstacle to democratic change in Iran”.

It denounced “the unwarranted revocation of the status of a large number of Iranian refugees on the pretext of the terrorist list”, while condemning “intolerable pressures on Iranian asylum seekers” and calling on the German government to “end the policy of persecution and harassment of asylum seekers and provide security and accommodations for them”. It further urged Iranians residing in Germany to support asylum seekers and refugees who have been subjected to persecution.

Christoph Straesser, member of the Federal Parliament (Bundestag), Dietrich Thiede, Michel Panse and Mieke Senftleben, members of State Parliaments, and Rolf Goessner, president of the League of Human Rights of Germany, were among the large number of political and social personalities in Germany who addressed the convention.

The speakers expressed their support for the political alternative proposed by Rajavi, and stated that considering the increasing prospects of the clerical regime obtaining nuclear weapons, as well as the deteriorating situation of human rights in Iran, the time had come to adopt a decisive policy vis-à-vis the clerical regime.

Rajavi addressed the convention via a live satellite broadcast. She referred to a recent declaration signed by 2.8 million Iraqis, which condemned the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq and voiced support for the PMOI, and said, “The demands specified in the declaration by the Iraqi people have the same substance as your convention. They are demanding the recognition of the status of the People’s Mojahedin as a legitimate resistance movement. They are also asking the United States to remove the terror label against the Mojahedin, itself the biggest victim of state terrorism”.

She also condemned expulsion orders for Iranian refugees by Germany’s Interior Ministry, adding that this decision ran counter to the German constitution, which accorded refugee rights to those persecuted for political reasons.

The representatives of Iranian communities across Germany chanted slogans in support of the PMOI and waved the tri-coloured Iranian flag and portraits of the Resistance’s leaders.

The convention in Berlin followed a similar one in Brussels in late April, where some 2,000 delegates from Iranian communities in the Benelux – Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg – held their first-ever convention, where they supported the notion of democratic change in Iran through the Iranian people and their Resistance.