NCRI CONFERENCE
Wednesday, 7 June
2pm-3:30pm
Room N, Portcullis House, Westminster, London
I’m very proud of the fact that the Iran Statement, supporting the Iranian uprising, recognizing the protesters’ legitimate demand for regime change, and supporting the main democratic opposition movement the NCRI/MEK, has been signed by 82 out of 129 members of the Scottish parliament. The statement has now gained significant support by 3,000 MPs and senators worldwide, including a majority in the US Congress, Northern Ireland, Wales, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia, and more. We anticipate gaining a majority in France, Germany, and other countries soon.
Indeed, in a breakthrough that has rocked the tyrannical Iranian regime and sent shockwaves across the bows of Western appeasers, 109 former world leaders have now signed a similar joint statement of solidarity with the people of Iran, showing their support for the NCRI and the MEK. Signatories include 50 former Presidents, 47 former Prime Ministers, one former Chancellor, and nine other former Heads of State from across the world. Two former Presidents of the European Commission and three Nobel Peace Prize laureates are also among those who signed. Mike Pence, former US Vice President has recently added his signature.
Those who have signed the statements have shown their outright support for Mrs Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan as a blueprint for Iran’s future, built upon the pillars of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, within a secular and democratic republic. It is a platform on which I would be proud to stand as a parliamentary candidate.
The mullahs’ regime has, of course, gone into overdrive to spread abusive and offensive propaganda about this initiative and the NCRI and MEK, labelling them as extremist organisations, in an effort to counter this groundswell of international support. Having supported the NCRI and MEK for more than 20 years, I am very familiar with the regime’s demonization tactics and the way they spread defamations and deceptions. But such entreaties are absurd and worthless.
Since the most recent nationwide uprising in Iran began in September last year, the clerical regime has struggled to restore order, facing the dawning realization that it may never succeed in doing so. Women, who have been at the forefront of the protests, continue to go about their daily lives without wearing the legally mandated hijab, despite threats of increasingly draconian punishment for violating the Islamic dress code. Meanwhile, videos continue to reach social media from cities and towns across the country, showing that young women and men are still chanting provocative, anti-government slogans on a nightly basis, in open defiance of a brutal crackdown, which has left more than 750 people dead, 30,000 arrested and precipitated a huge surge of executions by the regime, designed to terrorize the dissenters. More than 144 people, including several women, were executed last month alone. Two weeks ago, the regime executed 3 young men arrested during the protests after torturing them into making false confessions. Dozens of prisoners on death row are currently being transferred to solitary cells to await execution.
As it seems that nothing Western nations have done in the past has altered the egregious behaviour of the theocratic regime, we now ask the UK government to take a lead in seeking to protect the Iranian people from this ongoing carnage. The only sure way of signalling your support for the people of Iran will be to blacklist the IRGC. Sanctions are clearly not enough. It is time to show strength and to show the 27 EU Member States that the UK is prepared to adopt a leadership role in this situation. It is particularly important at this time when the appeasers have surpassed their usual policy of fawning supplication.
Last week, in a scandalous prisoner swap that drove a cart and horses through the European justice system, the Belgian government freed the Iranian diplomat terrorist Assadollah Assadi, who had been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for arranging a lethal bomb attack on a major NCRI rally in 2018. He was sent home to a hero’s welcome in exchange for a Belgian charity worker who had been taken hostage by the mullahs and sentenced to 40 years jail, $1 million fine and 74 lashes on trumped up espionage charges. By succumbing to the Iranian regime’s outrageous hostage diplomacy, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and his government have simply emboldened the mullahs to perpetrate further acts of terror in the EU in the knowledge that they can ensure the release of their terrorists by taking hostages and committing criminal blackmail.
This appalling act of appeasement was compounded by the news that the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum in Geneva, intends to appoint an ambassador from Iran’s theocratic fascist regime as their chair in November? The appointment of Ambassador Ali Bahreini will make a mockery of the universal declaration of human rights and international conventions, given that Iran is the leading violator of these principles.
As the clerical regime enters its terminal phase, it is high time for the world to take concrete measures to hold the mullahs accountable for their appalling human rights violations. Iranians must be allowed to exercise their fundamental human rights without fear of reprisal.
Justice and freedom are contagious, and the world must support the Iranian people in taking down their tyrants.
