UK conference supports Iran protests
On Tuesday, a group of cross-party MPs and members of House of Lords attended a conference in the House of Commons, in support of the recent protests in Iran.
At the UK conference, speakers advised that the popular protests, which began in December 2017 and never really died down despite a brutal crackdown by the mullahs that has killed thousands, are the Iranian people’s way of rejecting the regime as a whole and demanding a democratic, free Iran.
MPs and Peers in a cross-party conference call on the UK Government to support #IranProtests & stand with the #Iran people and their just Resistance Movement led by Mrs. @Maryam_Rajavi for a #FreeIran2020 @BorisJohnson @foreignoffice @DominicRaabhttps://t.co/JPc5b4grHB pic.twitter.com/gSTnIzahc6
— Dowlat Nowrouzi (@DowlatNowrouzi) January 21, 2020
MP Matthew Offord, who chaired the UK conference, urged the UK government to work with the EU to ensure a firm policy on Iran, which would include labelling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s Intelligence Ministry as terrorist organisations to deny it the resources it needs to suppress protesters and export terrorism.
Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), sent a message to the UK conference where she thanked the speakers for supporting the right of the Iranian people to resistance.
She said: “The Iran uprising will not be stopped. The struggle of the people of Iran, the resistance units, and rebellious youth will continue to end the religious fascism. We are at a sensitive moment in the history of the people of Iran. The Iranian Resistance seeks to establish a republic based on people’s free choice and vote, separation of religion and state, pluralism, gender equality, and the abolition of the death penalty.”
David Jones, former Secretary of State for Wales, said that the UK Government should stand with the Iranian people and the NCRI and support their democratic aspirations. In the short term, he said, this would involve working with international allies to support the Iranian protesters and pressure the regime to “immediately release all political prisoners, dual citizens and those arrested in the recent popular uprisings”.
This was seconded by Professor Lord Alton of Liverpool who said that the regime killed at least 1,500 protesters during the November uprising and stressed that the regime has still not been held to account for the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.
While MP Steve McCabe supported Rajavi’s call for the United Nations Security Council to send a fact-finding mission to Iran to investigate the killing of protesters and reports of torture surrounding those arrested.
Other speakers at the UK conference included, Bob Blackman MP; Toby Perkins MP; Jim Shannon MP; Ian Mearns MP; John Spellar MP; Lord Clarke of Hampstead CBE; Lord Singh of Wimbledon CBE; and Lord Cotter.
