Enda Kenny, Prime Minister of Ireland (2011-2017) addressed the first day of the Free Iran World Summit on July 1, 2023.
Enda Kenney: I Say to Iran’s Regime, Change Is on Its Way
The full text of Former Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenney’s remarks, is as follows:
Good evening. Madam Rajavi, you show you display a Biblical capacity to display your patience. You need it all for politics. Well done.
Thank you, Senator Chambers and the Irish delegation for your words and for the work that you’re doing and have done in the Senate and in the Irish Parliament in respect of Iran.
I believe strongly in the rights of Iranian people and every other people to live in a secular and democratic republic where no individual, regardless of religion or birthright, has any privilege over others. I come from Ireland. I’m a Catholic. I was never in Iran. But I do know something about your situation. I am opposed to the death penalty. And I’m a member of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. My country, which abolished this many years ago, will shortly join the support group of members against the Death Penalty. I too signed the letters of former Prime Ministers on this matter.
See we have a written constitution where the people are the masters and the government are servants, where the executive and the judiciary are clearly separated, where church and state are clearly separated, where the rights of children are enshrined in the constitution, where freedom of expression, of religion are universal and where equality of marriage and women’s rights to medical facilities have all been adopted by referendum of the people and enshrined into law and the Constitution.
Just because you come from a small country doesn’t mean actually that you can’t make an impression at a global level.
Iran was a founding member of the United Nations, and every day since that United Nations was founded, our country, a neutral country from a military point of view, has had troops, small in number in some locations on this planet on peacekeeping or peace enforcement duties. And it was in 1958 that an Irish Minister for External Affairs produced an Irish resolution that morphed into the first nuclear nonproliferation treaty, now of such importance to the globe.
And it was in September 2015 that the historic Sustainable Development Goals, chaired by Ireland, were brought before the United Nations, adopted by the United Nations, and signed by 193 countries of great importance to the rising generation.
This planet that we live on faces many challenges. Climate change, poverty, famine, sickness, areas of conflict and war, population explosion, genocide, illiteracy and ignorance, and many other problems can only be dealt with by cooperation and modern solutions. Unfortunately, too many millions live under the brutal regimes of the dictatorship of autocracy and moderate theocratic existence.
Iran is a case in point, and I know that the Iranian people reject such a philosophy. The march to freedom and democracy and equal rights is never easy. Nor will it be, nor has it been for the Iranian people.
As former Speaker Bercow will know, it took us a long time to achieve separation from the domination of the British Empire. 700 years. And it’s still not done in totality. But we’ve been very good friends for a long time.
Martin Luther King and his people had many years of peaceful protest for civil rights for black people and the right to vote for black people in the United States in the face of appalling brutality by a white police force before federal America responded.
Nelson Mandela campaigned for 27 years to end the apartheid regime in South Africa before achieving success in the right of millions of South African people to vote in free elections. In Ireland with a terrorist campaign for 30 years by the provisional IRA trying to wreck a fragile peace with the work of Britain, the United States and Europe, and everybody else concerned the civil rights movement peace was achieved and while our state is separated from the church, all of the religions in Ireland recommended restraint and understanding in the face of constant pressure.
I’ve heard most things today about Iran, but I read something recently that I think is worth repeating. In times of crisis where dictatorships apply, the normal story is to avoid the truth at all costs.
But one report that does not avoid the truth is the report by the United Nations on Rights in Iran published this March because it’s stark and riveting in its findings. Its author does not lie or ignore the truth of what is happening in Iran under this regime. Javaid Rehman deplored the brutal response of the government to nationwide protests that erupted last September after the arrest of Mahsa Amini and her violent beating while being transferred to the Vozara detention center in Tehran and her death subsequently in Kasra Hospital. I salute that young woman’s courage and bravery and resilience, and I hope that her spirit will stand for the Iranian people in the future.
That report also deals with the use of unlawful, lethal force against protesters and outlines specific instances where this happened. The report deals with the arrests and the detention of protesters. 18,000 arrested since the beginning of the protests, dozens of human rights defenders, 500 students, 45 lawyers, and 576 civil society activists.
That report also deals with the torture and the ill-treatment of protesters, including sexual abuse, and the sweeping crackdown on civil society, including human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and artists they are being charged with offenses and their communications methods being confiscated.
He also deals further in blatant truth with the harassment of families, the cover-up of human rights violations, the sentencing of protesters following grossly unfair trials, and the execution of at least 500 people in 2022, including two persons sentenced as children and 14 women.
The Aban Tribunal, which investigated the protests of 2019, issued its judgment on November 1st last year. Its findings, listen to this, unanimously established beyond reasonable doubt that the Iranian government and the security forces designed and implemented a plan to commit crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, and sexual violence in order to quell the protests and conceal the crimes committed.
To think that I was contacted before I came here by the Iranian embassy to tell me that I was going to meet terrorists and members of a cult.
Are these things happening in the eyes of the world? Why is Iran not fulfilling its international obligations under the conventions of the Right for the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? These findings do not make an Iran that you can be proud of. Nor does the funding of terrorists in the greater region to exercise destabilization, that does not make Iran to be proud of.
And most definitely the supplying of missiles and drones to Russia for the purpose of destroying Ukraine and the killing of thousands of innocent people in a totally illegal and appalling invasion do not make for a proud Iran.
And finally, to speak of the threat to use nuclear bombs to obliterate and destroy millions of people is simply beyond comprehension. But this regime has not gone and will become more paranoid, more brutal, more violent, and more dangerous before it fractures and fractures it will. And it will fracture in the face of overwhelming support for a new direction for Iran by millions of Iranian people who are not afraid to stand out in nonviolent and peaceful demonstrations for what are their legitimate aspirations.
How many people are prepared to do that in front of a police force that has directions from the very top not to show any leniency? And these figures in the United Nations report prove itself.
And when that regime falls, Madame, it will be as sudden as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the removal of the hated Ceausescu regime of 37 years in Romania. Then the real leaders, the young people of Iran must be given their opportunity, and no hiatus created to allow anything else.
They will then see the benefit of a democratic and secular state. You will have a new country, a new beginning, and a new and proud outlook where Iran’s message will be about life and living and not about death and destruction. Where the music and laughter of the children are heard in the schools and the homes not inhibited by fear and by dread.
And where young men and young women can follow their dreams and their ambitions in an Iran, secular and democratic in structure and focused on playing its part, sanctions-free in dealing with the common challenges of our humanity on this, our only planet, with the freedom and opportunity that that democracy brings.
So, I say to this regime; change will come. It is on its way. So whatever your creed is none. Whoever you worship and believe in is none. Remember and understand that every child is born with a purpose. And for children in Iran specifically, that purpose is not when they grow up to inflict brutality, torture, violence, sexual abuse, forced imprisonment, and execution on innocent fellow countrymen and countrywomen at the behest of any regime.
So let me leave the people of Iran with this thought; there is always a way to a better world. There is always hope for a better alternative. And your Ten-Point Plan is the basis for that new Iran.
This message of hope is best enshrined in the words of one of our famous poets, the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, in his poem ‘Cure of Troy’, where he says:
“History says don’t hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme. You are that tidal wave.”
Keep your courage, continue your journey and Iran will be proud again. Thank you.
