Rt Hon. David Jones, Deputy Chairman of the European Research Group since 2020, MP for Cloud West since 2005, former Secretary of State for Wales and former BREXIT Minister, addressed at the 2nd Day of The Free Iran World Summit on July 11, 2021.
Madam President-elect, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, people of Iran, and especially friends and residents of Ashraf 3, all of us attending this event today agreed that the future of Iran must be decided by the Iranian people. Madam Rajavi, you and your movement have spearheaded the quest for freedom.
You call for a boycott of the sham presidential election, and the majority of Iranians answered your call in a clear rejection of the theocratic dictatorship. Your movement and its resistance units inside Iran have helped the people to carry out this campaign by mobilizing the opposition to the regime and organizing protests across the country.
And that is why, as we can see by the strong attendance today and the boycott of the national election, that you have strong support among Iranians and among cross-party parliamentarians in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe. The momentum is growing in your favor at this critical moment in Iran’s history.
In contrast, in a sign of clear weakness and desperation, the regime and Supreme Leader chose a man who has been called the butcher of the 1988 massacre, Ebrahim Raisi as its president. This should be a source of alarm to the international community and reinforce the case for an investigation into the massacre– an inquiry that the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran has called for following Raisi’s emergence. The UK should now press the United Nations to launch an independent inquiry into the 1988 massacre.
The families of the victims and the entire Iranian people deserve that justice. And I know that such an inquiry has widespread cross-party support in both houses of the United Kingdom Parliament, and is the best way for the government to show the Iranian people that the United Kingdom stands with them, and not with their oppressors.
So, I and my colleagues will continue to petition the United Kingdom Government to stand with the Iranian people in their pursuit of justice, and to recognize the NCRI led by Madame Rajavi as the viable democratic alternative to the regime in Iran, that is such a menace to the Iranian people, and a threat to the wider world.
Madame Rajavi, your resistance has for the past 40 years advised the international community that the regime ruling Iran is not capable of reform. History has shown us that any attempt to unearth any ounce of real moderation within the regime is futile. Despite your sound guy who was a western pilot, instead of supporting the Iranian people in their resistance, pursued the wrong path by attempting to appease the Mullahs’ regime by prescribing your legitimate movement, dealing a heavy blow to the democratic will of the people of Iran.
The approach that you advocated all along was the correct one, and the one that the west pursued was wrong. For that, the western nation should be seeking to make amends to the Iranian people and bear the movement for democracy.
Madam Rajavi, all of us here today attending this remarkable event will stand with you until Iran is free.
