European Parliament calls to put relationship with Iran under condition

More than 270 Members of the European Parliament call the EU and member states to condition further relations with Iran with regards to “a clear progress on human rights and a halt to executions.”
By Violetta Rusheva
Violetta Rusheva is a journalist at New Europe.


In a statement published today by the office of Gérard Deprez, a Belgian MEP and President of the Friends of a Free Iran group in the European Parliament, more than 270 MEPs call into question the democratic reforms in Iran.

“We are extremely worried about the rising number of executions in Iran. Since the ‘moderate’ President Rouhani took office in August 2013, several thousand people have been hanged in Iran. Moreover, in a public speech on Iranian television, President Rouhani described executions as a “good law” and “the law of God!” the statement says.

The MEPs urge the EU and member states “to condition any further relations with Iran” until progress on human rights improvements is reached there. Deprez, commenting on the letter from Brussels, added that “it will be a great damage to the European credibility, if EU does not insist publicly and seriously on improvement of human rights.”

“This statement as well as the support of MEPs of the Iranian opposition leader, Maryam Rajavi, shows that the elected representatives of the European people have rightly put human rights and democratic values before economic interests and ‘business as usual,” Firouz Mahvi, a representative of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said.

Amnesty International in its report on Iran harshly condemned the situation with Human Rights in the country saying that: “torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained common and was committed with impunity, whereas women and members of ethnic and religious minorities faced pervasive discrimination in law and in practice.”