In an international conference in Paris on the occasion of October 10th, the World Day against the Death Penalty, the main Iranian opposition Coalition (NCRI) declared: “Our plan is an Iran without the death penalty and obliterating the mullahs’ religious decrees.”The conference sponsored by the Committee Defending Human Rights in Iran, was entitled, “Iran, Human Rights, Stop Executions”. A number of European and international personalities, elected representatives of the people of France, as well as human rights and women’s rights advocates attended the meeting. From France, Gilbert Mitterrand, former member of the French National Assembly and President of France Libertés (Danielle Mitterrand) Foundation; prominent jurists and lawyers including Henry Leclerc, François Colcombet and Patrick Baudouin; Rama Yade, former Minister of Human Rights.
One of the speakers in the conference, Mr. Mark Williams, Member of Parliament from the United Kingdom declared in his speech: “I condemn the death penalty in Iran. The country which has the highest number of executions in the world per capita. Since Rouhani took office human rights have gotten worse in Iran.
Mr. Henri Leclerc, prominent French human rights lawyer, took the parole in defense of the rights of the Iranian people to resist against the mullahs’ regime. He also condemned the human rights violations and death penalties in Iran.
Rama Yade, former French Minister for Human Rights”: the flaw in the July 14 nuclear deal between the major world powers and the Iranian regime is that it ignores the human rights abuses by the regime. Turning a blind eye to the human rights violations in Iran only encourages the regime to commit more such abuses” she said.
Mr. Farzad Madadzadeh, a political prisoner who has been recently released after five years of imprisonment in the clerical regime’s torture chambers, and Pariya Kohandel, whose father is a political prisoner in the Gohardasht Prison of Karaj, both supporters of the PMOI in Iran who have recently left the country, spoke on the abysmal state of the Iranian people’s lives and the horrible prison conditions. Their speeches were among the most interesting segments of the “Iran, Human Rights, Stop Executions” conference. They urged international organizations to go beyond words in condemning the regime’s abuses and put on trial in international courts the Iranian regime leaders for their crimes, especially the 1988 massacre of 30,000 prisoners and the unrelenting, daily executions in Iran.
Elaborating on the Iranian Resistance’s plan for tomorrow’s free Iran, Mrs. Rajavi declared: ”Our plan for future is an Iran without the death penalty, obliterating the mullahs’ religious decrees and establishing an independent judiciary, defending democratic values, freedom, equality and sanctity of every citizen’s private life; no one will be arrested arbitrarily and torture is banned.”
The conference featured an exhibition in memory of 120,000 political prisoners executed on the orders of the religious dictatorship’s leaders in Iran, including the mass execution of 30,000 political prisoners massacred in 1988, an alleged sum of 30,000 prisoners. Also on display were sculptures and symbolic statues made by the Iranian Resistance’s sculptors.
The message of the Conference in short was that while a single execution is enough to torment everyone’s conscience, world powers have remained disgracefully silent over the situation in Iran, especially as they were engaged in the nuclear talks and were busy striking a deal that would open the path to doing business with the regime. Sacrificing human lives at the altar of commercial interests have never been a good investment for anyone. The world must stop its silence and inaction vis-à-vis executions and other atrocities in Iran. All forms of engagement with it must be conditioned on the halt to executions in Iran. As long as this sinister trend continues, there is no justification for reaching out to the mullahs. The world must respect the Iranian people’s resistance for freedom