Int'l summit urges UN to take tougher action against Iran
A global summit of activists and political leaders on Friday called on the UN to get tough on Iran's "murderous, terrorist" government by implementing more powerful sanctions against the regime in Tehran.
A lot more than 100,000 persons from Europe, the US and Iran took part in the online Transatlantic Summit to Support a Free Iran, that was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), reports Arab News.
Included in this were Republican and Democratic US politicians who reserve domestic differences to become listed on the condemnation of the Iranian regime and demand a finish to its campaign of repression.Several speakers highlighted a "new wave of executions" in Iran stemming from mass protests that commenced in 2018 and surged again in November 2019 following the Iranian regime increased the cost of gasoline.
There was a global outcry this week after it had been announced on Sept. 12 that Navid Afkari, an Iranian national wrestling champion, have been executed. He was arrested through the 2018 protests and accused of killing a security guard, a charge he denied.
"His only crime was to go up up and fight to overthrow a regime which has devastated Iran and drenched it in blood while plundering the country," said Maryam Rajavi, the newly elected president of NCRI, during her opening remarks at the summit.
"The persons of Iran had been protesting for weeks against the death sentence handed down to him by (Iranian Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei's judiciary. The people of Iran, human-rights advocates, freedom lovers and athletes launched an unprecedented worldwide campaign to avoid the inhuman verdict. "Today, Navid Afkari lives on in the hearts and struggle of thousands of resistance units in Iran, (which) will continue to resist and rise for freedom and justice."
The Iranian leadership has a long history of executing activists who oppose its rule. In 1988, more than 30,000 protesters were rounded up and put to death. Rajavi said that Iran's leaders should face justice for those killings and the murders that followed in the following three decades.
"The knowledge of the past 40 years of the clerical regime's rule in Iran has displayed that it has continued its rule by committing 120,000 executions on political grounds, like the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, 90 percent of whom belonged to the PMOI," she added. "The regime has been condemned 66 times so far by the UN General Assembly, as well as in the Human Rights Commission and Council for its gross human rights violations."
Iran has spent a lot more than $30 billion to safeguard the regime of dictator Bashar Assad in neighboring Syria, Rajavi said, ordering Iranian militants and their allies deployed there to focus on and kill American soldiers and advisers.With American politics increasingly divided in the run-up to the presidential election on Nov. 3, there is a rare display of harmony between Republicans and Democrats.
The long list of speakers included Republicans such as for example Trump adviser and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former house speaker Newt Gingrich, and senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
On the Democratic side, senators Bob Menendez, Jeanne Shaheen and Kirsten Gillibrand, and former senator Joe Lieberman all called for tougher and more restrictive sanctions on Iran. "Iran is a regime of terror," Giuliani said during his live video address. "Every year brings a fresh year of violations of human rights, deprivation and terrorism."
Although most speakers looked to the near future, urging the UN to strengthen its sanctions against Iran, Giuliani took the opportunity to criticize former President Barack Obama for trying to "appease" Tehran in 2015 by agreeing to provide the Iranians $1 billion during the negotiations for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called nuclear deal, under which Iran decided to give up its research into nuclear weapons.
British MP David Jones said that the (JCPOA) and the failure to crack down on the Iranian regime had "encouraged them to pursue terrorism against its critics," including members of the united states Senate and Giuliani, who has been an outspoken critic of the regime for several years.
Other speakers including former general James Jones, who served during the Obama administration. He denounced the regime in Tehran as the one which partcipates in "scandalous, outrageous and unspeakable cruelty to their own people."
On Aug. 14, the UN Security Council rejected a US-led draft resolution calling for an extension of a UN arms embargo on Iran, which is due to expire in October. Trump is likely to announce this week that the united states will impose its embargo against Iran, and urge other nations to follow suit.Rajavi criticized the UN for failing woefully to act following the attacks on protesters last fall, or to condemn the execution of Afkari.
