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Irish lawmaker: Iran’s ‘despotic’ regime must be held accountable

Peter Mathews

NCRI – The “despotic regime” ruling Iran, under the Presidency of Hassan Rouhani, is iron fisted and is choking the breath of the people of Iran, Mr. Peter Mathews, an Irish Member of Parliament, has said.

Mr. Peter Mathews TD addressed a Geneva conference on September 18 on the sidelines of the 30th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Iranians plan to rally outside the United Nations in New York on September 28 to denounce the visit by the mullahs’ President Hassan Rouhani to the UN General Assembly.

The rally, which is being organized by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities (OIAC), will press the international community to hold the regime in Iran accountable for its abhorrent human rights record.

The mullahs’ regime in Iran continues to execute more of its citizens per capita than any other U.N. member state. Some 2000 people have been executed under Rouhani in the past two years.

Text of remarks by Mr. Peter Mathews, Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament) from Ireland:

Human Rights Situation in the Middle East
Friday 18 September 2015 (15h30 – 17h00)
Palais des Nations – Room XXI

I am very honored to be speaking amongst such distinguished and experienced people here at the panel. I am a new comer to politics. I come from a country that is a small country with just under 5 million people. Next April we will be celebrating 100 years from the time of the rebellion that led to the independence of Ireland from England. The reason I just mentioned that is that Iran is a wonderful country. It has been at the bedrock foundation of the civilization of the human family in the Indo-European context. Some 75 million people live there, roughly half and half men and women, but the country is in the iron grip of a despotic regime that is iron fisted in its narrow fundamentalism by any measure, and it is choking the breath of the people of Iran. Isn’t it a shame to think that in Canada alone 30,000 doctors work there having qualified in Iran. Something is wrong when the conduct of a country run by a fundamentalist regime masquerading under parliamentary democracy under the leadership of state of President Rouhani who just does what he is told. It is up to us in the various countries from which we come to talk in plain talk in plain images of the suppression of such a wonderfully large people. The other speakers have told us about the summary executions. The presumption of guilt rather than innocence and proper distributions of justice. And the microcosmic expression of that pan-suppression of that people is seen in Camp Liberty [in Iraq, which houses thousands of members of the Iranian opposition PMOI, or MEK].

The shocking paradox of even the words is an oxymoron. It is a cement wall, a concrete T-wall, around roughly 3000 people who arrived after the Camp Ashraf massacre and who are imprisoned there while the so-called sophisticated democratic Western countries talk about it and do nothing about it. They run in and out of meetings at the UN, Europe and so on, they leave 3000 souls to be tortured and tormented, deprived of medicine and of food and of sanitation and failing to recognize which they in a sort of way did a few years ago that they are refugees. And they do merit the status of people being bullied directly and indirectly by a rotten government. It is up to all of us in our parliaments and our public places to get this story out there and to stop shuffling papers and lever arch files using committee language with multi-syllable words hugely complex and tiredly paragraphs meaning nothing. We saw what the world did when they saw that little poor three-year-old boy washed up on the shores of Turkey. See what an image, what a photograph can do.

We need to talk in pictures in terms of the 3000 souls [in Camp Liberty] in temperatures of 50 Celsius degrees and no air-conditioning because the Iraqi government and officials haven’t got the guts to be decent, and give them speedy fair processing so that they can bring their families to safer places outside of that camp. Whether it be in Iraq or in Europe or the United States or China or anywhere. That is what is needed. But the disfigurement of a country by what is essentially a cowardly regime. A regime that cannot answer simple questions in a straight forward and honest way. And that is why we have to keep asking questions in a simple and straight forward way and eye-ball them.

As I said, I am only a recent arrival in politics. But I do go to the committees, to the foreign affair committees and while I am put down towards the end of the queue for making a contribution I did ask the Iranian ambassador when he came with his acolytes. And you can even see it. In the physical presence you could see the creepy dishonesty of their presence. Talking sweet talk, sugared words meaning nothing.

I asked a couple of questions and I was told, ‘Please Peter. This isn’t on the agenda’. I said, ‘It should be on the agenda’. Because I asked, what is the net worth roughly of the supreme leader Khamenei?” Of course they dived for cover when I asked that question. But that is the question that reveals an awful lot. Because if the answer was given honestly it would have been multi-billions. That says a lot. Because we know that most human beings, when they get an awful lot of money they cannot handle it and they want more. And they want to buy power. That is the evidence over the ages of what happens.

But you have a great leader of Maryam Rajavi. She has a 10-point plan for the future. That is something that should be spoken of by all of us. Because we can see 10, we can handle 10. You move from units into 10 to hundreds to thousands. It is easy to picture it. The Americans have their congress, their senate and their democracy in the Pentagon a five-angled building. Well Iran might have that in double that and call it a decagon. The 10 points, one side of the decagon of the parliamentary building for each of those 10 cornerstones of true democracy, of gender equality, of human rights, of respect for human beings. Creation has given to us for manufacturing, to make things, our hands. And we have 10 digits in our hands. That is what we make. Our crafts, our writing, our films, whatever it is. Shaking hands, explaining things. 10. Keep it simple. Ten messages need to come from each and one of us in our close spheres of influence. Everything counts. The avalanche sometimes only happens because of a snowball and even more sensitive than that, a snowflake. The scale of justice which we can see in our imaginations of the two piles of sand on the balance scales; add a grain to one side and the scale swings. Everything makes a difference. But keep it simple.

I am very happy to do anything in the modest way that I can, anything to give encouragement from a distance, from near or from afar or through other human beings the encouragement. It is up to us to make Camp Liberty’s liberty a reality. And stop the prison that it has become. I wrote last Saturday to John Kerry, Secretary of State, at the invitation of suggestion of some of our colleagues. I hope the letter is read by him. I sort of used a distant connection, because my great grandmother was a sister of Mike Mansfield, the longest leader ever of the democrats of the US in the senate. So that made my grandmother and Mansfield first cousins. The letter pointed out the hugely intensive bullying that occurred only a week ago at the residents of Camp Liberty. It has got to stop. It has got to stop.

Thank you.

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