Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Iranians in UK struggle to free Iran from dictators

Op Ed from Birmingham Post

Iran and the United States started talking again yesterday for the first time in more than a quarter century, but Laila Jazayeri, director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women, argues that the Iranian regime remains an international threat.

The Iranian regime has long been lambasted for its human rights abuses and despicable attitude towards women. However, stoning to death, public hangings, amputation of limbs and torture have always seemed far away from British life.

Nowadays with many Iranians based in the UK due to political persecution in their homeland, many Britons have seen from videos smuggled out of Iran and heard first-hand the horrific ordeal that these Iranians have suffered under the suppressive dictatorship in Tehran.
Like other Iranians, the ones living in Birmingham continue their struggle in the UK, demanding that their country be free from the dictators ruling it so that their people can live in a democracy as they do here in the UK.

This struggle takes them on a journey south to London outside the British Foreign Office (FCO) where the Iranian community from across England gathers daily, demanding that the British Government stop its policy of appeasement towards the Iranian regime. Come rain or shine these demonstrators have gathered outside the FCO everyday making their demands clear.

They stand alongside those longing for freedom inside Iran. Students, teachers and public service workers have been showing their anger at their theocratic rulers by rallying in the streets and protesting at the suppression, torture and brutality handed out by the Iranian regime to its people. They do this in the full knowledge that attending such a demonstration may well lead to their death, with many demonstrators having been arrested, never to be heard of again.

This suppression has been a part of Iranian life for many years now, but its reality has gained greater prominence in Britain as the threat of the Iranian regime has spread far beyond its borders, to the streets of Iraq, where its bombs spill Iraqi blood daily, to the patrolling British personnel who are killed by Iranian-made roadside bombs and more recently to the British Navy personnel illegally arrested by Iranian revolutionary guards to then be forced into false confessions on TV.

The Iranian regime is now an extremely dangerous world threat, not only due to its undoubted attempts to acquire a nuclear bomb, but in its spread of a fundamentalist view of Islam. This spread of fundamentalism has led to the deaths of thousands across the world in terrorist acts such as those in London and Madrid. Failure to deal firmly with the Islamic fundamentalism emanating from Tehran undoubtedly leaves everyone roaming the city streets of England’s big cities in danger of such attacks.

This is no longer simply an issue solely for Iranians. This is why many MPs and lords frequent the indefinite rally outside the FCO. These include peers from the Birmingham area, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale and Lord King of West Bromwich. Lord Corbett has been at the forefront of the campaign to bring democracy to Iran for many years now and in this regard he chairs the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, a cross-party parliamentary group, which campaigns tirelessly for freedom and democracy in Iran.

The main slogan chanted by the demonstrators is, ‘No War, No Appeasement, Support Iran’s Resistance’. The British Government’s policy of attempting to appease the Iranian regime has only emboldened the mullahs. I point to Iran forging ahead with its nuclear weapons programme and its continued widespread sponsor of terrorism worldwide, including the illegal arrest of the British sailors, as clear evidence of the failures of this appeasement policy.

This appeasement policy has been followed to such an extent that former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw went as far as to proscribe the democratic Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), as terrorist in a despicable act of appeasement towards the Iranian regime. As he admitted in February 2006 on the BBC, the Iranian regime had demanded this of him, and he obliged.

This proscription in the UK led to the PMOI also being labelled as terrorist in the European Union. Knowing that this tag had no legal justification, the PMOI took the EU to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) where the court ruled in an unprecedented decision in favour of the PMOI. The decision was extremely clear in stating the PMOI should never have been placed on the list and must be removed with immediate effect.

However, the Government in its continued policy of attempting to appease the mullahs is shamefully continuing to proscribe the PMOI in direct breach of the rule of law.

More than 1,000 parliamentarians across Europe have demanded the immediate implementation of the ECJ’s judgment and a majority of UK parliamentarians have demanded the PMOI be de-proscribed immediately. This campaign has now led to 35 MPs and Lords appealing the proscription of the PMOI in the UK courts. This is an unprecedented action by a group of British parliamentarians and indicates the immense support that the organisation has not only amongst Iranians, but amongst parliamentarians worldwide.

In order to counteract the world threat posed by the Iranian regime we must support the democratic forces that struggle against this fundamentalist regime.

Such support must begin with the immediate removal of the PMOI from the blacklist. The Iranian regime must receive a clear message from the British Government that we support democracy and not dictatorship. A failure to do so will leave any prospect of democracy in Iraq in tatters and any prospect of a Middle East peace process dead in the water.

The Iraqi people have made their support for the PMOI clear with over 5.2 million Iraqis signing a petition demanding that the Iranian regime be expelled from Iraq and the PMOI be supported as the democratic organisation it is.

The PMOI espouses a moderate and democratic interpretation of Islam in direct contrast to the fundamentalist murderous Islam advocated from the Iranian mullahs. This is the Islam that must be supported not only to save the lives of the Iranian people, but also to save the lives of innocent Iraqis and the lives of us here in the UK.