![\"Struan-Stevenson-London-21.04.2018\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/04\/Struan-Stevenson-London-21.04.2018.JPG\" "\\"Struan-Stevenson-London-21.04.2018\\"")
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The following speech was made by Mr. Stevenson in Hammersmith Town Hall, London on the occasion of the Iranian New Year.
Ladies & Gentlemen<\/p>\n
As a Scotsman, I am always happy to celebrate New Year, or Hogmany as we call it. So the opportunity to celebrate the Persian New Year in April is an added bonus! Happy Nowruz.<\/p>\n
Sadly, this is not a very happy new year for the 80 million oppressed, impoverished and brutalised Iranian citizens. In Iran, more than half the population of 80 million is under 30. Around a quarter of young people are jobless, more in some harder-hit regions. Yet Iran is one of the most pro-Western countries in the Middle East. But they are ruled by a clique of elderly, bearded, deeply corrupt mullahs, who have drained the country\u2019s rich oil resources to featherbed their own lavish lifestyles and to fund their policy of aggressive revolutionary expansionism. After 39 years of misrule, the economic situation inside Iran is dire.
The middle-class has all but been extinguished, apart from a few affluent neighbourhoods that house the extremely wealthy and largely corrupt clerics, revolutionary guards and key supporters of the theocratic regime.
Their clear frustration with the mullah-led regime boiled over with the uprisings, which exploded across Iran in 142 cities on 28th December last year and continued throughout January and indeed continues sporadically to this day. Millions of ordinary Iranians bravely risked their lives to join these mass public protests against the repressive theocratic regime. The widespread nature of these demonstrations is without precedent. Demonstrators chanting: \u201cDeath to the Islamic Republic\u201d and \u201cShame on you, mullahs,\u201d have shown that this is an uprising against the regime itself. Their chants of: \u201cDeath to Hezbollah\u201d and \u201cLeave Syria alone, think about us instead\u201d have shown that they are sick of their wealth being looted to fund proxy wars and terrorists throughout the Middle East.
Of course the mullahs reacted to the crisis in their usual, time-honoured fashion, sending in the regime\u2019s Gestapo, the IRGC, who gunned down dozens in the streets and arrested over 8,000 protesters, 14 of whom have already been tortured to death in prison. This is a new and horrifying phenomenon in a country that indulges in horror. Smarting from repeated criticism of their brazen use of the death penalty, the mullahs have now developed a new method for permanently silencing their political opponents. Fourteen of the students and young protesters who were arrested during the uprisings were tortured to death with the mullahs claiming that they were drug addicts who had died of overdoses, from drugs, which they had mysteriously managed to acquire in prison. The bodies of those who were returned to their families were mutilated, battered, broken and bruised.
Iran is the most repressive country in the Middle East; it is also the most corrupt. It executes more people, per capita, than any other country in the world. 90% of executions carried out across the Middle East, take place in Iran. The regime tightly controls the media and education. It is a misogynistic, homophobic and male-dominated society. While the top leaders live a life of luxury, anger has continued to build amongst the poor. Increased repression, mass arrests, public hangings and floggings are the regime\u2019s response, because what they fear more than anything is the popular fury of the masses spilling over into a new revolution, sweeping their fascist regime from power.<\/p>\n
Now the mullahs have blamed the recent wave of protests on the main democratic opposition movement, the People\u2019s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI or MEK). So the opposition movement, once dubbed by the mullahs as an insignificant grouplet, has suddenly been catapulted into pole position as the main agitator behind the uprising. According to the AFP news agency, President Rouhani even telephoned Emmanuel Macron on 3rd January, pleading with him to take action against the Paris-based PMOI and their leader Maryam Rajavi. Macron rejected Rouhani\u2019s demand.
The fact that the regime has now openly accused the PMOI of playing a leading role in the uprising has exposed their acknowledgement that indeed there is a democratic opposition led by Mrs Rajavi; there is an organized resistance and an alternative to the ruling theocracy. Mrs Rajavi\u2019s 10-point political platform, calling for a secular, parliamentary government, human rights, women\u2019s rights, an end to the death penalty, and an end to the nuclear threat, is something that the majority of Iranians now crave.
It is sad and disgraceful that here in the West we think that \u201cconstructive dialogue\u201d with the mullahs is sufficient, while they export war and terror throughout the Middle East. We close our eyes to the daily abuse of human rights, because we don\u2019t want to derail the chance for rich, commercial contracts with this evil regime. We block our ears to the screams of the tortured and oppressed, because we believe that our policy of appeasement will suffice. Well it is time that we woke up.
And the Iranian people know that they are no longer isolated in their demand for change. In America, both Republicans and Democrats have at long last recognized the Iranian regime as the Godfather of terror. It is time the UK government and the EU did likewise. We must make sure that Europe will be on the side of the Iranian people and not on the side of the mullahs. Business and commerce must never be allowed to trump human rights.
I should add that I sincerely believe that when we help the Iranian democratic opposition, it is not just for democracy and human rights in Iran, but it is also a chance for all of us to play a small role in history and to respond to our collective conscience.
Let us hope that this Nowruz will indeed turn out to be a happy one, with the overthrow of the Ayatollahs and final victory for the people of Iran. Happy Nowruz.<\/p>\n
Struan Stevenson was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an international lecturer on the Middle East and is also president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) and Coordinator of Campaign for Iran Change (CIC).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The following speech was made by Mr. Stevenson in Hammersmith Town Hall, London on the occasion of the Iranian New Year.Ladies & Gentlemen As a Scotsman, I am always happy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":51099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[178],"class_list":{"0":"post-24674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran-a-world","8":"tag-save"},"yoast_head":"\n