Down with Islamic Republic
Date: August 23, 2019
Iran National Council for Free Elections remarks that the United States Treasury Department has placed the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on its sanctions list beginning two weeks ago. Zarif is a spokesman for a government that systematically spreads corruption and oppresses Iranian citizens. Women who make up one-half of the Iranian society comprise the largest number of victims of the Islamic Republic in the past four decades. While Iranian women fight for their basic rights, three young women named Mojgan Keshavarz, Monireh Arabshahi and Yasman Ariani have been sentenced to a total of 55 years in prison for protesting the compulsory Hijab laws. Lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years in prison with 148 lashes. Mohammad Javad Zarif takes advantage of the free media of democratic countries and falsely claims that Hijab is part of the Iranian culture.
Baha’i citizens are arrested and detained, they have been detained even at their cemetery, while Baha’i students are being barred from education, and the Baha’i shops and businesses are being shut down. Mohammad Javad Zarif, at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, openly and cleverly lied by stating “We do not recognize Baha’i religion, but this is a belief. One can be agnostic, one can be atheist. We are not going to jail them for being atheists.”
Zarif’s statements on atheism are categorical lies. Atheists and Baha’is alike are considered heretics and are punished one way or another.
While government security officials are entrapping homosexuals in social media and mistreating them in a violent, derogatory, and degrading manner, Javad Zarif falsely claims that gays are free to live as they wish as long as they are restricted to their homes.
Zarif said in an interview with Charlie Rose on April 29th, 2015 that “we are not imprisoning anyone in Iran for his beliefs.” Yet, Dr. Ahmad Jalali who is a dual citizen of Iran and Sweden is on the eve of execution in one of the dreaded prisons of the Islamic Republic. Nazanin Zaghari a British-Iranian Citizen has been held hostage and imprisoned.
In December 2017, Zarif claimed that “we have made it clear that we have not supplied these weapons to Yemen, “while Mehdi Taeb Head of Amar Camp, in a speech about Houthis and Saudi Arabia war, stated: “They (the Houthis) had only one solution to capture the Saudi Air Force. What did they need? Surface-to-surface missiles. This is something we (Islamic Republic) have a lot of and they didn’t have it!”
Javad Zarif denies the systematic violations of the rights of Iranian citizens and the tyrannical activities of Ali Khamenei’s government; and on the other hand, strives to justify or trivialize them by distorting the Islamic Republic’s inhumane laws. Last month, fourteen (14) civil and political activists (“The 14”) demanded (1) the resignation of Ali Khamenei, (2) dissolution of the Islamic Republic, and (3) holding free elections to achieve a secular democracy. Fourteen (14) women activists inside Iran also issued a separate statement.
A call for the formation a “Coalition of Committed” with the support of Iranians at home and abroad is being made within the framework of the statement signed by “The 14” whom the Islamic Republic’s security forces have brutally detained and imprisoned.
In the past two years, the Iranian regime has arrested thousands of protesters, civil and political activists, labor, and trade unions representatives.
Iran National Council for Free Elections reminds all European governments, Sweden, Norway, France, among others, that the presence of the Foreign Minister of a terrorist and inhumane government in democratic countries is insulting to human rights activists and freedom fighters in Iran and to citizens of democratic countries.
As Zarif tries to negotiate with European governments, we believe that in negotiating with the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic, the Europeans should also focus on the systematic violations of the rights of Iranian citizens.
Iran National Council for Free Elections believes that it is impossible to reform the Islamic regime. We are against any violence and war and we are against negotiating and dealing with agents of the Islamic Republic. The only way for democratic governments to support the Iranian people and to participate seriously in the international coalition of Committed of Iranian pro-democracy forces is to move away from the cruel and corrupt theocratic system of the Islamic Republic in order to achieve secular democracy in Iran.
We call for a transition from Islamic Republic to a free electoral constitution, calling for a Constituent Assembly of the Iranian people to draft a new constitution in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and principles of democracy and secular society.
