David Jones is a former Welsh Secretary and is MP for Clwyd West.
It may not be over-optimistic to hope that we are on the brink of witnessing a new, robust policy by the West toward the ruling in theocracy in Iran.
For those of us who have viewed the human rights abuses with increasing despair over many years, it is a pivotal moment.
Iran has been rocked by a nationwide uprising for well over two months. The movement sparked by the killing of a young woman who supposedly violated the strict Islamic dress code quickly developed into a coordinated, popular challenge to the entire theocratic system and fundamentalist ideology that underlie such violations of Iranians’ basic rights.
In response to the unrest, agents of the regime have opened fire on crowds, often with live ammunition, sometimes with heavy weaponry. According to the leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), 660 protesters have been killed, with some 30,000 arrested or disappeared.
Some of the most heart-rending scenes have been of young children murdered by the Ayatollahs’ henchmen. At least 60 juveniles have been documented to have been shot dead.
Western powers have imposed multiple rounds of new sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities considered responsible for human rights violations. However, many observers have not unreasonably dismissed these gestures as merely symbolic. Supporters of the Iranian uprising have been consistently critical of the Western response for leaning heavily upon words of condemnation, at the expense of concrete actions to hold the regime accountable.
But there is a glimmer of hope that the West has eventually decided to adopt a more robust approach.
As a result of a resolution spearheaded by Germany and Iceland and backed by the UK, US, and other Western countries, as well as Latin American and African nations, the UN’s highest rights body, the Human Rights Council, last week condemned Iran’s repression of demonstrators, and voted to establish a factfinding mission to probe all alleged violations connected with Iran’s response to the ongoing protests.
This course of action has been recommended many times previously, particularly by Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the coalition of Iranian democratic opposition movements.
Sadly, such calls to action largely fell on deaf ears, with Western powers tending toward a softer approach, based on the mistaken belief that the Iranian regime was too politically secure to be challenged this way.
After the resolution, Rajavi stressed the need for the fact-finding mission to inspect the known and secret prisons of the regime and to consider the massacre around 30,000 political prisoners in 1988.
The current uprising, however, has been more effective than any previous action in shattering the misguided narrative that the mullahs are entrenched and have a solid grip on power.
The continuation of the protests for more than ten weeks, with the MEK-affiliated resistance units playing an important role every day in the streets of every major city, even as gunshots have rung out around them, leads inevitably to one conclusion: that there is a fast-growing, popular will in Iran to establish a free, democratic and secular republic in place of the ruling theocracy, which deserves the unalloyed support of the Western world.
No nation can turn a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s brutal response to this movement and expect to be taken seriously when it professes commitment to universal human rights or to democratic principles. Anyone who enjoys life in a modern, democratic nation should understand why so many Iranians seem willing to risk their very lives to make such a life possible for their loved ones and compatriots.
By the same token, Western citizens, and especially Western policymakers, should be appalled at the thought of so many people having to die for that cause in the 21st Century. They should be doing everything in their power to put an end to the killings.
And to that noble end, the UN resolution should be followed by the concrete political steps of recognising the absolute right of Iranian protesters to defend themselves when faced with ayatollahs’ savagery, and proscribing the IRGC, the principal agency of Tehran’s repression and terror.
Iranian people from all walks of life, ages, and ethnicities, with remarkable courage and with their blood, have clearly manifested their desire to bring about regime change for the betterment of Iran and the world. Is the free world now willing to show courage itself, and adopt a new policy that recognises that legitimate ambition?
We must fervently hope so.
David Jones is a former Welsh Secretary and is MP for Clwyd West.
It may not be over-optimistic to hope that we are on the brink of witnessing a new, robust policy by the West toward the ruling in theocracy in Iran.
For those of us who have viewed the human rights abuses with increasing despair over many years, it is a pivotal moment.
Iran has been rocked by a nationwide uprising for well over two months. The movement sparked by the killing of a young woman who supposedly violated the strict Islamic dress code quickly developed into a coordinated, popular challenge to the entire theocratic system and fundamentalist ideology that underlie such violations of Iranians’ basic rights.
In response to the unrest, agents of the regime have opened fire on crowds, often with live ammunition, sometimes with heavy weaponry. According to the leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK), 660 protesters have been killed, with some 30,000 arrested or disappeared.
Some of the most heart-rending scenes have been of young children murdered by the Ayatollahs’ henchmen. At least 60 juveniles have been documented to have been shot dead.
Western powers have imposed multiple rounds of new sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities considered responsible for human rights violations. However, many observers have not unreasonably dismissed these gestures as merely symbolic. Supporters of the Iranian uprising have been consistently critical of the Western response for leaning heavily upon words of condemnation, at the expense of concrete actions to hold the regime accountable.
But there is a glimmer of hope that the West has eventually decided to adopt a more robust approach.
As a result of a resolution spearheaded by Germany and Iceland and backed by the UK, US, and other Western countries, as well as Latin American and African nations, the UN’s highest rights body, the Human Rights Council, last week condemned Iran’s repression of demonstrators, and voted to establish a factfinding mission to probe all alleged violations connected with Iran’s response to the ongoing protests.
This course of action has been recommended many times previously, particularly by Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the coalition of Iranian democratic opposition movements.
Sadly, such calls to action largely fell on deaf ears, with Western powers tending toward a softer approach, based on the mistaken belief that the Iranian regime was too politically secure to be challenged this way.
After the resolution, Rajavi stressed the need for the fact-finding mission to inspect the known and secret prisons of the regime and to consider the massacre around 30,000 political prisoners in 1988.
The current uprising, however, has been more effective than any previous action in shattering the misguided narrative that the mullahs are entrenched and have a solid grip on power.
The continuation of the protests for more than ten weeks, with the MEK-affiliated resistance units playing an important role every day in the streets of every major city, even as gunshots have rung out around them, leads inevitably to one conclusion: that there is a fast-growing, popular will in Iran to establish a free, democratic and secular republic in place of the ruling theocracy, which deserves the unalloyed support of the Western world.
No nation can turn a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s brutal response to this movement and expect to be taken seriously when it professes commitment to universal human rights or to democratic principles. Anyone who enjoys life in a modern, democratic nation should understand why so many Iranians seem willing to risk their very lives to make such a life possible for their loved ones and compatriots.
By the same token, Western citizens, and especially Western policymakers, should be appalled at the thought of so many people having to die for that cause in the 21st Century. They should be doing everything in their power to put an end to the killings.
And to that noble end, the UN resolution should be followed by the concrete political steps of recognising the absolute right of Iranian protesters to defend themselves when faced with ayatollahs’ savagery, and proscribing the IRGC, the principal agency of Tehran’s repression and terror.
Iranian people from all walks of life, ages, and ethnicities, with remarkable courage and with their blood, have clearly manifested their desire to bring about regime change for the betterment of Iran and the world. Is the free world now willing to show courage itself, and adopt a new policy that recognises that legitimate ambition?
We must fervently hope so.