A demonstration against the death penalty in Iran took place this Tuesday, May 23 in Paris, a few steps from the embassy of the Islamic Republic, since the prefecture had prohibited the gathering from taking place in front of the building.
“ terrorist state », « criminal », « cruel diet “, Who “ kill », « ransom », « violates », « violates memories », « looted », « profane the graves “. The Tehran authorities took it for their rank, this Tuesday in Paris, near the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, protected of course by a prefectural decree issued for risk of “disturbing public order”.
We are not a disturbance of public order. They are the trouble with public order!
Dozens of people thus gathered at the Place d’Iéna, for lack of being able to approach the Iranian diplomatic representation, on the avenue, ” to say stop to the death penalty, stop to executions in Iran “. The water drop ” ? There hanging on May 19 of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi, in Ispahan, in the center of the country.
The same day, a sign of a further break in the social schizophrenia that reigns in Iran, residents of the capital let out their rage from their windows, their balconies, expressing themselves by all the means at their disposal. And in France, the lawyer Chirinne Ardakani, from the collective Iran justice, announced on RFI this meeting in Paris.
Neda d’Iran, Queers and Feminists for Iran Liberation, Azadi 4 Iran, the Collective of Franco-Iranian Caregivers, the Order of the Paris Bar, the National Bar Council, the Human Rights League, the International Federation for human rights, the League for the Defense of Human Rights in Iran, Together Against the Death Penalty, the Syndicate of Lawyers of France and finally Amnesty International have joined this call. Political figures came.
“Three children of the people”
” We are here to participate in the denunciation of the crimes perpetrated in Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini “Explains to RFI Jean-Claude Samouiller, president of Amnesty France. “ Iran is the second State that executes the most after China, he recalls, with a particularity : the death penalty is used to quell dissidents, against the right to demonstrate. »
These three men were given an unfair trial. We consider it a state crime.
” The pace of executions has intensified, especially over the past 20 days. We are talking about three hangings a day “, denounced Darya Djavahery-Farsi, of the Neda association of Iran. The participants mention enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, live ammunition, abuses of all kinds, and in particular torture in jails.
“ woman, life, freedom “, chanted many times the demonstrators. ” When Iranian women break their chains, women around the world move forward with them “, we could read on a sign in the audience. Or : ” Silence, we hang “. But also ” Poisoned schoolgirls, infanticide regime, Macron’s complicit silence “.
Among the French political figures: the vice-president of the National Assembly Valérie Rabault (PS), her comrades the socialist deputies Jérôme Guedj or Hervé Saulignac, but also their ecologist colleague Marine Tondelier or the president of the group La France insoumise au palais Bourbon, Mathilde Panot.
” When I received the message announcing the executions last Friday, I could not contain my emotions “, told the crowd Mr. Guedj, recalling that the tortured were “ three children of the people “, workers. ” We were horrified “added Ms. Panot, welcoming” the courageous mobilization of the men and women of Isfahan “.
Since September 16, the Iranian people have been engaged in a revolutionary process.
And the leader of the LFI deputies to press ” the power of the mullahs “, which does not hold “ more than by force “, she said, before expressing her deep concern and addressing her thoughts to Shahram Maarouf Mola, 22, convicted of “war against God”, and whom she sponsors. ” I think of him. I think of his relatives. Every minute counts. »
“The regime is at bay”
” This is not the first time that we have been forbidden to demonstrate in front of the embassy. It’s been years. But we are here ! “, launched Karim Lahidji, Honorary President of FIDH, all fired up against “ the military-clerical regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world champion » executions of political opponents and prisoners of conscience.
This new prefectural decree was very badly perceived, as cowardice in the face of Tehran. ” It is not a coincidence, believes filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, interviewed by RFI. I think of the fact that french hostages recently returned. I’m happy about that, but you mustn’t trade with the devil. Do not negotiate under these conditions, because they will start again. »
>> To read also: France: rally in Paris for Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, detained in Iran
The director recalls that despite a drop in the intensity of international media coverage, the Iranian movement, since the end of 2022, has not stopped, but that since December, the regime had “ it seemed, changed strategy “, avoiding executions while attacking” THE school girls with chemical weapons “. These hangings have their effect.
” These three men, from their prison, had launched an appeal that moved the whole world “recalls Sepideh Farsi. And with the mobilization for them in Isfahan, the obvious procrastination of the authorities, ” we hoped “. Their death has really stirred up the anger, the despair of these Iranians who continue to fight “. ” People are no longer afraid “, she observes.
I think the regime is desperate. The world must follow us.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been shaken to its foundations since the end of last summer, and the launch of a considerable protest movement, in the streets, on social networks, in the wake of the death on September 16, 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, arrested three days earlier by the morality police for an improperly worn veil.
The participants in the demonstration ask the French political class, but also the EU and the entire international community, to seize with more vigor their fight for an Iran ” independent, free, secular, democratic “. They demand, for example, that the Revolutionary Guards be considered a terrorist organization.
Seeing Macron going to the UN to get a photo with Raïssi is unbearable.
>> To read also: Death penalty around the world: Amnesty International notes an upsurge
Paris defends itself from any “counterpart” to Iran
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs assures him, this Tuesday, May 23 on France 2: there would have been no ” consideration to the release of Frenchman Benjamin Brière and Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, released in Iran on May 12.
” I want to say it “, insists Catherine Colonna. ” We pleaded a lot at different levels with the Iranian authorities given their extremely poor state of health. “Explains the head of the Quai d’Orsay.
” They were both sick. Fortunately, they came out of this ordeal “says Ms. Colonna. It should also be noted that France itself has an embassy in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Tehran.
GI