MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the death of Mahsa Amini and the repression of women’s rights protesters in Iran

B9‑0425/2022

European Parliament resolution on the death of Mahsa Amini and the repression of women’s rights protesters in Iran

(2022/2849(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Iran,

– having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,

– having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, to which Iran is a party,

– having regard to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1985,

– having regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989,

– having regard to the Iranian Constitution and, in particular, its safeguards against torture and arbitrary detention,

– having regard to the most recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,

– having regard to the Open Doors ‘2022 World Watch List Report’,

– having regard to Rule 132(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, originally from Saqqez in Kurdistan province, died after falling into a coma on 16 September 2022 following her arrest in Tehran by the Guidance Patrol, a special police squad in charge of the public implementation of Islamic hijab regulations; whereas she was arrested because her hijab did not meet the government’s mandatory hijab standards; whereas the police alleged that she died of heart failure, defining her death as an ‘unfortunate’ incident; whereas further evidence shows that she suffered fatal blows;

B. whereas the suppression of women is an undeniable characteristic of Islam; whereas since the early days of the Islamic Republic, women’s rights in Iran have been restricted and several laws imposed, including the enforcement of compulsory veiling;

C. whereas under the law of ‘compulsory veiling’ and the charge of ‘improper veiling’, the women of Iran have been denied of their most fundamental rights of freedom and have been harassed, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, flogged and even killed for defying the repressive laws imposed on them;

D. whereas the case has put the repression of women in Iran in the spotlight and has provoked protests against the laws on hijabs and against the regime’s hard-line crackdown on the most basic rights of the Iranian people;

E. whereas the death of Mahsa Amini has sparked the first large-scale demonstration of opposition on Iran’s streets since 2019 when the authorities crushed fuel price protests, resulting in the death of 1 500 people;

F. whereas in order to show their support, many women have taken to the streets – boldly standing up to police officers – and removed their headscarves, in many cases even setting them on fire, and whereas many women have also been cutting their hair in public;

G. whereas the protests have spilled over into 162 cities in all 31 provinces; whereas in the last two weeks, the number of peaceful protesters who have been killed by repressive state forces while demanding change to obtain their democratic rights, has exceeded 240 people as of 28 September 2022, while over 12 000 people have been arrested;

H. whereas solidarity has been shown in many parts of the world, including in Afghanistan, where 25 women protested in front of the Iranian embassy chanting the same slogan of ‘Women, life, freedom!’ used in demonstrations in Iran, before being dispersed by Taliban forces firing live rounds into the air;

I. whereas the Iranian security forces are continuing to target demonstrators opposing the conservative dress code for women in the country; whereas in the recent action against protestors, Iranian forces allegedly killed Hadis Najafi, a 20-year-old Iranian woman whose video of tying her unscarved hair back and boldly stepping into the middle of a protest went viral; whereas, according to reports, she was shot in the abdomen, neck, heart and hand;

J. whereas 13 people have been killed in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, as Iran launched missiles and armed drones at what it claimed were bases of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups blamed for their role in supporting the demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini; whereas this pretext is incorrect and promotes a misleading interpretation of the course of events;

K. whereas Iran’s President and cleric Ebrahim Raisi, who was already a member of the ‘death commission’ in Tehran in 1988, has been accused of persecuting thousands of political dissidents, of promoting systematic discrimination and impunity, and of the arbitrary and unlawful killing of Iranian citizens, many of them women and even children, in the course of committing past and ongoing crimes under international law;

L. whereas by disrupting and disconnecting the internet in large swathes of Iran, the regime is trying to prevent the transmission and dissemination of news about and images of the protests, to conceal the true dimensions of the uprising and prevent revelations regarding the scale of the massacre of protestors and their suppression;

M. whereas legislative developments in the Islamic Republic have further undermined the right to freedom of thought, of religion and belief; whereas Open Doors ranks Iran in ninth place in the top 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution; whereas converts from Islam to Christianity are particularly at risk of being persecuted; whereas concerns have been raised about amendments to the Penal Code, according to which spreading the Christian message could lead to prosecution;

N. whereas Iran does not recognise dual nationality and EU-Iranian dual nationals continue to be arrested and are often used to obtain leverage in state-to-state relations; whereas at least a dozen EU nationals are being arbitrarily detained in Iran, including French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, German-Iranian national Nahid Taghavi and Swedish-Iranian national Dr Ahmadreza Djalali;

1. Strongly condemns the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol; asks for an independent, transparent and credible investigation into her death, and that those responsible be held accountable;

2. Expresses its concern about the situation of women in Iran, whose rights have been restricted since the early days of the Islamic Republic; further expresses concern regarding the laws on compulsory veiling that have been enacted and enforced;

3. Expresses its solidarity with the women and other protesters who have taken to the streets boldly standing up to police officers to demand that their democratic rights be respected; stresses that these courageous actions by Iranian women have universal significance in terms of the struggle against oppression, the defence of women’s rights and the right to freedom of conscience, religion and dress, while the repression led by the Iranian Government stands for the negation of these rights and of the equal dignity of men and women;

4. Strongly condemns the vicious crackdown on demonstrators in Iran and calls on the Iranian regime to stop its continued, systematic and unacceptable violence against its own citizens, and to immediately release those who have been unfairly detained;

5. Deeply regrets the reaction of the EU and its failure to appreciate the underlying issues relating to the Muslim headscarf; notes that the EU’s reaction is a display of extremely problematic doublespeak where it pretends, on the one hand, to support Iranian women fighting for emancipation, while promoting, on the other, the wearing of the Muslim headscarf inside the EU; regrets the fact that the EU justifies this ambiguous stance by pretending to embrace freedom and tolerance;

6. Recalls that on various occasions, the EU has promoted the wearing of the Muslim headscarf either through funding or its official communications, such as on the occasion of European Youth Day, the ‘Freedom in Hijab’ campaign, the Commission’s partnership with the Islamist association FEMYSO, or the award of the European Innovative Teaching Award, the latter depicting a little girl wearing a veil; condemns these actions and calls on the Commission to review its policy in this regard and to immediately stop financing any association suspected of having links to radical Islam;

7. Condemns the Iranian regime’s internet shutdown and underlines the importance for the Iranian people of having free and unhindered access to the internet;

8. Calls on the Member States to put pressure on the Iranian regime to end the suppression of the Iranian people, and to end its support for terrorism in Europe, such as in the case of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in prison over a bomb plot, as well as elsewhere in the world;

9. Calls on the Member States to step up their efforts to improve the situation of dual nationals of EU Member States who have been unfairly detained in Iran;

10. Reiterates its concern about the situation of political prisoners who are being detained in inadequate conditions, often following unfair trials; expresses concern about the systematic use of prolonged solitary confinement, of arbitrary arrest or detention and the denial of access to medical treatments, visits and furlough in violation of Iran’s international obligations;

11. Deplores the fact that an EU diplomat attended the inauguration of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in August 2021, while many European countries boycotted the ceremony;

12. Underlines the importance of respecting the right to freedom of thought, of religion – including religious conversion – or belief, a universal human right; invites the Member States to support the Christian minorities in Iran;

13. Calls for the European Union to stand firmly on the side of the emancipation of women and girls, and of the recognition of their equal dignity;

14. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the UN Secretary-General, and the Supreme Leader and the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.