Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-17-Speech-4-423-000"
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"en.20111117.22.4-423-000"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of the High Representative and the Commission as a whole, I welcome this resolution.
We use public diplomacy: the impressive number of public statements this year on human rights in Iran reflects the gravity of the situation. Nothing more or less than that. In order to reach out to an Iranian public, the statements are translated into Farsi and posted on the web with alerts from the High Representative via Twitter.
In Tehran and in Brussels, EU services continue to demarche Iran on human rights cases, seeking information and conveying our messages strongly.
The United Nations’ General Assembly will this year again consider a resolution on human rights in Iran, which enjoys full EU backing. We also want access to Iran for the United Nations special rapporteur, Dr Shaheed, whose mandate was created at our initiative.
In April and in October this year, EU Foreign Ministers adopted the list of 61 Iranian individuals responsible for great human rights violations. So we are not going against the Iranian people, we are going against Iranian individuals. Their assets in the EU are frozen and they cannot travel here.
In parallel to the sanctions, we have let Iran know that we are open for contacts on human rights.
Let me finish by saying that there is unfortunately no country in the world that receives as much attention on human rights from the EU as Iran does. This House should have no doubt about our determination to do what we can to promote and protect human rights in Iran. I know the European Parliament shares this extreme concern and I thank you for that.
I would like to stress that the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran is dreadful and is deteriorating. Abuses committed by the Iranian authorities are harming more and more individuals and organisations and worsening the climate of fear and suspicion.
Human rights defenders, lawyers, political leaders, students and journalists are harassed, imprisoned, sometimes tortured. Religious minorities, homosexuals, women’s activists, artists and film-makers are also targeted.
Iran continues to ignore its international obligations and its people have nowhere to turn. Frequent arrests of human rights defenders and lawyers, the interruptions of Internet and the interceptions of mobile phone communications, the situation of religious minorities, the continued house arrest of political leaders and the extremely high number of executions are sad and striking illustrations of this trend.
A lot of you referred to some special cases, so let me also give you some information.
Referring to the Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, we are on the same line as Parliament. Iran must live up to its international human rights obligations, also on freedom of religion. The High Representative has publicly called on Iran to release Mr Nadarkhani and drop the apostasy charges against him, and is following this case closely.
We are also on your side and have condemned publicly the detention and sentencing of prominent film-makers and artists you have referred to: Jafar Panahi and Mrs Vafamehr. We welcome the release of Mrs Vafamehr, but remain very concerned at the targeting of the artistic community which threatens the expression of artistic freedom.
We agree with your call on Iran to put a moratorium on the death penalty and to help all pending cases. An issue of particular concern is the execution of juvenile offenders, as happened last September. This is really appalling.
The European Union is therefore actively working on trying to improve the human rights situation in Iran. Let me give you some examples of our actions."@en1
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