Dr. Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who speaks with such passion and authority on this very unpleasant subject.
At the start of last autumn, Mahsa Amini was not a household name, but in the aftermath of her supposed death in custody for mis-wearing a hijab, the 22-year-old has become the rallying cause behind a surge of popular protest. Protesters are often young, and they are often women who publicly remove their enforced headscarves and set them alight, chant for freedom, and cut their hair in defiance of a brutal theocratic regime. Men, too, have taken to the streets. Although the protesters are often just teenagers, the movement cuts across gender, generation and class.
Violent crackdown
And the regime’s response? Violent crackdown—more bloody suppression, killing, sham trials, and barbaric public executions, of which there have been four since December and there were two just this weekend. More than 100 are at imminent risk of execution. In addition, there is routine censorship, monitoring, and poverty, to the point that lack of water is a concern—predictably, the country’s gas and oil profits do not reach the people.
Recent mobilisations have reverberated, with solidarity protests across continents. My constituency has amassed the fourth-highest number of signatures to the two petitions that launched this debate. According to 2021 census figures, of all UK local authorities, Ealing has the fourth highest number of people born in Iran and the fourth highest—there is a pattern here—number of Iranian passport holders. I remember an influx of new classmates arriving from Tehran when I was at Montpelier Primary School in 1978, in anticipation of the Iranian revolution of 1979, following the unrest.
That revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini and his evil brand of the clerical rule to power
Because I was just six at the time, I was not really following the politics of it, but I do remember that England did not qualify for the World cup that year and “Blue Peter” suggested supporting Scotland. In our class, however, Iran was the top choice.
We can contrast those, for me, innocent days with the shame that our diaspora community felt this time around for supporting Iran, and by extension the Iranian regime. When the current team chose not to sing the national anthem in support of the ongoing protests—all 11 of them were in silence as the music played in that flashy stadium in Qatar—it was a massive statement, taking huge courage. It was truly sickening to see just this week the 26-year-old Iranian footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani sentenced to 16 years in prison for taking part in nationwide protests. The offense is sinisterly termed “partaking in enmity against God”, even though the laughably named morality police have been disbanded. We have heard the roll call of other names today.
This debate has sparked great interest among my constituents, and they have furnished me with shocking detail of what is unfolding back home to add to the statistics, where they are not shocking enough. Four months after the killing of Mahsa Amini, it is estimated that 516 protesters have been killed in anti-government protests in Iran. Many more have been maimed and tortured. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has said that the dead include 70 children, and approximately 70% of the population of Iran is under the age of 30. The number arrested is now at 19,200—it is going up by the minute—and that includes 687 students, and there are scary stories of how food in student canteens has been poisoned.
A lady in Ealing told me:
“My own cousin was abducted, blindfolded with her hands and feet tied, thrown in a van, and taken to an unknown location, all for chanting ‘freedom’. She’s 25 and was beaten so severely, then thrown off from the van, and she was so distorted she had no idea where she was. It took my family 24 hours to find her. We were however extremely lucky that she was not raped or killed…My cousins have to burn things such as paper or clothing to be able to breathe as it cancels the gases the regime releases in order to deter the protesters.”
Another constituent—she is ex-Montpelier Primary, like me, although she is a lot younger than me, as everyone seems to be nowadays—highlights how this repression is not new. She said:
“My father was also taken and put in the notorious Evin prison…nine years ago. They accused him of being a spy. He was 69 at the time and he experienced two months of solitary confinement and eventually went into a diabetic coma as they wouldn’t give him his meds. He nearly died.”
Others describe how minority populations, such as the Iranian Kurds and others from Balochistan, are even further at the sharp end of this brutal tyranny.
The Iranian regime does all it can to suppress protests and quell news of it spreading by cutting the internet and spreading a campaign of disinformation on state and social media. While it was reassuring to see our Foreign Secretary summon Iran’s most senior diplomat after the regime executed two more protesters only this weekend, after what the UN labeled as
“Unfair trials based on forced confessions”
widespread international condemnation, including from the EU and numerous nation-states must be matched with concrete action. We have heard a lot of suggestions today.
Why should women have men dictate what they do or do not wear, putting them in fear of violent reprisals? Iran is a signatory of international treaties and conventions that grant citizens, including women and children, basic rights and freedoms. Given the age of the protesters, these treaties should ensure those rights. The authorities have an obligation to respect freedom of expression and belief. Instead, Iran has hijacked a peaceful global religion with its twisted Shi’a sectarian anti-western worldview, and it calls itself “Islamic Republic”.
What can and should we do to support the Iranian people fighting for freedom? One Iranian-born woman who came to my advice surgery the other day was asking, “Why is my adopted country staying silent and harbouring criminals?” We have not exactly stayed silent, but we could do better. This House should express its solidarity with the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. There are five relatively easy steps that we could take immediately.
First, the Prime Minister must condemn the executions. We are talking about the death penalty here. We need to stop the executions. We should be looking into this notion of Members of this House acting as political sponsors—we have all had emails, and I am unsure how it works, and I would like to hear from the Minister about the exact mechanics—of those facing execution and imprisonment for exercising their right to peaceful protest following bogus trials.
Designate the Islamic RGC as a terrorist organisation
Secondly, we should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. They have done it in the US, France, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and those are all allies of ours.
Thirdly, there is something we can do even before banning the IRGC, which would be to extend sanctions beyond named IRGC regime officials to their close family members. It is an open secret that many of the regime’s family members and oligarchs live, has property and assets, and/or operate businesses in the UK. We saw Magnitsky-style sanctions come into action quickly after the invasion of Ukraine. The same thing should be happening with Iran. The Met police and the National Crime Agency could between them set up a unit to identify who these people are and seize their assets.
Fourthly, we must stop supplying anti-riot equipment directly or indirectly to the Iranian regime. It is a matter of shame that there is solid evidence that tear gas made in the UK has been used against protesters despite sanctions. That is shocking.
Fifthly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who was a long-time Ealing councilor, is no longer in his place, but he talked about the media—we must stop the closure of the BBC Persian service at this critical moment when it is needed more than ever. For Iranians, it is the only independent media source out there. It is unbelievable. The decision is putting hundreds of jobs at risk, and the service is due to have the plug pulled this April, despite having 18 million regular users. This happens as Iran shuts down the internet and imprisons journalists on spurious charges of terrorism, such as the two brave women who broke the Mahsa Amini story. Iran wants to curtail information flow, and we cannot allow that to happen.
Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst—these women’s names are inscribed in our history, and the struggles they fought led to action. Let Mahsa Amini’s death be the start of a different, new Iranian revolution toward freedom, justice, and democracy. It is time for “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi”—woman, life, freedom.
Click below to see the video:
Debate to Urge the UK Government to Include Iran’s IRGC on the List of Proscribed Terrorist