0715 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. President Ahmadinejad, using the Eid al-Adha holiday for a break from the economic and political tensions that have engulfed him this month, addressed a ceremony honouring Navy forces in Hormuzgan Province in southern Iran on Saturday: “The Islamic Republic of Iran, using regional potentials and forces, has the power to establish and stabilize security in the [Persian Gulf] region.”
Ahmadinejad ruled out the presence of foreign military troops, “Aliens, proclaiming [efforts] to establish security in the Persian Gulf, with any motivation and under any pretext whatsoever, can never achieve success.”
0555 GMT: Five members of the European Parliament were supposed to arrive in Tehran today for talks with Iranian officials. On Saturday, however, the trip was cancelled, in a telling display of the regime's sensitivity --- and silence --- over human rights and its political prisoners.
The MPs asked to meet prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, imprisoned since September 2010 and serving a six-year sentence, and film director Jafar Panahi, under threat of a summons to prison for his six-year term. On Friday, the two had been awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for their expression and defence of human rights, despite the threats and punishment of the regime.
Iranian authorities refused. The MPs announced they would not make the journey to Tehran.
That is not the end of the story, however. The Islamic Republic had proclaimed the visit as a sign that, despite sanctions, Europeans still recognised and wanted to work with the regime, so now it had to explain why this would not occur. At the same time, officials did not want to draw attention to political prisoners such as Sotoudeh, noted for her defence of other activists, and Panahi, internationally acclaimed and now barred from filmmaking for 20 years.
So MPs who spoke for the regime found another excuse. Kazem Jalali of the National Security Committee said:
The European parliament is under the influence of the Zionist regime when making some important decisions, and...since the very first day, the Zionist lobby voiced opposition to the EU delegation's visit to Iran and made the EU parliament call off the trip, and this shows the EU's lack of independence.
Fars carried Jalali's words without mentioning the political prisoners at all; Press TV said, "The [European Parliament] officials requested on Friday to meet two Iranian nationals, who have been sentenced to prison on charges of breaching Iran's national security."
The regime game continues this morning. Press TV has refused to post a comment noting that the "two Iranian nationals" are Sotoudeh and Panahi. Instead, it features Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the National Security Committee, to repeat the line, “This decision by the European Parliament’s delegation proved that they lack the power to take serious decisions [independently] of the Zionists’ pressure and elements outside this parliament."
Posted via email from lissping
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.