EU Lawmakers Denounce Attacks Against Women, Rights Defenders in Iran

The European Parliament has condemned the “ongoing deterioration” of the human rights situation in Iran and called for the immediate release of all victims of arbitrary detention.

In a non-binding resolution adopted on November 23 by 516 votes to four, with 27 abstentions, the lawmakers slammed the "the brutal murders of women by the Iranian authorities.”

It cited Armita Geravand, a 16-year-old girl who died last month after being assaulted at a Tehran metro station for not wearing a mandatory headscarf, and Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in police custody in September last year after being detained on allegations of improperly wearing the hijab.

Amini’s death sparked nationwide protests against the Iranian establishment which were brutally put down by security forces. More than 500 people were killed in the repression and over 20,000 were arrested, including many journalists, human rights advocates and civil activists.

In October, the European Parliament awarded the EU's top rights award, the Sakharov Prize, to Amini and to the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement that sprang up after Amini’s death.

MEPs also called for the immediate release from detention of human rights defenders, including Narges Mohammadi who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month for keeping up her fight against the “oppression of women” in her country despite numerous arrests and spending years behind bars.

The European Parliament urged the Iranian authorities to “immediately end all discrimination against women and girls, including mandatory veiling,” and to “repeal all discriminatory gender laws.”

The lawmakers reiterated their call on the EU to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and to sanction “those responsible for human rights violations in Iran, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and Prosecutor-General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri.”

They also condemned the Islamic Republic’s "hostage diplomacy" under which many foreigners have been incarcerated in Iran for what activists and Western governments say is a tactic to extract concessions from the West, or the release of Iranians imprisoned abroad.