Spanish lawmakers urge EU to take action over Iran’s human rights abuses

Some 35 Members of Parliament and Senators from Spain have signed a statement expressing their “deep concern” over “the terrible situation of human rights in Iran.”

The UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran has recently expressed alarmed about the ‘exponential increase’ of executions in Iran and estimated that over 1000 people could be hanged in Iran this year alone.

“While the EU and the world powers were negotiating over a nuclear deal with Iran, the government of the ‘moderate’ President Hassan Rouhani was busy hanging hundreds of its citizens, many of them in public,” the Spanish lawmakers said while expressing dismay over the silence by the European Union.

“We regret that very little - or nothing - has been said by the EU High Representative to condemn these inhuman practices.”

They called on EU High Representative Federica Mogherini to “publicly denounce human rights violations in Iran, call on the regime to halt the public executions and call on those responsible for these crimes against humanity to be brought before international courts.”

A new resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly has demanded that Tehran halt "widespread and serious restrictions, in law and in practice, on the right to freedom of expression, opinion, association, and peaceful assembly" of human rights activists and government critics.

The Spanish politicians urged the EU to precondition any expansion of relations with Iran to an improvement of the human rights situation in that country.

“The European Union which is defined by its democratic values and humanitarian principles should have put human rights as a top priority for any expansion of relationship with Iran,” they stressed.