European parliamentarians quizzed Zarif about human rights violations in Iran

EU-Iran relations should not improve at the expense of human rights, members of Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament said in Tuesday’s debate with the Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

In his first-ever visit to the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, members told him “the human rights situation in Iran, the death penalty, public executions and the prosecution of bloggers and journalists are unacceptable and will serve as a litmus test for future relations,” according to a report published on the Parliament’s website.

Reuters reported: “European parliamentarians quizzed Zarif about alleged human rights violations in Iran, Iranian defense spending and nuclear activity and Tehran's stance on Middle East conflicts that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes, spurring a large influx of refugees into Europe.”

Meanwhile Iranians in Brussels protested the visit by the foreign minister of the clerical regime in Tehran. They gathered on Monday outside the Brussels justice department, the Belgian news agency Belga reported.

“The demonstrators stressed that Iran has reached a world record with over 2,300 executions since Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013.”

“They called on the European Union to make the establishment of economic relations with Iran conditional upon an advance in terms of human rights.”

"To the Iranian people, the most important issue is the defense of their rights, not the nuclear issue", Belga quoted an activist of the National Council of Resistance of Iran as saying.

"The Iranian regime uses the country’s money for repression inside the country and Assad in the war in Syria."