Back to Brief on Iran
THE HAGUE - Thousands of Iranian refugees and dissidents marched in The Hague today to denounce Tehran's clerical regime and rally support for the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran made speeches, chanted and waved Iranian flags outside the Parliament building before marching through the streets. Organizers said up to 8,000 protesters took part.
Banners, projection screens and publicity stands filled the square in front of Parliament, where protesters shouted slogans against the Iranian government and handed out leaflets citing alleged executions, torture and other human rights abuses in Iran.
"We want the Dutch government to end support for the Iranian regime and boycott trade with them," said Vajihe Nabavian, a former teacher who left Iran over a decade ago. She said she came to the Netherlands after she was jailed for protesting the slayings of 16 of her students.
The protest coincided with today's
launch of a Dutch government review of its foreign policy with Iran. A
delegation of exiled Iranian resistance leaders met with the chairman of
the committee conducting the review.
Demonstrators Denounce Mullahs' Regime and Their Operatives in The Netherlands, Voice of America, September 7
Iranian pro-democracy activists demonstrated Tuesday in the Dutch city of The Hague to show support for recent student uprisings in Tehran and to condemn alleged human rights violations in their home country... The demonstrators also want the Dutch government to prosecute what they say are Iranian spies working in the Netherlands.
"Khatami, no. Mullahs, no." The message of the crowd was simple: no to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, "no" to a repressive clerical regime, and "yes" to human rights...
The protesters, organized by the National Council of Resistance in Iran, want an end to what they say is a religious dictatorship that has executed 120-thousand people in the past 20 years -- 450 of them since... Khatami came to power two years ago.
Iranian refugee and noted opposition symbol Mohtaram Kushali traveled to The Hague from France. She was one in a group of women at the demonstration holding pictures of the children they say were killed fighting the Iranian government. Mrs. Kushali lost six of her own -- five sons and a daughter.
"They've massacred tens of thousands of people and I've come to denounce this," she says. "I've also come to support the refugees in Holland. They're being treated badly. They're being sent back home to Iran under the pretext that things are going well."
The rally follows a petition to the
Dutch government signed by 30-thousand people who... want the Netherlands
to expel what they say are Iranian spies working to discredit exiled dissidents.
Another Pro-Khatami Daily Shut Down, Reuters, September 5
TEHRAN - Iranian authorities have forced a newspaper to close after it questioned the principle of Islamic retribution and printed a call for the supreme clerical leader to avoid factional politics, editors said on Sunday.
A member of the editorial board of the daily Neshat told Reuters publication was suspended after the hardline judge of the special Press Court on Saturday threatened to send in security forces if the newspaper published the next day.
The closure, the latest in a series
of attacks on the pro-Khatami press, follows a firestorm of criticism by
conservatives who accused Neshat of opposing the Islamic principle
of retribution -- summed up in the injunction "an eye for an eye" -- in
recent essays on capital punishment.
Rafsanjani Vows No Change in Vengeance Laws, Agence France Presse, September 3
TEHRAN - Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday repeated warnings to the pro-Khatami press after a paper proposed abolishing the death penalty and the Islamic law of vengeance.
"We will defend all the values and pillars of Islam with determination and force," Rafsanjani said, two days after Iran's supreme leader denounced any call to end Islamic punishments as the work of "apostates."
"The popular religious forces and volunteer militia will not tolerate attacks against their religious convictions," said Rafsanjani, who remains a powerful force in Iran's political life.
"Any attempt to weaken the foundations
of Islam is a coup against the country and the religion," he said during
his sermon at Friday's weekly prayers at Tehran University.