An 11 member delegation of European Union visited Iran on December 7-10 for the second interparliamentary meeting with Iran.
The Delegation met its interlocutors in the Majlis (Parliament) of the Islamic Republic of Iran (including the Speaker, Haddad Adel), members of government (in particular, Foreign Affairs Minister Manouchehr Mottaki) and senior officials, as well as officials of the UN agencies active in Iran. It also held a dialogue with members of Iranian “civil society,” including representatives of trade unions, women’s organizations, ethnic and religious minorities, and met Members of the diplomatic and business communities.
In its report the delegation also thanked ”in particular those who attended the meetings held “under the UN umbrella” in the UN headquarters in Tehran, and who in many cases ran personal risk in order to meet the Delegation and inform it on the situation in Iran. They asked the Delegation to transmit to the European Parliament and to the wider international Community a series of urgent requests” such as ”immediate liberation of arrested trade unionists”….”a stay of execution for Kurdish journalist Adnan Hassanpour”…..”end to the discrimination and harassment suffered by religious and ethnic minorities” …and ….” improvements in the area of women’s rights and family law, such as important amendments to the proposed “family protection bill” and the quick adoption of the “children and juvenile courts bill”
The Chair of the Delegation and the representative of the EP subcommittee on human rights met the families of students arrested in the first days of December in a nation-wide police action against student organizations. A list of 28 names of students (whose whereabouts and conditions were still unknown) was transmitted to the Iranian Majlis, with a call for immediate action in view of their liberation. The Chair of the Iranian Delegation, Dr. Mahmoud Mohammadi, undertook to raise this issue with the competent Iranian authorities. The list was also forwarded to the EU Presidency, with a call for rapid action.
Human rights were also discussed with the Iranian parliament, “particularly in the light of possible reform of Iran’s legislation on the death penalty, the age of legal responsibility and the execution of “child offenders”.