Iranian feminine demonstrators win Sakharov Prize
Parliament awarded the 2023 Sakharov Freedom of Thought Prize to the late Zina Marsa Amini and the Women, Life and Freedom Movement, which has campaigned for stronger ladies’s rights in Iran.
Massive protests erupted in Iran after Amini died in police custody in September 2022 on suspicion of sporting a scarf inappropriately. The authorities launched a violent crackdown, arresting protesters and shutting down social media.
In response to those developments, on January 19, 2023, Parliament known as for additional sanctions towards the Iranian regime, stating that each one these answerable for human rights abuses ought to be topic to EU sanctions, whereas the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was declared an EU terrorist He mentioned that it ought to be added to the listing.
Congressional resolutions relating to Iran
Amini’s demise by the hands of Iranian police will not be the one time that members of parliament have spoken out towards gross human rights violations within the nation.
Congress is carefully monitoring the human rights scenario in Iran. In latest years, it has adopted varied resolutions to attract consideration to the situations by which each EU and Iranian nationals are held in prisons. these of human rights activists like Nasrin Sotoudeh, a outstanding human rights lawyer and winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2012; And that of girls’s rights advocates too. Lawmakers additionally criticized the violent crackdown on anti-government protests and condemned the introduction of the demise penalty within the nation.
The EU’s longstanding response to human rights violations in Iran
Relations with Iran have confirmed problematic for the reason that 1979 Islamic Revolution, with ladies’s rights specifically being restricted and the human rights scenario worsening 12 months by 12 months.
The EU has lengthy been involved concerning the scenario and imposed focused sanctions in 2011 in response to critical human rights violations within the nation. Additional restrictive measures have been imposed in March 2012 and have been prolonged yearly since.
In 2015, the EU helped attain a deal to cease Iran from creating nuclear weapons in change for sanctions aid. The scenario stalled in 2018 after the US withdrew from the settlement.