Strasbourg: around 12,000 people mobilized to support the demonstrations in Iran

Europe 1 with AFP 5:20 p.m., January 16, 2023

About 12,000 people according to the police, from all over Europe, demonstrated in Strasbourg on Monday to ask the European Union to blacklist the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's ideological army, " terrorist organizations".

The procession, submerged in Iranian flags, set off in the early afternoon towards the European Parliament where the monthly plenary session of MEPs begins on Monday.

Ask the Parliament to register "on the good side of history"

"We are coming together to make Iranian women and men heard in Europe and to ask the European Parliament to continue to be on the right side of history," centrist member of the Swedish parliament Alireza Akhondi told AFP. , organizer of the event.

"Without Europe's help, without us to be their voice, there will be no revolution in Iran," he added.

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Iran has been rocked by a wave of protests against power since the death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died three days after being arrested in Tehran by the morality police for having badly worn the Islamic veil.

Several people have been sentenced to death and executed in connection with the protests.

Their faces and names were displayed on placards held by demonstrators who repeatedly proclaimed the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom!", the rallying cry of the crowds currently protesting in Iran.

The long journey of an Iranian refugee in the Netherlands

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola spoke as the procession arrived in front of the institution's headquarters, assuring the demonstrators that MEPs were "with them".

"We will urge the international community to respond forcefully to the terror that has been unleashed by the regime on the people in the streets of Iran," she said.

Masoud Hamidifar, 38, an Iranian refugee in the Netherlands, set off on January 8 from The Hague, seat of the International Criminal Court, on a long journey on foot which will take him to Lyon where he committed suicide. Mohammad Moradi by throwing himself into the Rhône at the end of December to draw attention to his country.

He took a break in his journey which had already taken him to Brussels to be present at this rally in Strasbourg.

"We are all together to have one voice," he told AFP.

"We take advantage of our privilege of being European citizens to be able to defend this revolution and to bring them (the Iranians and especially the students, editor's note) a voice that they do not have", explain Sahar Aghakhani, 26, and Aida Tavakoli, 30, Franco-Iranian students who created a collective to support the protests in Iran.

Adding the Revolutionary Guards to the list of "terrorist" organizations, as the United States has already done, "would change a lot of things, both economically and geopolitically," said Sahar Aghakhani.