Mr. Makhmalbaf is a well known Iranian film maker. He has received many praises and rewards for his movies, However, this speech puts him at the level of all those Iranian freedom fighters who have risked every thing for democracy.
Please Read and Judge for yourself.
"European Parliament urgent meeting on Iran - 8 July 2009"
Ladies and Gentlemen; (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Honorable members of parliament,
I am here - as an Iranian, as an artist and as a representative of the
protestors who are being killed in Iran for the sake of democracy - to ask
you the following questions:
"If the passengers of an aircraft were taken hostage by a hijacker, would the
governments of the world side with the hijacker or with the passengers? Would
the nations and governments of the world declare that the hijacking is an
internal affair between the passengers and the hijacker, or take steps to
rescue the passengers?"
Do not imagine that the Iranian people's movement has ended with the
repression, killings, detentions and torture. Our movement against the coup
d'e'tat government has become an everyday part of our lives. You will see
that, through civil disobedience and non-violent struggle, the Iranian people
will ultimately topple this government.
You know that: Dozens of people have been killed. Thousands have been detained
and tortured. And many reporters - even foreign reporters - have been
arrested. Political figures who have objected to election rigging and
dictatorship have been arrested. Even the local employees of embassies in
Tehran have not been
spared and have been arrested; although they were performing the same jobs
that people do in the Islamic Republic of Iran's embassies abroad. And anyone
who speaks to any independent news source is at risk.
Iranians have the right to look at the world and to view as their enemy
anyone who helps this coup d'e'tat government and helps perpetuate it. The
people of
Iran
must not be sacrificed for their oil. It must not be that, as long as there
is oil and as long as there is a need for oil consumption in the world, other
governments give themselves the right to negotiate and strike deals with
those who hold the key to the flow of oil.
The rage that the last generation of Iranians felt towards the
United States and Britain
was because of the coup that they staged in Iran in 1953 against the popular
government of Dr Mohammad Mossadegh, and because of their cooperation with
the Shah's post-coup government. For more than half a century, this rage
prevented Iranians from being friends with the West. It also allowed a
demagogic State to rule over the people by exploiting this rage, thereby
depriving the civilized world of a highly-cultured ally. Let us not behave in
a way that will make the next generation of Iranians view Europe
in the same light. You must convey the message to the people of Iran that
today's world is a humane world, in which everyone is aware of other people's
suffering and nothing can make them indifferent to this suffering.
The Iranian people will deal with the coup-makers themselves. They do not
expect weapons or financial assistance from European governments. But
expecting Europeans not to view the coup d'e'tat government as a friend and a
partner is surely not an unusual expectation.
Iranians were wearing green wristbands and they only had one demand: announce
who we voted for; not who you wanted us to vote for. This has been enough to
earn them imprisonment and torture. Are you, the European people, going to
remain calm and silent, so that, thanks to the revenue it continues to earn
from oil, the Ahmadinejad government can continue to torture people? Do you
want it to train terrorists for the entire region and threaten others with
missiles?
Finally, let me continue by summarizing what Mr. Mir-Hussein Moussavi has
been saying in the statements he has published:
"The declared election results are astounding. The people who voted know that
they did not vote for Ahmadinejad. The Iranian people are vigilant and they
will not submit to those who come to power by rigging elections."
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