October 31, 2010: Mission Free Iran Statement, Read in Front of the Embassies of Greece and Turkey

Iranian refugees have fled their home country to escape internationally recognized brutality, rape, torture and execution by the Islamic regime in power. Thousands have escaped to Greece and Turkey, yet find themselves in the midst of an ongoing crisis – a crisis that governments and the UN have refused to respond to effectively.

These refugees have come to Turkey and Greece seeking protection from the criminal Islamist regime in Iran which has, for the past nearly 32 years, subjected people in Iran to horrific rules belonging to a barbaric era. On the basis of these ‘holy’ rules, it has committed an entire catalogue of medieval crimes against the dissenters, the accused individuals, the youth, the women, the workers, the intellectuals, in short, against the entire society – a catalogue extending from flogging to imprisonment, amputation of limbs, torture, rape, execution, lynching, assassination and stoning.

Thanks to the on-going movement for freedom by people in Iran, as well as the lies of the representatives of the Islamic regime about their oppression of the people in Iran, the regime’s true murderous nature is now common knowledge worldwide. Iranian refugees in Turkey, Greece and other countries have escaped such conditions, and should by all rights be accepted as refugees with open arms and a minimum of ‘investigations.’ Their safety and security should be guaranteed in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Instead, they are faced with imprisonment, harassment from national authorities, threats from the Islamic Republic’s agents, and an utter lack of protection or effective advocacy from the UN’s Refugee Agency. Turkey gives a free hand to the agents of the Islamic Republic to threaten Iranian asylum seekers, and arrests refugees fleeing across the border for “illegal entry,” while Greece refuses to address the petitions of asylum-seekers, leaving them in an uncertain status in many cases for years. Iranian asylum-seekers who protest against this abuse by the Greek government receive not their rights as promised, but continued persecution by Greek police forces, which raid the refugees’ sit-in site, beat them and trash their belongings.

In both Turkey and Greece, they all suffer from poverty and lack of care for their health.

We refuse to allow these government to violate the rights of refugees in silence.

We stand up and demand that the rights of Iranian asylum-seekers – and all those seeking refuge worldwide – be upheld immediately.

We demand for them ASYLUM! PROTECTION! and NO FORCED RETURN!

And we will continue to press these demands until there is relief for refugees in Turkey and Greece.

Statement in PDF format