Political prisoner Narges Mohammadi calls for election boycott "out of respect for the blood of those killed in recent Iranian protests"
Narges Mohammadi, a civil rights activist imprisoned in Iran, published a short note referring to the repression and killing of protesters by the Islamic Republic government and called for a boycott of the Islamic Consultative Assembly elections.
In this note, published by Taghi Rahmani, the husband of Narges Mohammadi, on Tuesday, February 5, Mrs. Mohammadi called the Iranian people a peace-loving nation committed to justice and freedom who went to the polls demanding reform, but the government confronted the nation with crisis and repression.
This civil activist wrote: "The nation called on the government to exercise moderation, but extremism and street killings were the government's ruthless response."
Referring to the "street massacre and the government's brutal response" to the protests of the Iranian people and that the government does not tolerate any legal and peaceful means of popular protests, he called for an "election boycott" as the most civilized way to protest the government's narrow-minded and repressive policies, writing: "Out of respect for the blood of the innocently killed, let us not be present at the ballot boxes."
The parliamentary elections, which will be held on March 2, are the first elections after the bloody suppression of the protests in November this year.
The widespread disqualification of candidates to run in these elections prompted a response from Morgan Ortagus, a spokesperson for the US State Department, who wrote on Twitter that with the Guardian Council disqualifying many candidates for the parliamentary elections, all remaining candidates are the same.
Source: Voice of America
