Request to the European Parliament: A minute of silence for Iran
Supporters of the 1min4iran campaign took to Twitter Sunday night to call on members of the European Parliament to observe a minute of silence during one of the parliamentary sessions this week in Strasbourg in honor of those killed in the November protests in Iran.
The idea originated from an Iranian citizen living in Sweden; Kourosh Qaysari shared the idea of a minute of silence for Iranians living in Europe in honor of those killed in the November protests with Damon Golriz. The researcher also changed the idea to silence in the European Parliament.
Damon Golriz tells the Swedish citizen that it would be better to share this idea with the Swedish representative in the European Parliament. The result of Mr. Qaysari's contact with the Swedish representative in the European Parliament was a letter that was signed by 17 members of the European Parliament from 12 different countries and presented to the President of the European Parliament.
During this week's sessions of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, which will take place from today, December 15, to Thursday, December 18, the Speaker of the House will decide whether or not to hold a minute of silence in honor of the Iranian dead.
In order to draw special attention to this issue, a Twitter storm was launched at 9 pm on Sunday, December 14, with the hashtag #1min4iran.
Damon Golriz, in an interview with DW, emphasizes that this campaign does not belong to any group, faction or political party and is only the idea of Iranian citizens living in Europe. He says that most Iranian users with different views have supported this campaign and that this hashtag has received a relatively good response and has “taken off the charts,” so to speak.
Several members of the European Parliament have also retweeted the hashtag and have actually supported it.
Given the relatively good relations that the European Union currently has with Iran, and the recent addition of six other European countries to INSTEX, the financial mechanism for European trade exchanges with Iran, how much hope is there that members of the European Parliament will respond positively to this campaign?
Damon Golriz, explaining that the function and nature of the European Parliament is different from the Foreign Policy Committee and the trade relations of the Union, to which INSTEX is related, says that issues such as democracy, human rights, and an open society are more important to the representatives of the European Parliament than political and trade relations, and these are the same values that, according to him, "the Iranian people have been fighting for for more than 150 years."
For this reason, this lecturer at The Hague University believes that "focusing on members of the European Parliament to speak out with the Iranian people will have the greatest political result, not an executive result like INSTEX."
If members of the European Parliament accept this request and observe a minute of silence in honor of those killed in the protests in Iran, what effect will this action have?
Damon Golriz says: "Politically and in the media, it shows that the voice of the Iranian people has been heard, and even if this does not happen, this will put additional pressure on European representatives, for you and I to ask them why they did not take this action?"
According to this researcher, the result of such an action could be manifested in various areas, including greater European support for the United States in sanctioning officials of the Islamic Republic, or allocating more budget to Persian-language media in order to focus more on the events of November 2019.
The next step for those who launched this campaign, according to Damon Golriz, is to make the same request to representatives of European parliaments, so that Iranian citizens living in Europe ask representatives of their country of residence to observe a minute of silence in the country's parliament in honor of those killed in the November protests.
According to Damon Golriz, the one-minute silence movement is a very low-cost movement that is not easy to oppose, meaning that no one can simply oppose expressing silence in protest of the killing of hundreds of people in a country.
On Monday afternoon, Swedish MEP Charlie Wymers announced that his party had succeeded in getting a resolution condemning the massacre of the Iranian people to a vote in the parliament. The results of this vote will be announced on Wednesday afternoon, December 17.
Source: DW
