Human Rights Day Speech at the European Parliament on Iran
Maryam Rajavi: In Iran, the Mullahs Hang Human Rights, Every Single Day!
Honorable representatives,
Dear friends,
Today’s conference takes place on International Human Rights Day.
It is the day for peoples who refuse to let torture, hanging, repression, and censorship decide their fate. Peoples who above all strive for their human dignity.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and all other documents on freedom and human rights, every word in them carries the blood and suffering of these very peoples.
Professor Kazem Rajavi, the great martyr to the cause of human rights in Iran, said, “We write the history of human rights with our own blood.”
He was assassinated in Geneva, the European capital of the United Nations, by the criminal agents of the mullahs’ regime.
The Clerical Regime’s Extra-Territorial Suppression
In Iran, the mullahs hang human rights every single day. Their record of horrific crimes does not need an annual review. This tragic dossier is open every day of the year, every hour of the day.
In November alone, 335 prisoners were executed. Nearly 2 million people are arrested every year.
The mullahs have even destroyed the graves of political prisoners who were massacred in the 1980s. As Dr. Mai Sato, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, has said that the destruction of such sites violates international law, and deepens the suffering of the families.[1]
The number of repressive institutions in Iran is shocking. But Khamenei has not limited repression to inside Iran. He has extended it beyond the country’s borders.
A striking example is the terrorist assassination attempt against Professor Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former Vice President of the European Parliament, in the heart of Madrid in November 2023. Fortunately, he survived certain death.
On July 9, 2025, the judge of Spain’s National Court, in his formal charge exposed the network of the regime’s foreign agents behind this crime. According to the judge, the key suspect has fled to Iran.[2]
The European Parliament, in a resolution against the trans-national repression of human-rights defenders, strongly condemned the terrorist attack organized by the Iranian regime against Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras.[3]
In the United Kingdom, the report of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee provides a clear picture of the threats posed by this regime. These include assassination, kidnapping, espionage, intimidation, and physical attacks against opponents.[4]
In France, the Minister of the Interior warned about the danger of “targeted attacks” by the Iranian regime against its opponents, specifically those affiliated with the National Council of Resistance. He stated that the regime uses “proxies connected to organized crime.”[5]
In July of this year, 12 European countries as well as U.S. and Canada issued a joint statement. They condemned the threats posed by the Iranian government through its intelligence services on their soil.[6]
In recent weeks, German officials have reported that Iranians living in Germany are facing increasing harassment from the Iranian regime’s security services.
At the same time, the National Council of Resistance’s representative office in Germany revealed that since the beginning of this year over 100 cases of threats and harassment against Iranian exiles have been recorded in Germany alone.[7]
Despite all this, the mullahs openly call for the export of repression, terror, and persecution abroad.
In a show-trial that the regime has held for two years against the People’s Mojahedin Organization and over 100 of its members and officials, the so-called judge has threatened that any Iranian living abroad who attends a meeting of the PMOI anywhere in the world can be prosecuted in that court.
Unprecedented Escalation of Repression
At the same time, successive death sentences have been issued for supporters of the PMOI.
Currently, 18 political prisoners have been sentenced to death for membership in the PMOI.
The regime imposes increasing pressure on political prisoners; some of them have been in prison between two and three decades including Saeed Massouri, Maryam Akbari Monfared and Gholam-Hossein Kalbi.
Nevertheless, prisoners have been holding the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign every week for nearly two years.
Never before have the mullahs been so much in need of intensifying repression because never before have they felt so close to being overthrown. This regime is trapped in a dead-end in the face of the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance.
The Resistance Units through their expanding activities demonstrate the desire of the Iranian people to end the religious dictatorship and to establish a democratic republic in Iran.
The Iranian people reject both the mullahs’ and Shah’s dictatorships.
The Iranian Resistance Seeks Respect for Human Rights
Dear friends,
We have risen for human rights, for freedom, and for democracy. For the sovereignty of the people in a republic based on free and pluralistic elections. A republic with freedom of expression, freedom of parties, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and an open online space. A republic founded on the separation of religion and state, where individual and social freedoms and rights are guaranteed according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Iranian Resistance emphasizes the end of all censorship, the prosecution of those responsible for the massacre of political prisoners, ban on torture, and the abolition of the death penalty.
We seek a legal system that is independent and based on international standards. This system must respect the presumption of innocence, the right to defense, the right to legal appeal, and must abolish the mullahs’ Sharia laws.
We call on the members of the European Parliament:
1.To end the silence of the EU External Action Service and the Council of Ministers regarding human rights violations in Iran.
The silence about the situation of the 18 political prisoners, whose only “crime” is supporting the PMOI, must not continue.
2.All relations with the regime must be conditioned on the halt of executions.
3.They must close the embassies and institutions affiliated with the regime that serve as centers of support for the regime’s cross‑border repression. And
4.They must place the IRGC and the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence on the terrorist list.
[1] Mai Sato, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Statement, November 15, 2025
https://iranfocus.com/human-rights/55996-un-rapporteur-condemns-destruction-of-iranian-political-prisoners-graves/
[2] El Mundo, July 9, 2025
[3] European Parliament Resolution 2025/2048 (INI), October 23, 2025
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-2048_EN.html
[4] Report of the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament, April 9, 2025
[5] Le Figaro, June 23, 2025
[6] Joint Statement of 14 Countries, German Foreign Ministry, July 2025
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/2729232-2729232
[7] Reuters, November 20, 2025
