While President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola lent her support to the peaceful demonstrators in Iran, on Friday 9 January the Iranian Mission to the EU “unequivocally reject[ed]” the “interventionist” statements made by MEPs, including Ms Metsola, on the Iranian demonstrations, denouncing “their hypocrisy and double-standard approach to rights”.
“The very same Members that were silent on genocide in Gaza, and the killing of hundreds [of] Iranians during Israel’s war of aggression, are now trying to spread distorting accounts of the peaceful protests in Iran and shedding crocodile tears for the rights of Iranian people with hostile aims”, stressed the mission on X.
In response, Ms Metsola pointed out that the freedom of expression used by the mission to criticise the European Parliament was exactly what the Iranians wanted. “Must be nice to be able to tweet from Europe and be able to use the Internet freely to publicly disagree with leaders, without being arrested, beaten or having the country’s telecommunications disabled. That’s the sort of thing people in Iran’s streets are asking for”, she posted on X, as authorities cut off the internet across the country in response to the ongoing protests.
The spokesman for the European External Action Service, Anouar El Anouni, also urged the authorities “to uphold the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in terms of the Iranian people and to restore access to information and to the internet for all Iranians”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)