Den Haag - Iranische Botschaft besetzt

Today part of the Iranian embassy in the Hague was occupied. The group of both Iranians and non-Iranians protested in solidarity with the Iranian people against abuses perpetrated by the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei, which include torture, abduction, mass execution and the repression of free speech and assembly. The current Iranian regime has established a reputation for repressing its citizens on many occasions since its inception in 1979, but the last 9 months have witnessed an escalation in its severity. Protesters and government forces clashed after the disputed elections of June 2009, the results of which Iranian protesters and many international analysts believe were tampered with by the government.

Today the protesters unfurled banners on the embassy building proclaiming “Free All Political Prisoners”, “End Executions and Torture” and “Freedom In Iran.” They also hung an image of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian girl who was gunned down by government forces in Tehran on June 20th 2009 as she stood observing the sporadic protests from a distance.The protesters are strongly opposed to those Western voices calling for armed action against Iran, which would bring only destruction and misery, and force opponents of the regime to defend it rather than see Iran turned into another Iraq.
Rik Versteeg, one of the protesters, said “The fate of Iran belongs in the hands of the Iranian People - it should not be decided by dictators, clerics or international oil-thirsty war-mongers.”




*Statement from the Protesters:*
(english, farsi and russian also online at:  http://iranlives.blogspot.com)

Today we have occupied part of the Iranian embassy in The Hague, in solidarity with you, the people of Iran, who in the past months have witnessed such a level of brutality and barbarity from your "rulers", that the world can see once and for all how illegitimate they truly are.

The world is watching, and acting. The demonstrators in Iran are being joined by increasing numbers from Stockholm to Paris, The Hague, and Berlin, who have also protested the regime's crimes at Iranian embassies abroad.

In the so-called "Islamic Republic", candidates are hand-picked by the ruling elite, elections are rigged, and dissident clerics are jailed or otherwise forced to shut up. The regime's paranoid fear of journalists is very telling. As they ban foreign journalists from reporting anything other than propaganda events, and they have locked up more of their own journalists than any other country in the world, one wonders what they are trying to hide, beyond the well-known tale of dictatorship mass execution and torture.

Is it perhaps the treatment of students who have been beaten and killed by thugs, expelled from school and banned from traveling abroad? Or is it the arrest and abuse of mothers mourning their lost children and others inquiring after the fate of the hundreds who have been abducted, tortured, and never heard from again?

Perhaps they are trying to hide the millions in oil wealth which disappear into the pockets of their revolutionary guards as a reward for bullying their citizens to fear and obey them? You have luckily shown courage, strength and resourcefulness. Even with your journalists in jail, your newspapers banned and your internet and phone signals cut, you have found ways to tell the world of their crimes and have continued to protest their rule.

We are non-Iranians and Iranians who stand together for the very simple principle that you, the people of Iran -- not the government, not the clerics, and not the Americans -- have the right to determine your future and your own path to happiness.

People have the right to congregate, to say what they think, and to choose a religion or none at all. Governments which engage in violence against their people as methods of imposing their policies, even employing morality police to enforce religious dogma as state policy, are a sad relic of former times.

We stand equally firmly against a proposed US/Israeli intervention, which would bring enormous death and suffering, and would force even opponents of the regime to defend it rather than see their homeland destroyed. In the case that it "succeeds", as in Iraq, the ancient lands of Iran would be overrun with military bases so soldiers and contractors can satisfy America's thirst for oil, money, and regional domination.

Tyrants always claim that their actions are in the name of righteousness and peace, whether in Chile under Pinochet, Argentina and Uruguay under the generals, Spain under Franco, Russia under Stalin -- the list of criminals who kill and torture to make their systems work goes on and on.

But soon there will be one more name crossed off it.

They have no right over the country of Iran, and far less, therefore, over a piece of land thousands of kilometers away which they have leased from the Dutch government. We have occupied it, and we and others will do it again and again, not just here on Iran's doorstep, but within as well, until the coming day of celebration when the dictatorship collapses.