Hunger Strike in London

Potkin Azarmehr, Iran va Jahan:

Four young Iranians in London staged a hunger strike in front of the Islamic Republic Embassy in Prince’s Gate, Kensington. The hunger strike was in support of the Iranian political prisoners on hunger strike and in support of the hunger strike staged by Reza Pahlavi in LA.

Amongst the hunger strikers in London, there was an Iran-Iraq war veteran and a victim of Saddam Hossein’s chemical warfare. The other hunger strikers were student activists and supporters of the recent appeal for referendum in Iran.

The hunger strikers stayed all day and all night in front of the embassy for three days and were visited by hundreds of Iranian ex-pats and supporters in London.

More than a thousand leaflets (see below) in English were passed to passers by, informing them of the reasons for this action.

The embassy officials were very agitated by this action and asked the police several times to remove the hunger strikers and have even threatened to sue the four who took part in the action.

Text of the borchure:

International Hunger Strike in Support of the Political Prisoners in Iran
11 – 14 Jun 2005 London

Freedom Loving People of Britain,

Islamic Republic of Iran is an Islamic theocracy. The real power to vet the candidates before and after they emerge from “Islamic Ballot Boxes” and the final power to veto any legislation deemed un-Islamic is with an unelected body called the Guardian Council.

The Guardian Council is made up of senile aged clerics determined to run Iran as a medieval religious dictatorship.

The people of Iran have had their revolution of 1979 hijacked by these clerics of the dark ages. In the last 25 years, Iranian people have struggled for a secular democracy and a better life without much help from the international community.

When the women in Iran were forced to wear the veil again, no women’s organisations in the West marched in support of the Iranian women who wanted to choose what to wear.

When kids as young as 12 and pregnant women were executed by the Islamic Republic for opposing the Islamic regime, no one marched to condemn the Islamic Republic’s hideous acts.

When virgin teenage dissident girls were raped before execution so as not to enter the “Islamic heaven” after their deaths, no one in the West marched to express their condemnation.

When women in Iran are put into a sack and buried up to their waist and stoned to a cruel agonising slow death, no so-called progressive organisations in the West have marched to condemn this barbaric act.

When the Iranian political prisoners, mostly Left-wing activists, were massacred in their thousands in 1988, no one, including the Left in the West marched to stop the massacre.

When thousands of Iranian students were rounded up in 1999 and given long-term sentences during the student uprisings that took place across 19 Iranian cities, the so-called progressive organisations and students in the West again were silent.

Yes, we are against a military invasion of our country. But in order to guarantee peace and security for the people of Iran and the Middle East, first we must get rid of the theocratic, medieval religious dictatorship in Iran that supports harbours and sponsors international terrorism. Only a free and democratic Iran will be the best guarantee against any military intervention.

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