As the last plenary session of the year is about to begin, the European Parliament has redoubled pressure in recent hours to try to change the minds of the Iranian authorities so that they allow the relatives of the young Mahsa Amini, who died, to travel to Strasbourg. on September 16, 2022, three days after being detained by the morality police for not wearing the veil “correctly”, to receive the Sakharov Prize awarded posthumously by the institution, which has also awarded the 'Women, life and liberty', inspired by his death. Hopes that Tehran will reconsider her stance are slim, however.
"The restrictions on their visas are intended to silence the family of Jina Mahsa Amini, preventing them from denouncing the scandalous repression of women's rights, human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Islamic Republic of Iran," reads the signed open letter by 118 MEPs with representatives of the great European political families, popular, social democrats and liberals, an initiative that adds to the call launched this weekend by the president of the European Chamber, Roberta Metsola. "I call on the Iranian regime to reconsider the decision to prevent Mahsa Amini's mother, father and brother from traveling. On Tuesday her place is in the European Parliament to receive the Sakharov Prize with the brave women of Iran. The truth cannot be silenced," Metsola tweeted.
Two representatives of 'Women, Life, Freedom', during repression by the Iranian authorities, will be able to participate in the ceremony that will take place tomorrow in the Alsatian capital. These are the activists Afsoon Najafi, sister of a young tiktoker murdered during the protests in Karaj, a satellite city of Tehran with a significant mass of the working middle class where the movement had great impact, and Mersedeh Shahinkar, who lost an eye in a of the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini.
The awarding of the European prize for freedom of conscience, added to the Nobel prize to the journalist Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned in a Tehran prison for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran, has given hope to these activists that the fight and The lives lost have not been forgotten and may have some future repercussions for their demands. According to human rights organizations in Iran, around 500 people have been killed (eight of them were executed, accused of attacking law enforcement) and almost 20,000 detained since the beginning of the protests in September 2022, which this year have lost much of their strength.
