By Navid Felker
The US Representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US), Soona Samsami, has welcomed the unanimous passing of a resolution (H.Res.752), entitled “Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes”, in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives.
The resolution was amended and passed shortly after the uprising, which spread to 191 cities, began.
Samsami said: “This timely bipartisan resolution sends an unequivocal and powerful message to the people of Iran that US Congress fully supports them in their nationwide uprising for a free Iran and that it strongly condemns the massacre perpetrated by the Iranian regime in November.”
The security forces murdered over 1,500 protesters, of whom 520 have been identified so far by the Iranian Resistance, on the orders of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Still, the uprising shook the regime to its core and is another step closer to the mullahs’ downfall.
Samsami said: “The uprising’s gains are irreversible; no matter how deep or wide the state suppression.”
The resolution said that the security forces “used lethal force” and “killed hundreds of people” in “the popular protests against the Iranian regime”, with reports that regime authorities have “refused to return victims’ bodies to their families and that security forces have removed bodies from morgues and transferred them to unknown locations”.
Samsami added: “The NCRI’s President-elect, Mrs Maryam Rajavi, has repeatedly underscored that the slaughter of protesters in November was a manifest case of a crime against humanity and, therefore, the United Nations Security Council must take urgent action to halt the killings and suppression and secure the release of those arrested.”
She said that the Iranian Resistance endorsed the Resolution, which urges the White House to convene emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council to condemn the regime’s ongoing human rights violations and set up a way for the Security Council to monitor such violations.
Samsami said that Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and 92 other senior officials must be brought to justice for crimes against humanity, as well as calling for a fact-finding mission to be dispatched to Iran to investigate the crimes against humanity.
The resolution highlights that the regime implemented a “near-total shutdown of internet services” in Iran in order to stop Iranians sharing “images and videos of deadly violence being used by security forces”. It called on the White House to ensure that the Iranian people “have free and uninterrupted access to the Internet”.
Samsami said: “The time has come for the world to recognize the right of the Iranian people to change the repressive regime and establish a democratic, pluralistic and non-nuclear republic based on the separation of religion and state.”
