GVF — The Coordinating Council of the Green Path of Hope, the Green Movement’s highest decision making body, has issued a statement in solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Syria, while calling on Iranian authorities to cease their support for the Assad regime’s deadly suppression of dissenters.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, since the start of demonstrations in the country, the regime has sought to quell the protests with brutal force, killing around 1,650 civilians and imprisoning thousands of protesters.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has already confirmed that Turkish authorities have intercepted an arms shipment from Iran to Syria, according to state-run Anatolian news agency.
Since their call for protests on 14 February in solidarity with the uprisings of the Arab world, Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi have been placed under house arrest along with their wives Zahra Rahnavard and Fatemeh Karroubi.
In July, the German Foreign Ministry’s Human rights commissioner Markus Loening said the pair had been”held without any legal basis at an unknown location with no contact to the outside world” and must be freed, “along with all other political prisoners.”
The statement is as follows:
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Deem not that Allah is unaware of what the wicked do. [1]
Faithful brothers and sisters, free and democracy-seeking people of Syria
Accept our warm greeting from a land whose people, like you, have a history filled with struggles for freedom and respect for their human rights. The Greens [2] of Iran are profoundly saddened by what is being inflicted upon you these days. We remember you in every moment of this blessed month [of Ramadhan], and are certain that for as long as you fight in the path of righteousness, the Lord will be your helper, and victory awaits you and other free peoples across the world.
For five months now, protests and rallies by freedom-seeking Syrians been ongoing despite the violent and bloody crackdowns, and Syrians in search of justice are bravely going after their humane and democratic demands. More than 1500 fatalities, over 5000 wounded and injured, thousands of prisoners and citizens forced to flee and to become refugees; this has been the result of Bashar Assad’s dictatorship and the authoritarianism of the oppressive regime in Damascus since the start of popular protests in the country.
While paying no heed to the fate of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and many other parts of the world, the tyrants in control of Syria have chosen to ignore their citizens’ just and humane demands, the same route as the one taken by the likes of Muammer Gaddafi. While the despotism of the likes of Assad and Gaddafi paves the way for foreign intervention in their [countries’] socio-political developments, it also turns their countries into burnt land, as their nations’ human and material resources are sacrificed for their own unquenchable thirst for power.
Democratic and freedom seeking opposition movements have a similar position in the face of despotic and authoritarian regimes; the Green Movement of the free Iranian nation has been facing vicious and unlawful clampdowns and threats from the autocrats in the past two years. The common sorrowful feature of these events is the tyrannical rulers’ reluctance to draw lessons from the fate of their oppressive counterparts.
The Coordination Council for the Green Path of Hope expresses its profound sympathy with the seekers of freedom and democracy in Syria, and calls on the brutal and autocratic establishment in Demascus to cease the slaughter of its citizens, to honour their democratic and humane demands, and to stand accountable.
The Council praise the resistance, perseverance and strong will of the free people of Syria in pursuing their demands patiently and seriously, and states, that the Greens in Iran share the pain and suffering of the oppressed and devastated citizens of Syria. Freedom movements all over the globe learn from and exchange experiences with one another. This solidarity is a human resistance and struggle against the inhumanity of oppressive governments collaborating to silence their citizens’ just protests.
The Coordinating Council of the Green Path of Hope calls on Iranians to pay heed to the developments vis-à-vis the political protests in the region more carefully and vigorously than ever before, and to show their solidarity with the freedom-loving and oppressed people of Syria by any means possible, while merging resistance and resolution with hope and patience. The Council would also like call on those in power in Iran to respect the fundamental and civil rights of their citizens, and to abstain from inhumanely providing security assistance to the Syrian government in cracking down on the freedom and democracy seeking citizens of this country.
The Coordinating Council of the Green Path of Hope
5 August 2011
Notes:
[1] The Holy Quran, Surah 12, Verse 42.
[2] Green Movement supporters.
http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2011/aug/06/3231