Iran: Execution of Protesters

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important and powerful point. It is not for me to discuss the proscription of individual cases. My colleagues in the Foreign Office will have heard what he had to say, which echoes what many others in this place have said on various occasions. In relation to the vote coming up in the next few days, I assure him that we will be voting the right way.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, although these executions are an outrage, they are not the only judicial outrage perpetrated by the Government of Iran. Will His Majesty’s Government pursue the injustice of extending the sentence of the longest-serving prisoners of conscience in the world—Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet, two women of the Baha’i faith, aged 60 and 69—for nothing other than professing their religion?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the Iranian regime has a long, dark record of persecution—not just of religious minorities but of the LGBT community and, as has already been discussed, anyone who stands up to the regime in any way. The atrocities which the noble Baroness has just referenced are par for the course for a regime which is beyond the pale in its actions towards anyone not part of the mainstream establishment within Iran.