MADRID, 7 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
An opposition party in Iran has demanded this Monday the holding of new elections as a way to end the demonstrations registered in recent weeks over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, detained in the capital, Tehran for allegedly wearing the veil incorrectly.
“The lack of political legitimacy is the most obvious threat to the country’s national security,” argued the general secretary of the reformist Islamic People’s Union Party of Iran, Azar Mansuri, in a message on her Twitter account.
“Do you want to apply legitimate amendments? Do not eliminate the problem. Look for the reasons for the popular protests and ask yourself what happened when the protests were taken to the streets,” he said, before calling for “free elections” in the country.
Mansuri’s call comes after more than 220 Iranian parliamentarians have called on the courts to hand down death sentences against the protesters and compared them to members of the Islamic State terrorist group.
The statement, read by parliamentarian Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani and signed by 227 of the 290 deputies, calls the protesters a ‘mohareb’, equivalent to a warrior but also an ‘enemy of God’, which carries the death penalty in Iran.
The repression of the protests over the death of Amini, which include calls for the fall of the Iranian regime, have so far resulted in the death of more than 300 people, the non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) denounced on Saturday.