Ladies and Gentlemen my friends

It is a great privilege and a pleasure of course to join you all today in celebrating this Persian New Year. This festival of New Years brings with it the arrival of spring, new life and new hope for the coming year. I think you know that it is time when we have to remind ourselves of those friends of ours some of whom I have never met but I regard them as friends who are not nearly as comfortable in their everyday lives as we are. I am sure you do know I refer to the people of Iran who wish to live in peace and in freedom, in democracy in their own county. But they are held down by a most terrifying dictatorship.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a time also to remind world statesmen that the deal that was brokered in good faith by the United Nations and agreed to by residents of Ashraf to relocate to Camp Liberty has not been honoured by the Iraq regime and by the international community. You know when we meet together we say, and we shall continue to say, to Secretary General of the United nations and to his special representative for Iraq, Ambassador Kobler, and to the United States government and the United Kingdom Ambassadors that they should not be deceived by Iraq and examine for themselves the inhuman and unacceptable living conditions imposed upon the residents of Camp Liberty, conditions which clearly fall foul of international law.  

And you know in this New Year when life begins anew we call upon Ambassador Kobler to raise his voice and the authority, the authority of the United Nations, against inhumane siege conditions imposed at Camp Liberty and to allow the residents the medical conditions they need, the clean water, and the basics of human existence and to live free of harassment and free of oppression.

My friends it is a time too, in marking this New Year, we must also mark our calendar for this year for a date when we can give a warm welcome to our shores to President Maryam Rajavi. Get out your diaries and let us look forward to a date there. Her visit to us here on my ground, my territory, it is fine form me to go to Paris, I want her here in my country in my United Kingdom. Her visit to us here and a move to a free and democratic Iran can’t come too soon.

A Happy New Year to all of you for all of us and let us hope it is a better one for your people in Iran and for our comrades all over throughout the world. Thank you very much. And ‘comrade’ is the finest greeting one human being can give to another as far as I am concerned. 

BPCIF celebrated the Iranian New Year, Nowrouz, in Parliament on Wednesday 14 March 2012. Nowrouz coincides with spring equinox and is celebrated by over 300 million people around the world.  In October 2009 Nowrouz was officially registered on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.