The European Parliament on Thursday condemned what it said were Iran's rights abuses against women, including "brutal murders," and its detention of EU nationals.
A nonbinding resolution slammed the "deterioration of the human rights situation in Iran, and the brutal murders of women by the Iranian authorities, including the 2023 Sakharov Prize laureate Jina Mahsa Amini," a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died last year in police custody.
Parliament members also called for the immediate release from detention of human rights defenders, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi.
The motion was adopted 516-4, with 27 abstentions.
Parliament members urged Tehran "to end immediately all discrimination against women and girls, including mandatory veiling, and to withdraw all gender discriminatory laws.”
Amini's death last year sparked widespread street demonstrations against the Iranian government that security forces put down brutally. Hundreds of people have been killed or executed in the repression, and thousands have been arrested.
In October, the European Parliament awarded the EU's top rights honor, the Sakharov Prize, to Amini and to the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement that sprang up after her death.
European lawmakers reiterated a call for EU states to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "terrorist organization" and for sanctions against the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials for human rights violations.
They also condemned Iran's "hostage diplomacy," which European governments say Iran uses to extract concessions from the West or gain the release of Iranians imprisoned abroad.
