Thousands of people gathered north of Paris on Saturday to support Iranian opposition protesters and an Iranian exile group pushing to be rid of a terrorist label.
Crowds spilled out of buses and filled the fairground in Villepinte under drizzly skies. Organizers said 1,000 buses were hired to bring protesters from around France and Europe, including legislators from several countries.
The rally was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Organizers said 90,000 people turned out. Police estimates were not immediately available.
The France-based umbrella group includes the People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran, which was recently removed from the EU’s list of banned terrorist groups. The group, also known as the Mujahidin-e-Khalq, is trying to persuade the US to stop classifying it as a terrorist group, as well.
The leader of the National Council, Maryam Rajavi, spoke on Saturday to huge cheers, hailing the importance of resisting Iran’s leadership.
The people in the crowd “want an end to the clerical dictatorship in Iran and they want a secular democracy which is represented by Mrs Maryam Rajavi,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, one of the organizers of the French rally.
The group organizes rallies in France every year.
The demonstrators in France are not supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, but are expressing solidarity with Iranian opposition protesters, who have rallied in Tehran for several days to demand a new presidential election. Iran’s rulers are facing their greatest internal challenge since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran participated in Iran’s Islamic Revolution. But it soon fell out with the clerics in charge of the country and launched a campaign of assassinations and bombings in an attempt to topple the government.
The group’s supporters argue it no longer engages in armed struggle in its quest for a new sleadership in Iran and they have won several court cases in Europe in recent years.
In Hamburg, Germany, more than 4,000 people marched through the city to protest Iran’s election result. Police said most were of Iranian origin and the event passed peacefully.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS