Gazelle Sharmahd, Iranian human rights activist and daughter of imprisoned journalist Jamshid Sharmahd, addressed the 16th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on May 15th 2024.
Full remarks:
My name is Gazelle Sharmahd and I wish I could be there with you today in person, but unfortunately we live in a world where terrorists are invited on red carpets and activists have to fend for their own lives. I was told it’s not safe for me to travel because the Islamic regime is watching my every step and I could be assassinated or kidnapped like my father Jamshid Sharmahd.
As I’m speaking to you, my dad Jimmy is spending his 1384th night somewhere inside of Iran in a torture chamber, as a hostage awaiting public execution. My dad didn’t live in Iran. He didn’t travel to Iran. He doesn’t hold an Iranian passport. Jimmy is a German-American journalist and activist, and he was kidnapped and taken to Iran by force to silence him and with him to silence the truth.
I’m determined to tell you my dad’s story, not because it highlights the brutality and the global power of the terrorist regime in Iran. I think we all know terrorists are bad and do bad stuff. But because it exposes the supporters of the regime: Our Western governments.
My dad always believed in the courage and bravery of the Iranian people and he knew if they had the chance to speak up without interference of the Islamic regime, they could move this world and lead their own liberation. Two decades ago, before we had all of these social media platforms, my dad created a bulletproof VPN-based website that was used as a social forum, where communities from inside of Iran could speak freely and protected, and my dad promised to never censor their truth. Ever.
How harsh the regime reacts when their people speak up we know latest after the 2022 revolutionary uprising. Hundreds of thousands were beaten, shot in the eye, raped, put into prison, tortured, or hanged to death. But the regime doesn’t stop inside of their borders. They persecute people all around the world. That’s called transnational repression. And they start off by attacking your identity, which is called character assassination.
They use their big propaganda machines to make my dad look like a criminal, like a spy, and ironically, like a terrorist. Then the death threats started. In 2009, they sent assassins to our door in Los Angeles to murder my dad and my family. We survived, but deeply traumatized. My dad developed Parkinson’s disease, but he wouldn’t stop supporting the Iranian people.
Then in 2020. My dad took what he believed was a short business trip to India. It was during the pandemic, so flights got frequently rerouted or cancelled. On July 27th, my dad called my mom from his hotel room in Dubai, waiting for a connection flight. That was the last time we were able to reach him. After that, all contact broke off. But we could see on his Google tracker that the regime was taking him to Oman. And then to Iran.
The next morning, the regime showed a video of my dad, blindfolded, his face swollen, and he was forced to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. We were terrified. What would this regime do to him? A regime that sentenced young men to death for attending a protest, or who would murder young women for showing a strand of hair. What would they do to someone that criticized them for 16 years?
For the last three and a half years, the regime has slowly been killing my father. The last time we heard his voice was in October in a highly supervised phone call. After three years of unimaginable torture, my dad could barely pronounce words. And that was the last proof of life we had.
I don’t have to remind you, terrorists do bad stuff to good people, but what I have to tell you is that their crimes are ignored at best or supported at worst.
When the regime kidnapped my father, a German-American national, dragged him through two state borders into Iran, my governments said nothing.
When the regime tortured my father, brutally knocked out his teeth and threw him in a cell with stabbing chest pains, They said nothing.
Last year the regime sentenced my dad to death. This year the regime sentenced my dad together with the US government to pay 2.5 billion dollars or else they will hang Jimmy from a crane in public.And again the response from our democratic governments. Was nothing.
Last year, hostages were repeatedly released from Iran, including six Europeans and five Americans, in exchange for mass murderers, political concessions, and billions of dollars. None of these hostages criticized the terrorist regime. In fact, some were known to do even business with the regime. Each and every one of them entered the country voluntarily, some despite level four travel warnings. None of them faced life threatening execution sentences.
The question is not, why was my father abandoned? The question is, why are ALL of us abandoned by our governments when we criticize the regime?
In 2020, French Blogger Ruhollah Zam was kidnapped to Iran and executed. Swedish dissident Habib Chaab was kidnapped by the Islamic regime in the same year as my father and executed last year without any outcry.
And it’s not just high profile critics of the regime. More and more activists and journalists are facing death threats, assassination plots, kidnappings, stabbings on American and European soil. And when they asked their Western governments for protection they’re told to stop their activism. Don’t go to rallies, don’t go to conferences, or go into witness protection. So in other words, “shut up, or protect yourself from terror plots”.
I’m an American citizen, but for three years, our State Department refused to even talk to me. I’m a German citizen, but the German government refused to give me any protection to come to Germany. How come our governments not only abandoned the people of Iran, but their own citizens? Their message was clear: If you’re standing up against the tyrants of this world, you better be bulletproof because they won’t protect you.
Are these democratic politicians just evil or incapable? I found out it’s not personal. It’s just business. The source of all evil always goes back to big money. Starting in 2014, a network of Islamic regime agents infiltrated the European and American governments, think tanks, media and academia. It’s called the Iran Experts Initiative. And these are the people that tell our politicians what to do:
- Yes, engage in hostage negotiations, but only hostages who are not against the Islamic regime. And look the other way, while we execute these ones, To wage terror in the hearts of the diaspora.
- Yes, it’s okay to stand with women like freedom, but don’t put the IRGC on the terrorist list.And here are some talking points that you can use to keep everyone busy arguing back and forth for a month just to get to the point where they prove that this was actually not even factual.
- Yes, stand in solidarity with the freedom fighters and protesters in Iran, but don’t establish a strike fund, definitely don’t arm them, don’t help the diaspora form a government in exile. Just laugh at their struggles and tell them you condemn the regime, but don’t cut your ties with the regime while they’re brutally cracking down on protesters, watch them die for 12 months and then wonder and say, “Where did all the protesters go? Is your revolution over?”
We’re not just fighting against oppressive regimes and terrorist organizations. We are up against a multi billion dollar industry that is designed to make money with the regime in power. Our government’s decisions on what hostage to save, who to sanction, what gets media attention, who’s going to be silenced, is in the hands of the terrorists inside of Iran. They have penetrated our government bodies from the local and national levels up to the UN. Once we come to terms with this reality, we will no longer sit back and wait for our governments to do the right thing. They won’t.
We have to realize that we’re still living in a democracy and in a democracy, the highest position of power is still the will of the people. People like you, like me, like my dad, Jimmy, and all of the freedom fighters.
You, who are assembled here today in Geneva, thanks to the organizers of this powerful event, you represent the largest and most influential coalition of NGOs and activists around the world. You are here Because you’re on the right side. So this is what I ask of you:
First, for my father Jimmy, issue a statement from this conference identifying him as an international hostage held under inhumane conditions by the Islamic regime in Iran. The international community, the UN, the European Parliament, the US Congress, and all legislative assemblies in the free world in the United States must demand his immediate release.
He’s 69 years old. He needs immediate medical care. He needs to rejoin our family in Los Angeles.
Second, on behalf of all hostages, political prisoners and victims of torture around the world, call on the UN and the free world to enact laws and resolutions to ban international kidnappings, tortures of hostages and extortions. These state sponsored terrorist regimes who are responsible for this human horror should face severe legal, financial, and economic consequences. Breaking such laws against cross-border kidnappings should be redefined as crimes against humanity.
Many years ago I asked my dad, “Why do you do this? This is so hard, so dangerous. It can cost us everything. It can cost us our lives.” He just looked me in the eye and said, “If I don’t do it, who will?”
It took me a long time to understand what he meant. He meant, there’s only us. We have only us. There is no army, no superheroes, no governments that will save us. Only us. So that’s why I’m asking you, “If we won’t do it, who will?”
