Iran parliament condemns US police 'racial terrorism against blacks'

Members of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) have denounced the racist terrorism perpetrated by US police against defenseless African Americans, saying they have been unable to breathe for decades and subjected to violence and discrimination.

In an English-language statement issued on Tuesday, the Iranian lawmakers expressed their outrage at the shocking US police brutality that led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, saying the tragedy “revealed the inhumane nature of the US regime."

Floyd, an unarmed African-American man, died after a US police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes despite his cries that he could not breathe.

His death, captured on video, has sparked street protests across the US, which are being met with an increasingly heavy-handed police response.

US President Donald Trump has supported the violent suppression of the demonstrations.

The Iranian MPs described Floyd as just one of hundreds of black Americans brutally killed by police every year, saying the blacks "have been unable to breathe for decades under the pressure of racial terrorism by the US regime."

"Today, 'American nightmare' is emerging more than ever, and the cry of the oppressed blacks is being heard, who, like martyr Malcolm X, want to shout that we are victims of Americanism; the victim of the hypocritical system that today seems to be all over the world, as if it has the authority to tell all the people of the world how to run their country," they said.

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He was assassinated in New York on February 21, 1965.

Elsewhere in their statement, the lawmakers highlighted the higher infection and mortality rate among the black Americans caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The lawmakers noted that more than 400 years after the forced migration of the black people to America, they are not yet being recognized as "citizens" by the US establishment.

They noted that racism in the US is even being manifested in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding the number of black victims of the coronavirus is three times higher than whites and that in some states, more than 70 percent of COVID-19 patients are African Americans.

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"Moreover, black Americans and other colored-skin Americans are yet victims of the systemic police brutality, mass confinement and racial discrimination in the American judiciary system," they said, adding while the black community comprises only 13 percent of the American population, they constitute half of the prisoners’ population (more than one million) and account for about 25 percent of murders at the hands of police.

The Iranian parliamentarians condemned the "systemic nature of racial terrorism of police against the black people," citing figures that show police killers of the blacks evade justice.

Based on official figures, in 2019 alone,  264 black Americans were killed by police. In 99 percent of the cases, the perpetrating officers were not even arrested. The remaining one percent of cases were blamed on police misconduct.

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The MPs further referred to Trumps' recent threat to unleash the military against anti-racism demonstrators, saying Washington has adopted the same approach towards other countries.

"Recent developments have revealed the reality of American human rights. The US terrorist president's remarks about the threat to kill American protesters show that people in other countries are not only victims of US state terrorism, but that Americans are the first victims of various forms of terrorism. We hope to see the popular movement in the United States soon come to fruition in order to expose the inhumane nature of the US regime," they noted.

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