French police blocked a planned Saturday rally in Paris by an Iranian opposition group on Friday, saying the gathering posed a serious risk of violence. The last-minute ban stopped the demonstration before it could begin.
The order said there was a serious risk of clashes between activists holding opposing views, especially because the gathering point and route of the planned march would have passed close to several public buildings and diplomatic missions. For the National Resistance Council of Iran, which had been preparing to protest executions by the Iranian regime, the decision came after business hours on Thursday, as the group put it, and it called the justification bogus.
The rally was supposed to draw 100,000 people and to put pressure on Iran over a wave of executions during the Middle East war. Rights groups say more than 40 people have been executed in Iran since the war began, and at least a dozen men have been hanged recently over links to banned opposition groups including the MEK and outlawed Kurdish and Sunni Baluch organisations.
That is also why the ban landed so sharply. The National Resistance Council of Iran is the political arm of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, also known as MEK, and the Islamic republic outlaws it as a terrorist group. The group has held many protests in Paris before without incident, which is part of why its organisers say the police explanation does not hold.
They have filed an emergency motion to reverse the ban, but whether that succeeds is the immediate question now. The organisers also suggested the move was linked to a call hours before the cancellation on Thursday evening between the French and Iranian foreign ministers, while the French Foreign Ministry said Jean-Noël Barrot did not mention the demonstration or ask for its cancellation.
For now, the rally is off and the dispute has shifted from the streets of Paris to the paper trail behind the ban. If the emergency motion fails, the cancellation will stand as a blunt reminder of how quickly France–Iran tensions can turn a planned protest into a security case.
