Thursday, May 8th 2008

OMV - Murder and More?

STOP THE BOMB announces protest on the occasion of OMV shareholders’ meeting and considers an international divestment campaign

On Wednesday the 14th of May the OMV shareholders’ meeting is taking place in Vienna. In this meeting the topic of the planned billion Euro deal with Iran will be covered. The campaign STOP THE BOMB – Coalition Against The Iranian Extermination Programme, which has been mobilizing against doing business with the Iranian regime with an international petition since the end of last year and lately with the conference “The Iranian threat”, has been preparing for this shareholders’ meeting for months. Members of the coalition are going to take part at the meeting to give utterance to their criticism. They are going to ask specific questions regarding the deal with Iran and insist on their right as smallholders to get answers. There are also protest actions planned to be held around this meeting.

Furthermore STOP THE BOMB obtains international and prominent support. Nobel Peace Price Prize Elie Wiesel points to the anti-Semitic character of the Iranian regime, which “announces to the whole world its wish to see a nation member of the international community wiped off the map.” Winner of Nobel Prize for Literature Elfriede Jelinek advocates “support for the Iranian opposition, which represents a real alternative to the actual regime and fights for a secular and democratic Iran” instead of collaboration with the Iranian mullahs.

The OMV has to envisage criticism and public protest during its shareholders’ meeting on the part of different organisations. Especially exiled Iranian organisations as the Democratic Party of Kurdistan Iran are incensed by the support for the murderous Mullah-regime. Hiwa Bahrami who is the Austrian representative of the DPKI: “The money made by the OMV-deal enables the regime to arm and to further terrorize the population.” Kayan Kaboli of the Green Party of Iran demands “termination of the negotiations between OMV and the Iranian regime, the abandonment of national support of doing business with Iran, and the imposition of effective and wholesale sanctions for the purpose of isolating the Iranian regime politically and economically.” Simone Dinah Hartmann, who is speaker of STOP THE BOMB, annotates: “With its enterprise OMV has already accomplished to infuriate variable organisations and individuals all over the world. Already in the beginning of May exiled Iranians, Israelis and US-Americans gathered together with activists from Europe, and put aside their differences to pursue their common goal which is the prevention of the Iranian bomb.”

 

For quite some time STOP THE BOMB has been in contact with brokers and investment bankers in the USA, in Germany and Israel to take adequate measures concerning the shareholders’ meeting. In the United States it has been common practice for a long time to exert public pressure so that state owned-pension funds as well as investment banks sell their stocks of companies which are doing business with Iran. The coalition assumes, that a big part of OMV-smallholders shares the concerns regarding the planned deal with Iran. Should OMV adhere to its undertaking, STOP THE BOMB is going to exhaust all possibilities, to act internationally to that effect, that OMV stocks are going to be discharged to a greater extent. This implies an appeal to smallholders to sell off their stocks in protest.

 

In regard to the intended billion euro deal, political scientist Stephan Grigat annotates: “The planned conclusion of the contract would promote the Iranian regime to one of the main business associates of Austria and to a relevant strategic partner of Europe. As it is internationally attempted to avert the Iranian threat by the means of impairing the regime, an Austrian enterprise, in which the Republic of Austria has a share of 30%, falls on the back of these efforts.” According to reports issued from inside Iran by the Iranian opposition and recently made public by social-democratic member of European Parliament Paulo Casaca, high-ranking representatives of OMV are to travel to Iran in the second half of May to finalize an agreement on oil extraction in Khuzestan. Therefore the conclusion of a new contract could be imminent. Casaca suggests that OMV stockholders take into consideration that this is not “business as usual”: In fact the deal would "provide the Iranian regime with the means to continue its internal war against its people and its avowed promises of obliterating Israel.”

 

Queries:

 

Austria:

Simone Dinah Hartmann (STOP THE bOMB)

Email: info@stopthebomb.net

Phone: +43 650 3448858

 

Hiwa Bahrami (Democratic Party of Kurdistan Iran)

Email: hiwa.bahrami@pdki.org

Phone: +43 699 18883573

 

 

Contact persons abroad (Contact via Ms. Hartmann):

 

Germany:

Ulrike Becker (Mideast Freedom Forum, Berlin)

Matthias Küntzel (Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Hamburg)

 

European Union:

Paulo Casaca (MEP, Lisbon/Brussels)

 

Israel:

Yossi Klein Halevi (Shalem Center, Jerusalem)

Yacov Stiassny (Club of the Austrian Pensioneers in Israel, Tel Aviv)

 

USA:

Jeffrey Herf (Professor for history at the University Maryland)

Kayvan Kaboli (Green Party of Iran, Los Angeles)

Andrei Markovits (Professor for political science at the University Michigan)

Charles A. Small (The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism)