Maryam Rajavi: The will and resolve of the people will ultimately shatter the chains

Speech to the Estonian Parliament

Dear Friends,
My Fellow Compatriots and Supporters of the Iranian Resistance,

Let me express my heartfelt salutations to all of you who have assembled here to support the Iranian people’s Resistance, especially to the parliamentarians and friends of the Resistance in Estonia as well as the other personalities from Latvia and Lithuania who are here.
With you and on behalf of the Iranian people’s resistance movement I offer my warmest greetings to our distinguished friends and the proud people of Estonia.
It is no accident that Tallinn has opened up its hearts today to the Iranian Resistance. This city has a brilliant history of perseverance and standing firm against dictatorship, occupation, and Nazism for a good part of the twentieth century and for decades that followed World War Two. It is a source of pride for the contemporary world.

The painful but inspiring history of Estonia teaches the world that even in times when the largest and most deceitful despots and tyrants are in power, it is the will and resolve of the people that will ultimately shatter the chains and claim victory. The history of Estonia tells dictators that you may be able to enslave anything; but you can never enslave the desire and yearning of people for freedom and liberty. In the end, this longing will always triumph.
Let me also express the Resistance’s deep admiration and appreciation for the elected representatives of the people of Estonia who have on numerous occasions supported the Iranian people’s Resistance.

I would also like to send the salutations of the Iranian people’s Resistance to the parliamentarians and representatives of the people of Latvia and Lithuania who are here today. The declaration of the parliament of Latvia and declaration by members of parliament in Lithuania, calling for regime change in Iran and the official recognition of the Iranian Resistance by the international community, is a model for a correct policy; one which the international community needs today in the face of the most significant threat to global peace and security, the religious fascism ruling Iran. I thank you all.

Dear Friends,
Our gathering here today, like all the efforts of the Resistance’s members and supporters inside Iran and around the world, aims to send one message:
The time has come to overthrow the religious fascism ruling Iran.
The Iranian people and their organized resistance have risen up to overthrow the regime.
The international community must realign itself with the will of the Iranian people.

Spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and North Africa is a global threat.
20 years ago our movement warned that Islamic fundamentalism is the new global threat and its heart beats in Tehran but unfortunately the world failed to take prompt action.
Today, we say that solution to this phenomenon is regime change in Iran and that the Iranian Resistance is the cultural antitheses to this phenomenon.

The religious dictatorship ruling Iran has imposed the most unparalleled crackdown in the world today on the Iranian people. On the other hand, a broad resistance movement has formed against it. Thus far, 120,000 political opponents, mostly members and sympathizers of the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance have made the ultimate sacrifice in this struggle.
This book contains the identities of over 20,000 of those executed.

Also during recent weeks, the mullahs have harassed disgracefully women political prisoners. They started a hunger strike which has been supported by our compatriots across the world.
Mullahs survive by execution and torture. The average of daily execution in Iran is 2 persons per day and the average of hourly arrests is 80 persons per hour. This is why the Iranian people do not want this regime.

But what do our people and Resistance want?
Before anything else, it seeks to free the Iranian people from the clutches of the dictatorship and to freely elect their own representatives.
It also wants free elections, the establishment of a republic, separation of church and state, pluralism, gender equality with an emphasis on equal role for women in political leadership, respect for human rights and especially the abolishment of the death penalty, and a non-nuclear Iran that is economically advanced and provides equal opportunity to all its people.
This Resistance with all these sacrifices and perseverance as well as its democratic platform, without any doubt is capable to overthrow mullahs’ regime.
Sadly, however, Western governments have in practice sided with the mullahs against the Iranian people, despite the fact that on the surface, antagonistic rhetoric is exchanged between Western governments and the ruling mullahs in Iran.
But in the context of political and economic relations, no other factor has helped and enabled the mullahs and prevented their downfall than the policy of the Western governments.

Dear Friends,
A new era in the history of our Resistance has begun.

This Resistance has removed a great barrier on the path of the freedom of the Iranian people; and, additionally, the mullahs have entered a phase which will culminate in the overthrow of their regime.

They are surrounded and besieged by the compressed anger of Iranian society. They have been caught in a devastated economy whose challenges are insurmountable; an economy in free fall, with a 50% inflation rate, 30% unemployment rate, a 300% reduction in the value of the national currency, and a negative 0.7% growth rate.

At the same time, the ruling circles are crippled with divisions and internal feuds. They are on the verge of their presidential elections, which means that these divisions will become even more severe.

In order to preserve power, the ruling mullahs have deepened and accelerated efforts to suppress the Iranian people, meddle and conduct terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, and murder the people of Syria, while developing nuclear weapons.
Today, the struggle to liberate the Iranian people falls in the same category of efforts to preserve international peace and security in the face of the threats posed by the religious fascism ruling Iran.

That is why dispensing with all the initiatives tied to the policy of appeasement is more imperative than ever before.

It is time for Western governments to respect the will of the Iranian people to overthrow the religious dictatorship and this is an urgent imperative and would benefit peace and security of the entire world.
I would also like to draw your attention to this reality that parallel to its efforts to maintain their main opposition in the terrorist list, during last decade the mullahs regime tried to annihilate 3,200 Iranian opposition members residing in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. Handing over the protection of these people from the US government to the Iraqi government, which is clearly the Iranian regime’s puppet, is a flagrant violation of the international law and the best contribution to the Iranian regime.
Up until a year ago, they were residents of Camp Ashraf, a city near the border with Iran, which they had worked hard to build for 26 years. But as a result of the pressures of the religious fascism ruling Iran and its puppet government in Iraq, including two rounds of massacres in July 2009 and April 2011, coupled with the inaction and appeasement of the U.S. and EU, these residents were relocated from Ashraf to Camp Liberty. The conditions of this camp, according to the UN, resemble the conditions of a prison and it does not meet humanitarian and human rights standards.

I strongly urge the international community and especially the United States to use their influence to pressure the Iraqi government to cease all pressures against the PMOI in Iraq. The United Nations must designate Camp Liberty as a refugee camp.

Today, in accordance with the agenda of the Iranian regime, the Iraqi government has implemented extensive pressures and plots to loot and steal the properties and assets of the residents of Ashraf, which are the product of their labor and that of the Iranian Resistance. They want to deprive the residents of Ashraf from the right to their property, which is a basic and fundamental right. I call on the U.S. and the UN to prevent the Iraqi government’s attempts to steal their property.

All the obstructive relics of the policy of appeasement must be abandoned in favor of opening the way forward for freeing a nation that is currently enchained and held captive.

The same force which propelled history forward and the same hope and everlasting brightness that eventually freed Estonia from the yoke of tyranny and dictatorship will undoubtedly also liberate our capital Tehran and the entire Iran.

Yes,
The time has come to overthrow the religious fascism ruling Iran.
The Iranian people and their liberation army have arisen to overthrow the regime.
The international community must realign itself with the will of the Iranian people.
Hail to the people of Iran
Hail to freedom
Hail to all of you.