Excerpts from Maryam Rajavi’s Talks with Some of Women’s Rights Activists at the European Parliament

On Wednesday, November 20, 2024, Maryam Rajavi met with some of women’s rights activists at the European Parliament. During her remarks in this meeting, she said:

As we approach the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,
I would like to begin by sharing the message of courageous Iranian women who have rebelled against violence and oppression.
This is a message from a female prisoner, a member of the Resistance Units, detained in Evin Prison in Tehran: “From behind stone walls, we listen with our hearts to voices far away, and we hear you…
We are fighting not only for ourselves but for the rights of all Iranians and for the downfall of the mullahs’ regime. Women are the most powerful force in Iranian society.
The regime has, with its own hands, turned women and girls into a force digging its historic grave… But the Dawn is near.”

Violence and repression target women in all aspects of life.
Iranian women have always been at the forefront of the struggle against this regime.
They also play key roles in positions of leadership at every level of the PMOI and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the NCRI.

Dear friends,

At the social level, a key method of repression of women is carried out through imposing the compulsory hijab.
There is a very significant political and historical experience in this regard.
During the dark period of Reza Shah’s dictatorship, women’s head coverings were removed by force at gunpoint.
Under the mullahs’ regime, women are once again being oppressed, this time by imposing compulsory hijab.
Both dictatorships have denied women the freedom to choose their own clothing.
The regime and its allies have tried to minimize the struggle for the regime’s overthrow and realization of all of women’s rights and freedoms to the limited demand of freedom from Hijab. In this way, they mislead the struggle to overthrow the regime.
But during the 2022 uprising , female protesters and students rejected all forms of dictatorship, both the shah and the mullahs. They wisely chanted, “With or without the hijab, onward to the revolution.”
In the Iranian Resistance, we have always reiterated, “No to compulsory veil, No to compulsory religion and No to compulsory government”

I have always stressed that women are the force for change. Based on the experience of women in the Iranian Resistance, I have emphasized that true equality can only be achieved through a significant change, which is women’s leadership.
The active and equal participation of women in political leadership is the only effective answer to inequality.
The new message in women’s leadership and hegemony is the inevitable need to change the culture and ideology of machismo to advance equality.
We are fighting for a free Iran , for complete gender equality in political, social, cultural, and economic rights, and for women’s equal participation in political leadership.
Iranian women have proven their competence to fulfill this role, through their struggle for freedom.
Iranian people and their pioneering women will finally bring an end to the Velayat-e Faqih regime.

Thank you all.