Conference in Paris:
Political and religious figures and human rights advocates from across the Middle East and North Africa call on the UN, US and European countries to provide protection to Ashraf
NCRI – On the occasion of the month of Ramadan, an international conference in Paris on Saturday 13 August, was the host of a rare panel of parliamentarians, political and religious figures and human rights and women’s rights advocates from 15 countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa including, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and Mauritania, and a number of political figures from the US and Europe who discussed the prospect and threats of the Arab Spring.
The attendees, who included about 40 parliamentarians from various Arab countries as well as former prime ministers and ministers, pointed out the clerical regime ruling Iran’s destructive role in diverting the unprecedented uprisings in Arab and Islamic countries to spread fundamentalism and terrorism throughout the world and the Middle East in particular. They underscored the necessity to protect the Camp Ashraf residents in Iraq as the front line of confrontation against religious fundamentalism in the region and specified that the UN, the U.S. and European countries are responsible regarding Ashraf, guaranteeing their safety, and respecting their rights.
Mrs. Rajavi, the keynote speaker in the conference, hailed in her speech to the rising people across the Middle East and North Africa and also to Ashraf under sieged, political prisoners and rising people in Tehran and all over Iran.
In her speech, based on Quran verses and the tradition and words of Great Prophet of Islam, she explained the democratic Islam thought and described it as the religion of compassion and freedom, faith of consultation and peaceful coexistence with those who believe in other beliefs and religions, religion of tolerance, lenity and pluralism, and the religion of kindness with dissidents and protesters. A religion that advocates equality for the women, considers sovereignty as the highest right for the people, and its message is freedom and free choice for all.
Mrs. Rajavi reminded that since half of a century ago, the PMOI established its resistance vis-à-vis Shiekh’s and Shah’s dictatorship based on a democratic Islam and has fought against all abuses of Islam that employ it in the service of repressive rulers.
President-elect of the Iranian Resistance said, “Ashraf is an example of relations established between people believing in a democratic Islam based on trust, truth, unification, equality, love and sacrifice for others.
That is exactly why Tehran’s mullahs have assigned Ashraf, which is inspiring to the Iranian women and youth, as their main target of repressive attacks. During the past two years, they have carried out two massacres against Ashraf residents and now, through their puppet government in Iraq, they are seeking to prepare the grounds for another humanitarian catastrophe.”
Mrs. Rajavi finished her speech by calling on the participants in the conference to use all their efforts for the defense of Ashraf residents.
“I am asking you to compel the international community – especially the United States, the European Union and the United Nations – to respond to their responsibilities regarding the international protection of Ashraf residents,” she added. “Defending Ashraf, which includes 1,000 pioneering Muslim women, has now become an urgent Islamic obligation; as how the issue of Ashraf’s protection tests the international community and the UN on their commitments towards human rights.”
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 13, 2011
