PARIS – Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, on Saturday said Iran’s clerical regime is facing an “insoluble crisis” and the ruling theocracy has “entered its final phase.”
“The upcoming presidential election has aggravated a power struggle and this internal crisis is accelerating its downfall,” Mrs. Rajavi said in a speech in an international conference in Paris.
Mrs. Rajavi said the upcoming election is a sham since candidates are vetted to allow only those who support the regime’s violent theocracy. These individuals have no legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and will be boycotted nationwide. Maryam Rajavi called Iran’s mullahs the “epicenter of radical fundamentalism and terrorism” and said they are exporting warmongering and intervening in other countries in order to maintain power. The spread of fundamentalism and terrorism in the world, including Africa and Mali, she said, “is a tactic emanating from an Islamic fundamentalist ideology.”
“Without the export of fundamentalism, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards will lose its raison d’être and will quickly implode,” She said.
Mrs. Rajavi said radical fundamentalism, like other ideologies, cannot effectively spread globally without an epicenter and to uproot this evil around the world requires two yardsticks. First, Tehran, the “godfather of fundamentalism” must not be appeased and its “tentacles must be cut off.” Second, an ideological and cultural alternative, namely a tolerant and democratic Islam, similar to the Islam espoused by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), must be substituted.
Camp Liberty Prison
Mrs. Rajavi condemned the Iraqi Government and the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Iraq for evicting PMOI members from their home in Camp Ashraf in Iraq and placing them in Camp Liberty prison without basic necessities or their property.
According to the Iraqi Government and UNHCR, the PMOI members had to be relocated to Camp Liberty in order to conduct interviews to determine their refugee status. More than 2,000 PMOIs have been interviewed to date, yet only five have been allowed to relocate outside Iraq.
Mrs. Rajavi demanded the PMOI members be returned to Camp Ashraf and from there they should be resettled to third countries.
“Ashraf residents are protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the U.S. signed an agreement with each and every one of them to protect them until their final disposition in return for consolidating their weapons,” Mrs. Rajavi said. “The United States can in no way abandon its own responsibility vis-à-vis the Ashraf residents by passing it on to the United Nations, whose representative is at the service of New Iraq’s dictatorship.”
“The failure to uphold this responsibility has already resulted in two massacres, 50 killed and 1,130 wounded, an oppressive four -year siege and a collective forced eviction,” she said.
34th Anniversary of anti-monarchy revolution
In Paris conference where Madam Rajavi offered her remarks included dignitaries from France, Europe, United States, Egypt, Spain, and Estonia.
Among the guest speakers were Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives and presidential candidate; Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and Chairman of the U.S. Democrat Party, and Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico, U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations, and U.S. Secretary of Energy.
Also attending were Dominique Lefebvre, member of French National Assembly; Ambassador Phillip Crowley, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (2009-2011); three members of Spain’s parliament, Ms. Carmen Quintanilla (Chair of Women’s Committee), Jose Maria Chiquillo, (member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Commission), and Jordi Xucla; Rait Maruste, member of Estonia’s parliament (Chairman of the Constitutional Legal Committee and former judge in the EU Human Rights Court); Tahar Boumedra, a former senior UN official overseeing Camp Ashraf in Iraq; Atef Makhalif, member of the Egyptian parliament delegation; Aude de Thuin, founder and president of the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society in France; John Sano, former first Deputy Director of the CIA; Colonel Wesley Martin, former commander for anti-terrorism for coalition forces in Iraq and U.S. Commander for Ashraf protection.
Numerous speakers condemned the forcible eviction Ashraf residents and their transfer to Liberty prison and called for their return to the modern town they have built the past 26 years.
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Full text of Mrs. Rajavi’s speech: Anniversary of revolution of Iran- Change in 2013