CHURCH OF ENGLAND – By Matt Cresswell – June 24, 2011
MORE THAN 90,000 men and women opposed to the Mullahs’ regime in Iran gathered at a mass meeting in Paris on Saturday. Most of them were Iranian exiles abroad who support the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an organisation which is targeted by the Islamic authorities in Iran.
Maryam Rajavi, head of the NCRI, addressed the mass crowd who met at Villepinte Auditorium near Paris. She was accompanied by members of parliament from the UK, France and the US. Rajavi has lived in Paris since 1983 and her husband Massoud Rajavi, who founded the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), is currently in hiding.
“From Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria, everywhere, the people are calling for the eviction of the Iranian regime from their countries,” said Rajavi.
“The mullahs’ regime is bankrupt. International sanctions are increasingly closing up its breathing space.
“And the plan to eliminate subsidies, the regime’s largest economic project over the past 30 years, is in the quagmire of defeat.”
She paid her respect to Iranians who had lost their lives at Camp Ashraf in Iraq (a small town full of Iranian exiles) when the Iraqi government attacked them on 8 April this year.
Lord Corbett said, addressing those in Camp Ashraf (who were sent a video of the rally): “You are the bravest of the brave…
despite the murderous attacks on you by armed thugs you stand tall and defiant.”
He added: “Freedom can’t forever be delayed… Ashraf will live!”
Judge Michael Mukasey, a former US Attorney General, said: “[My aim] is to get my government to accept and act on the simple fact that one direct way to bring democracy to Iran is to stop obstructing the MEK [another title for the PMOI] with the unjust designation of ‘foreign terrorist organisation’.”
He called for the US to use its influence to protect Ashraf residents from further attacks.
Others who spoke at the rally included Rudolph Giuliani, former New York City Mayor and Presidential Candidate (2008), Rita
Sussmouth, former Speaker of the German Parliament (1988-1998), Jean-Pierre Brard, Member of French National Assembly and Alejo Vidal Quadras, European Parliament Vice President among many others.
Iranian exiles opposed to the Mullahs cannot return to Iran, where many of their families still live, as they would face inevitable
imprisonment. Many believe that the internal struggles between the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad will severely weaken the regime.
The PMOI was dropped from the European Union’s list of terrorist organisations in 2009. The US, Canada, Iraq and Iran still consider them to be terrorists, because of past operations carried out by the group before they renounced violence in 2001.
