Free Iran Global Summit: Iran Rising Up for Freedom

Written by
Sedighe Shahrokhi
MEK Resistance Units Are the Key to Regime Change in Iran
Every year, the Iranian Resistance holds its annual “Free Iran” grand gathering in Paris.

Tens of thousands of Iranians and supporters of the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), from around the globe attend the major event. Also, hundreds of renowned politicians, dignitaries, human rights activists, and parliamentarians from the US and Europe join the annual gathering and present their thoughts about the situation in Iran and the Iranian resistance.

Last year the gathering was held in Ashraf-3 in Albania, the main base of the MEK and the epicenter of Resistance for freedom. Ashraf-3 hosted hundreds of international dignitaries from 47 nations. The visitors saw a sprawling city in Albania that is now home to the main Iranian opposition movement, the MEK. Among the visitors to Ashraf-3 were former US and European prime ministers, foreign ministers, parliamentarians, diplomats and ambassadors.

The Iranian people have suffered gravely at the hands of the clerical regime. For the past 41 years, the regime has executed over 120,000 people, including MEK members, supporters, political and human rights activists. This includes the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988. In addition to domestic suppression, for decades the Iranian regime has adopted a policy of intervention in the region and export of terrorism, and it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Thanks to the efforts of the Iranian Resistance, the regime’s domestic and international efforts to suppress the people at home and destabilize the region and its nuclear program have been exposed.

For years, the Iranian Resistance has insisted on the policy of regime change by the Iranian people and through a popular uprising. It also insisted that the only solution to liberate the Iranian people and bring peace to the region is an uprising by the Iranian people to change the regime.

Since 2012 and according to the strategy of 1000 Ashraf, the MEK formed and organized Resistance Units all across Iran. For years these units were active in posting the pictures of Resistance leaders in all cities and organizing protests. In 2017, 2018 and 2019 these units played a major role in organizing and continuing the uprisings.

A cursory look at the statements and positions declared by the regime’s leaders and state-run media clearly shows that the MEK’s Resistance units were at the core of the uprising.

Even the brutal crackdown on the uprising did not distract the youth from the MEK and its Resistance Units.

In recent weeks and months, the state-run radio and TV, media outlets, and websites of the Iranian regime have repeatedly and on numerous occasions confessed to the role of the MEK in leading, organizing, and guiding protests and uprisings in Iran.

On May 17, 2020, the state-run website Erja News urged the clerical regime’s officials to be vigilant about the growing public embrace of the MEK’s ideals and slogans, especially among university students and the country’s intellectuals. It underscored the “sinister awakening of sleeping cells” of the MEK, in their “thousands,” inside the country and expressed fear over the expansion of the activities of the MEK and its Resistance Units.

The annual gathering is also a reflection of another fact; the world will witness a viable and democratic alternative, capable of overthrowing the regime. This was echoed in almost every speech delivered in the 5-day event at Ashraf-3 in 2019 by guest speakers from the US, Europe and the Muslim world.

The most significant message of the annual gathering is that regime change in Iran is imminent because the democratic alternative is ready and capable of achieving it. The 10-point plan of the Iranian Resistance’s President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, which has garnered extensive international support, calls for human rights, a democratic republic, separation of religion and state, gender equality, pluralism, free and fair elections, the rule of law, justice, abolition of the death penalty, a market economy, and a nonnuclear Iran in peaceful co-existence with its neighbors.

Western governments and policymakers must realize that they need a complete break from the devastating policy of appeasement. They must respond to the regime’s regional aggressions firmly and decisively. More comprehensive sanctions against the extremist regime must be imposed. The regime’s embassies around the world must be closed down because they fund and facilitate international terrorism and espionage. And, last but not least, the legitimate rights of the Iranian people and their organized Resistance movement to overthrow the brutal dictatorship ruling Iran must finally be recognized.

This year, given the coronavirus pandemic’s prevalence, Iranian communities acknowledged that they would hold their annual gathering online on July 17. Like previous years, many distinguished figures will attend the virtual conference to announce their support for a free Iran.

Notably, on June 17, 2020, in a bipartisan resolution, a majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declared their solidarity with the Iranian people’s desire for a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic of Iran.

On June 20, 2020, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, in an online conference said:

The resolution signed by the majority of members in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has recognized the Iranian people’s right to the establishment of a democratic republic based on the separation of religion and state, provides a credible model for all governments and the international community to follow regarding Iran and the Iranian people.

The resolution censures the clerical regime’s state-sponsored terrorism, and specifically, the terrorist plot against the Iranian Resistance’s 2018 annual gathering.

The spirit of this resolution can be summed up in supporting the right of the Iranian people to change the regime and to achieve a democratic republic. It states that the Iranian people have rejected the monarchical dictatorship and, as well, do not accept religious tyranny and oppose it. It also references and points to the Iranian Resistance’s Ten-Point Plan, which reflects the image of a free Iran:

No to velayat-e faqih; Yes, to people’s sovereignty in a pluralist republic based on universal suffrage.
Freedom of speech, freedom of political parties and assemblies, freedom of the press and the internet; dissolution and disbanding of the IRGC, the terrorist Qods Force, plainclothes agents, the unpopular Bassij, the MOIS, Council of the Cultural Revolution, and all of the suppressive patrols and institutions in cities, villages, schools, universities, offices, and factories;
Commitment to individual and social freedoms and rights in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights; dissolution of all agencies in charge of censorship and inquisition; seeking justice for the massacred political prisoners, prohibition of torture, and abolishment of the death penalty;
Separation of religion and state, and freedom of religions and faiths.
Complete gender equality in political, social, cultural, and economic rights, and equal participation of women in political leadership; abolishment of any form of discrimination; the right to choose one’s clothing, and to marriage, divorce, education and employment; prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext;
Independent judiciary and legal system in accordance with international standards based on presumption of innocence, the right to defense, the right to appeal, and the right to be tried in a public court; full independence of judges; abolishment of the mullahs’ Sharia law and dissolution of revolutionary courts;
Autonomy and removal of double injustices against Iranian nationalities and ethnicities in alignment with the NCRI’s plan for the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan.
Justice and equal opportunities in the realms of employment and entrepreneurship for all of the people in Iran in a free market economy; restoration of the rights of blue-color workers, farmers, nurses, white-color workers, teachers and retirees.
Protection and restoration of the environment that has been massacred under the rule of the mullahs.
A non-nuclear Iran that is devoid of weapons of mass destruction; peace, co-existence and international and regional cooperation.
As we mark the 40th year of the struggle against religious tyranny, the Iranian Resistance renews its commitment to the Iranian people and to the 120,000 martyrs for freedom.

Since the outset, we have declared that our goal is not to take power at all cost. Instead, our goal is to realize the Iranian people’s desires for the establishment of freedom, justice and democracy at all cost.