Rama Yade, former French Minister of Human Rights
Speech to the International Conference at Ashraf 3 marking the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Iranian Resistance, June 20, 2020
Madame President,
Excellencies,
Dear friends,
Forty years of fighting for democracy, for freedom, for equality… Your sacrifice has been great. It’s touching me, it’s talking to me.
It is not just for Iran that you have made that sacrifice. It’s for humanity.
Your emotion, your will, your sense of sacrifice, you don’t have to be Iranian to feel that.
The humanity we share is enough. History will remember that the Iranian Resistance is one of the greatest struggles that are changing the world.
By changing Iran, you will change the world. But do you know what upsets me the most? Your victory will be ours, but your sacrifices are only yours.
Let us be clear, these are not sufferings that belong to the past, but there’s present suffering. It is today, and every day, that the members of the MEK face terror.
The December 2017 uprising, you paid for it.
The November 2019 uprising, you paid for it.
The 2020 revolt after a Ukrainian plane was shot down by a missile or rather by the regime’s incompetence, 176 innocent passengers paid with their lives.
In the MEK, you paid for each of these events.
Let us remember and pronounce (at) this time the names of Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi, two students recently arrested for their alleged links to the MEK. So many others followed.
As for the sufferings of (the past), the anger through the painful faces of bereaved mothers, the determined faces of their grandchildren scattered throughout the world who are always in the memory of the martyrs.
The 120,000 victims since 1979, and many related to the MEK, and how many who are imprisoned today, tortured, yesterday disappeared, executed like the 30,000 political prisoners of 1988.
Since then, the PMOI has been relentlessly engaged in the long march of a campaign for peace.
You have to walk the isles of Ashraf 3 Exhibition and see the grave faces of the founders of Iran. Cross the eyes of Massoud Rajavi. To be dizzy in front of the portraits of hundreds of young people, women, artists, sportsmen, murdered by the regime. Be upset at photos of thousands of mass graves.
It all started 40 years ago, (on) June 20, 1981. This regime is first and foremost the story of a betrayal to a people who had believed that by overthrowing the shah, they would gain freedom.
The betrayal began with the murder of 60 MEK supporters.
On that day, the Resistance rose and since then has been moving forward, braving threats and fatwas, but also our own cowardice, the latest of which was the nuclear agreement which has come to nothing. These huge powerful obstacles have only strengthened the MEK.
What the regime fears is that in 50 years, the multi-generational and multi-ethnic aspects of an organization that has brought together the best of Iran.
What the regime fears is that the MEK has been able to push the principle of gender equality very high. What the regime fears is that the MEK has been able to reconcile Muslim faith with the separation of Islam and the state, while fiercely combatting religious extremism.
Your forty years of fighting are forty years of failures for the regime.
And I like to quote in our gathering this phrase from anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of conscious and committed individuals can change the world. That’s how it always happens.”
Throughout this journey of sacrifice, not everything was dark. There are also victories, and how beautiful they are.
The consecration of women is your victory. The PMOI puts women, wives, sisters, mothers at the heart of its work, because it knows what women have brought to Iran and that Iran would not be this great civilization without women.
Actresses of change, martyrs of the cause, they hold the strongholds for months and years, paying for their freedom all their life.
The awakening of youths mobilized as never before is also your victory.
Ashraf, place of memory and reconstruction is also your victory.
Above all, the hope that its light I see in your eyes and that nothing can turn off is without doubt your greatest victory.
No doubt, such perseverance will one day pay off. The men and women I have seen since we have known each other give themselves every day, because they know that they belong to Iran more than to themselves. Because they do not dream peacefully until justice is done for the victims. Because they will continue to fight until Iran has a better future. But commitment cannot remain individual. It is only fully realized in the collective. That is why the Iranian Resistance needs us. It is an act of faith in the human will.
Just for that, as we say in Africa, “We are together, yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
Thank you for your attention.
