On Saturday, February 22, 2025, the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran hosted a conference to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD 2025). The event gathered distinguished political leaders, human rights advocates, and supporters of the Iranian Resistance from over 80 countries.
Dominique Attias is the Chair of the Board of Directors at the European Lawyers Foundation. She has been the President of the European Law Society Federation as of March 2021 and the former Vice-batonniere of Paris from January 2016.
A long-standing friend of the Iranian resistance movement and the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations, Dominique Attias delivered a speech at the IWD 2025 event in Paris, the text of which is presented below.
Maryam Akbari Monfared: A Symbol of Unyielding Resistance
Madam Rajavi, you have moved us to tears with the stories of women who have sacrificed their lives for freedom, for the cause, for Iran. Today, I want to speak of one such woman—a woman I admire immensely. I want to speak to her directly. Her name is Maryam Akbari Monfared.
Maryam, Maryam, can you hear me from behind the walls of the infamous Qarchak Prison, where you were transferred on October 22? One of the worst prisons for women in Iran.
This speech is dedicated to you because, to me, you embody the boundless courage of Iranian women—young and old, inside and outside Iran.
You are one of the longest-serving political prisoners in Iran. More than 15 years. A mother of three daughters, you have been imprisoned in the dungeons of the mullahs’ regime since 2009.
For years, you were kept in solitary confinement, accused under the fabricated charge of Moharebeh—“enmity against God”—following a sham 15-minute trial.
Her Only Crime: Seeking Justice
Your only crime? Your ties to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
In 2016, you filed a complaint with the Tehran prosecutor regarding the extrajudicial executions of your siblings. From Evin Prison in 2018, you wrote: “The Islamic Republic has brought nothing to Iran but death, plunder, and spilled blood.”
A Voice That Cannot Be Silenced
Relentlessly, you have denounced the tragic plight of the Iranian people. In 2019 and 2021, through letters smuggled from prison, you exposed the murder of protesters.
Indomitable, Maryam, you have paid a heavy price for your struggle.
Not a single day of freedom in 15 years.
You have not seen your daughters grow up.
You have not been able to hold them, smell them, follow their education.
What greater torture could there be for a mother?
In July 2024, the regime ordered the confiscation of your property and that of your relatives.
You were supposed to be released on October 12, but once again, the regime extended your sentence—this time by three more years. Another absurd excuse: “propaganda against the system” and “insulting the leaders.”
The Regime’s Fear of Women Like Maryam
But what do the mullahs and their bloodthirsty henchmen, the IRGC, think?
Do they believe that such treatment will break you? That it will serve as an example? That it will instill fear in Iranian women?
They do not understand Iranian women.
Even in prison, Maryam and her fellow women, many of them PMOI/MEK members, continue to resist.
Every Tuesday, they protest executions— they sing in the prison courtyard, they refuse to move all night, they stage hunger strikes—unshaken by the brutal repression they endure in return.
The Resistance Continues, Inside and Outside the Prisons
In cities and villages, as you have said, Madam Rajavi, the Resistance Units, largely made up of women, strike back at the mullahs’ repression—they set fire to regime symbols, they write defiant slogans, they hang banners and posters.
Every day, they continue their fight, waiting for the day when they will take up arms.
Listen—
Listen to them humming the anthem of the French Resistance, adapted for their own struggle:
“Friend, do you hear the dark flight of ravens over our plains?
Friend, do you hear the muffled cries of a country in chains?”
Yes, as the anthem says, the enemy will pay the price for their bloodshed and tyranny.
The Unbreakable Spirit of Iranian Women
This anthem is also sung at Ashraf-3, where women and men dedicate their lives to supporting the resistance inside Iran.
I salute them. I thank them for the honor of their friendship. Nothing will weaken the women’s resistance.
Whether Kurdish, Baluchi, Tajik, or Turkmen, whether of different religious beliefs, they all share one reality—
They endure institutionalized discrimination in a climate of misogyny.
As you have rightly said, Madam Rajavi, the compulsory veil is merely the tip of the iceberg.
The key to gender equality? The complete legal elimination of all forms of discrimination.
A Roadmap to Freedom
You and your fellow freedom fighters understood this long ago, Madam Rajavi. Your 10-point plan for Iran’s future is a brilliant roadmap to democracy.
In a liberated Iran, all the women who today risk their lives in the Resistance Units will finally look back at the oppression they endured as a thing of the past.
For over 40 years, generations of women have fought—and continue to fight. Many have died in exile, never seeing their homeland again, never avenging their fallen comrades. Many have sacrificed their personal lives for a higher cause—the liberation of their nation.
But as you have said, Madam Rajavi, these sacrifices are not in vain.
Victory is near. The dream of a free Iran is within reach.
We Will Never Be Silent
Women have always been here. They were there on February 8, when we gathered in Paris. They are here today, standing together.
In December 2022, amid the uprisings following Jina Mahsa Amini’s murder, Maryam Akbari Monfared called for resistance from Semnan Prison, where she had been transferred yet again.
She said: “Do not remain silent. Cry out.”
You were right, Maryam.
We will never be silent.
We will stand with you and with every Iranian woman.
Until the very end, we will cry out: “Woman, Resistance, Freedom!”
