December 14, 2024, Sydney, Australia – Prominent Australian figures and representatives of Iranian communities came together at a conference organized by the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education to address Iran’s dire state of human rights. The event featured speeches by Corinne Fagueret, Edmund Rice Center’s Senior Manager for Advocacy and Research; Alopi Latukefu, Director of the Edmund Rice Center; Mohammad Sadeghpour, head of the Human Rights and Freedom for Iran Association; Isabella Antonio, a Green Party mayor from Western Sydney; Rev. Bill Crews, founder of the Bill Crews Foundation; and Dr. Ali Zahidi, a representative of the Iranian community in Australia.
Speaking online, Elham Zanjani, an NCRI Women’s Committee member, provided a compelling account of the ongoing resistance movement in Iran, focusing on the sacrifices and resilience of the Iranian people.
Excerpts from Elham Zanjani’s Speech at the Human Rights Conference in Sydney
Addressing the conference, Elham Zanjani outlined the ongoing struggle of Iranians against the clerical regime’s repression:
For over four decades, the struggle for freedom, women’s equality, and the rejection of religious dictatorship has defined the confrontation between the Iranian people and the ruling regime. Throughout this time, Iranians have shown unmatched courage in resisting tyranny.
The clerical regime’s atrocities are infamous: executing teenage girls, killing elderly mothers and pregnant women, assassinating religious leaders of other faiths, and employing inhumane methods of torture. Tens of thousands of courageous men and women as well as young teenagers who stood against this misogynistic dictatorship have faced brutal torture or execution.
Over the years, more than 120,000 of Iran’s finest children have sacrificed their lives fighting this regime. This includes the 30,000 political prisoners, mostly PMOI members, massacred in the summer of 1988 following a decree from Khomeini, the founder of the clerical regime.
Here with me is a very precious book of those who have fallen for freedom in Iran, mainly members of the main opposition the PMOI.
Dr. Kazem Rajavi, a prominent martyr for human rights in Iran who was killed by diplomat terrorists in Geneva, once said: “We are writing the history of human rights with our blood.”
Zanjani highlighted the regime’s escalation of repression and the adoption of the new Hijab Law:
Today, as we speak, facing a society on the brink of explosion, the clerical regime has resorted to escalating repression to suppress public outrage and prevent the regime’s downfall. Coinciding with International Human Rights Day, at Least 14 Prisoners were executed.
596 executions, including 21 women, during Pezeshkian’s Presidency.
Additionally, the regime has recently passed a draconian, misogynistic law, mobilizing numerous state institutions to enforce mandatory veiling. This law is not only an assault on women but a declaration of war against society. By expanding surveillance and control, the law heightens repression and gives legal backing to the activities of the regime’s operatives, enabling greater societal monitoring.
The NCRI Women’s Committee, in a statement, described this criminal law as violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the conventions related to women’s rights.
Echoing the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s statement, we view this “criminal and inhumane” law as a new phase in the regime’s efforts to crack down on Iranian women and girls, aimed at stifling uprisings. She has said time and again, no to compulsory hijab, no to compulsory religion, and no to compulsory governance.
For 46 years, despite the brutal repression of women under the guise of mandatory hijab, no formal law was ever established on the matter. the clerical regime, having failed with its previous tactics, decided to introduce this law, crafted specifically to tighten the noose around women, forcing them into submission.
She also pointed to the role of women in the resistance and the roadmap for a free Iran in the future:
The flip side to this brutal repression lies in the Iranian Resistance which continues to thrive and grow.
Our movement is led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi.
She is the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of some 500 Iranian opposition groups and personalities, committed to a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran. Over half of NCRI’s members are women.
She presented a ten-point plan in 2006 that calls for a future Iran based on the separation of religion and state, a country without the death penalty, complete equality for men and women in all aspects, and a non-nuclear Iran among others.
On November 20, 2024, at the European Parliament, Mrs. Rajavi presented a 6 point-plan for the process of regime change in Iran, which I invite you all to read.
Despite prison, executions, and suppression at their highest levels, the incredible resistance within Iran continues. Resistance units within Iran, have been formed, have expanded, and are the ones bravely facing the regime’s threats and dangers.
Despite all of this, however, regime change has been and is the demand of our people.
The regime’s hostile reaction to this blossoming movement reveals its immense fear as it recognizes the existential threat it faces.
Nothing will break our people’s will, and nothing will make us step down from our just right to bring freedom to Iran and to achieve regime change.
Today the banner of “Woman, Resistance, Freedom” has expanded all over Iran from the prisons and the women’s wards to the walls of all the cities and I call on you to join them and stand by them.
It is time to end the failed policy of appeasement to this brutal regime, it is time to end any dialogue with this regime and it is high time to recognize the Iranian Resistance as the solution to this regime.
