By Atousa Pilger
For 40 years, the Iranian mullahs have destroyed the lives of the people they rule over and now the Iranian people are calling on the international community to support their right to overthrow this dictatorship and achieve the freedom they were fighting for in 1979.
Many Westerners are familiar with Iran’s secret nuclear weapons programme or its malign support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, but far fewer know about the Regime’s appalling human rights record or about the organized democratic opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).
The Iranian Regime is the leading executioner per capita, according to the United Nations, and has executed some 120,000 MEK activists.
The Regime’s anti-MEK crackdown only intensified last year, after they found out that the MEK was behind the Iranian uprising that began in December 2017.
These nationwide protests calling for regime change, triggered in part by a failing economy and clamp down on freedoms, saw MEK members defying the Regime to chant “Death to the dictator”; something that could see them executed. According to Amnesty International, over 7,000 people were arrested for taking part in the protests.
This is not the first time that the Iranian people have protested to demand their rights, but it is the first time that the US has sided with the Iranian people rather than appeasing the mullahs.
However, the EU, with its special mechanism to bypass US sanctions on Iran and its commitment to the nuclear deal has shown that it is willing to betray human rights for short-term economic interests.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the US and Poland are co-hosting an international summit that will focus on Iran, where the Iranian people are asking that the world recognise their right to overthrow the Regime and achieve freedom.
Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), also advised that the West:
• Blacklist Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Intelligence Ministry as terrorist entities
• Expel Iran’s agents masquerading as diplomats
• Refer Iran’s human rights dossier to the UN Security Council
These are n outrageous requests, considering that in 2018 alone, the EU’s security agencies thwarted three Iranian terror plots against dissidents in Albania, Demark and France, including the arrest of an Iranian diplomat to Vienna who provided two would-be bombers with the explosives to bomb the MEK’s annual ‘Free Iran’ rally in Paris, which over 100,000 attended.
The Regime’s continuous targeting of the MEK has made it clear that the group is a viable opposition force that can bring forth the change the people demand.
The Warsaw Summit has the opportunity to do something great, by recognising the Iranian people’s right to freedom, so the countries in attendance must support the MEK and Rajavi to send a message to the Iranian people that the world stands with them.
