VISIT TO NORWAY 6-10 FEBRUARY 2022
ADDRESS TO MEMBERS OF THE NORWEGIAN STORTING
The Iranian regime is in a dangerously unstable state. The mullahs have wrecked the Iranian economy, financed and sustained proxy wars across the Middle East, accelerated their program to develop a nuclear weapon and sponsored acts of terrorism worldwide. Their corrupt ineptitude has led to an estimated 505,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. 80 million Iranians are now facing abject poverty and destitution and repeated protests and uprisings are a clear indication that a major revolt is evolving.
Active resistance units of the People's Mojahedin of Iran/Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), inspired by the charisma, courage and leadership of Mrs Maryam Rajavi, have sprung up in every town and city in Iran. Only last week experts from the resistance managed to hack simultaneously into dozens of TV and radio stations across Iran, interrupting national networks to call for the downfall of Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs' criminal regime. This has caused panic amongst the ruling elite and a surge of support for the opposition PMOI/MEK.
Khamenei clearly thought that the sham election of Ebrahim Raisi as president of Iran would send a hardline signal to the West. It was a serious miscalculation. 463 international human rights experts, jurists and dignitaries, including a fomer president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and 18 Nobel laureates, last week sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Council, calling for Raisi to be indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide for his key involvement in the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners. A dossier of evidence compiled by survivors of the massacre and families of victims, has now been handed to the police in the UK, calling for Raisi's arrest under universal jurisdiction. Meanwhile a senior Iranian diplomat is serving 20 years in a Belgian jail for his commanding role in a state-sponsored plot to bomb a rally attended by Mrs Rajavi near Paris in 2018. In Sweden, Hamid Noury, one of Raisi's henchmen during the 1988 massacre, is on trial for crimes against humanity.
With the mullahs' facing justice on many fronts and with mounting crises at home and abroad, the theocratic regime is at its most vulnerable state in four decades. This is a critical moment for the West to send a message of support to the beleaguered Iranian population and to confound the appeasers who cling, desperately, to the hope that the defunct nuclear deal can somehow be resurrected by ending sanctions against Iran and enabling the mullahs to re-double funding for their proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza, as well as their sponsorship of international terrorism and their aggressive attacks on commercial shipping in the Gulf. That approach would represent an abject betrayal of the Iranian people.
Last October, former Vice President Mike Pence, in one of his first public appearances in America since the US presidential elections, outlined his forthright support for the PMOI/MEK and Mrs Rajavi. Pence condemned Ebrahim Raisi, calling for his trial for crimes against humanity for the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988. He said that the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president was a sign that the regime is in a state of desperation and weakness. He said all indications are that the authoritarian regime in Iran knows that its days are numbered.
Mike Pence went on to say that one of the great lies that the mullahs spread is to try to convince the world is that there is no alternative to their corrupt and brutal regime, and therefore the current situation must be accepted. Pence mentioned that on the contrary, there is a well-organized and well-prepared alternative, that has all the competencies and enjoys the support of the Iranian people. This alternative is the PMOI/MEK. Pence said Mrs Rajavi's ten-point plan for Iran's future guarantees freedom of expression. It also establishes freedom of assembly and freedom for all Iranians to elect their own leaders and coexist peacefully with all independent countries in the region.
The ten-point plan is something that any democrat would sign up to. It involves (1) rejection of velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule). Affirmation of the people's sovereignty in a republic founded on universal suffrage and pluralism.
2. Freedom of speech, freedom of political parties, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the internet. Dissolution and disbanding of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRC), the terrorist Qods Force, plainclothes groups, the unpopular Bassi, the Ministry of Intelligence, Council of the Cultural Revolution and all suppressive patrols and institutions in cities, villages, schools, universities, offices, and factories.
3. Commitment to individual and social freedoms and rights in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights. Disbanding all agencies in charge of censorship and inquisition. Seeking justice for massacred political prisoners, prohibition of torture, and the abolition of the death penalty.
4. Separation of religion and state, and freedom of religions and faiths.
5. Complete gender equality in the realms of political, social, cultural, and economic rights, and equal participation of women in political leadership. Abolition of any form of discrimination; the right to choose one's own clothing freely; the right to freely marry and divorce, and to obtain education and employment. Prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext.
6. An independent judiciary and legal system consistent with international standards based on the presumption of innocence, the right to defence counsel, right of appeal, and the right to be tried in a public court. Full independence of judges. Abolition of the mullahs’ Sharia law and dissolution of Islamic Revolutionary Courts.
7. Autonomy for and removal of double injustices against Iranian nationalities and ethnicities consistent with the NCRI's plan for the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan. Restoration of the rights of blue-collar workers, farmers, nurses, white-collar workers, teachers, and retirees.
9. Protection and rehabilitation of the environment, which has been devastated under the rule of the mullahs.
10. A non-nuclear Iran that is also devoid of weapons of mass destruction. Peace, co-existence, and international and regional cooperation.
