Text of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi's speech in a conference on the occasion of the World Day Against the Death Penalty
Paris, 10 October 2015
Ladies and gentlemen,
Greetings to all of you and thank you for attending this conference on this very meaningful day for mankind. This invaluable presence demonstrates powerful solidarity with the people of Iran who are subjugated by the mullahs’ daily hangings of their children.
The clerics hang young men under the name of Islam, despite the fact that the dignity and life of any human being is precious and must be respected.
According to the holy books, killing one person is akin to killing the entire humanity.
The murderous mullahs have executed more people this year than they did last year. While a single execution is enough to torment everyone’s conscience, world powers have remained disgracefully silent over the situation in Iran, especially as they were engaged in the nuclear talks and were busy striking a deal that would open the path to doing business with the regime. Sacrificing human lives at the altar of commercial interests have never been a good investment for anyone.
If Western governments had stood up to the abuse of human rights in Iran, the mullahs could have never expanded their barbarity to Syria and Iraq.
Benefitting from the policy of appeasement, the mullahs have easily occupied large parts of Iraq. They also continued their deadly intervention in Syria to prop up the tyrant of Damascus. The outcome has been the death of 300,000 people in Syria, and the flight of refugees abroad and the emergence of ISIS.
Now that the mullahs have failed in Syria, Russia has step in to save the Bashar al-Assad or at least safeguard its own interests in that part of the world.
The ruthless massacre of Syrians continues unabated, something that the whole world must stand up to. The massacre and repression of the Syrian people must be stopped. Some people misconstrue the fall of the Syrian regime as opening the gates of Damascus to ISIS. But this is a misleading argument manufactured by Iran’s ruling mullahs in a bid to save their puppet regime.
To the contrary, it is supporting Assad and his continued rule that empower ISIS to continue to survive and expand. By the same logic, the only way to overcome ISIS is to evict the Iranian regime from Syria and Iraq and topple Assad. In step with the clerical regime’s expulsion from Syria and Iraq, all forms of engagement with it must be conditioned on the halt to executions in Iran. As long as this sinister trend continues, there is no justification for reaching out to the mullahs, Rouhani and other officials of this anti-human regime.
We say to Western governments:
Stop your silence and inaction vis-à-vis executions and other atrocities of the religious fascism ruling Iran and, instead, respect the Iranian people’s resistance for freedom.
I thank you all and with your permission I would continue the rest of my remarks in Farsi.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I appreciate your presence at this conference and your attention to the human rights crisis in Iran.
On this day, which the UN has designated as the World Day Against the Death Penalty, I salute the 120,000 souls martyred for the cause of Iran’s freedom, especially the 30,000 Iranian political prisoners who were massacred in 1988.
On this day, I have come to appeal to the world for help to stop daily executions in my homeland.
Torture and executions must be stopped.
This is the demand of all of Iran’s people.
Dear friends!
The human rights of my oppressed compatriots have been violated and auctioned off on the international level.
Swapping human rights for nuclear deal, forsaking human rights in Iran in the face of the regime’s depravity and terrorism in the region, and disregarding human rights in Iran have become the hallmarks of the weakness and cowardice of international policies.
Should human rights be respected only on the papers of resolutions and international covenants?
Why is a red carpet spread for someone who must be put on trial for his direct role in atrocities and terrorism in the past three decades? At least make the negotiations with him predicated on ending executions in Iran.
I am referring to mullah Rouhani, the Iranian regime’s president. When he took office two years ago, I emphasized that nothing will change without freedom of expression and human rights, without freedom of political prisoners and freedom of political parties, and as long as the regime’s nuclear program and aggressive regional policy are pursued.
Now look at the annual rate of executions during Rouhani’s tenure compared to his predecessor. It has tripled. As Rouhani acknowledged, the regime’s activities for the manufacture of weapons have increased five folds. The budget for security and military affairs and export of fundamentalism, has considerably increased.
Violation of human rights has jumped in every respect, targeting all Iranians: from human rights defenders to women, youths and teachers who staged a nationwide protest just two days ago, and from Christians, Baha’i’s and the Sunnis to our Arab, Baluchi and Kurdish compatriots. I must also point to the enraged workers. It was just last month that the combatant worker, Shahrokh Zamani, lost his life in Gohardasht Prison.
Indeed, why does the world remain silent when Iranian political prisoners are tormented to death or hanged?
Why is the world silent when juveniles are executed in Iran?
Why is this barbaric tyranny not pressured to publish at least a complete list of names of those it executes?
Today, a large number of our defenseless countrymen are secretly executed in prisons across the country. Several thousands more are on the death row.
We think of their parents, and of their wives and children who spend nights and days under stress.
We think of the women who sell their kidneys to pay for their husbands’ blood money and save them from being executed.
Criminals should be cursed, as should those who appease them!
Shame on those who turn a blind eye to so much abuse of human rights in Iran!
Those who seek to wash the stain of these crimes off the hands of the regime’s president must know that this policy will open the way for more atrocities and genocide in the region and the world.
Rouhani has clearly pronounced that these executions “are either based on Divine Law or on some legislation adopted by the parliament… and we only carry them out.”
Despite their differences, the ruling mullahs have a common viewpoint on executions and repression. They benefit from executions to preserve their regime.
However, the criminals should know that the blood they spill every day from the body of the Iranian nation will turn into a flood that will ultimately put an end to the mullahs’ regime.
Honorable ladies and gentlemen,
The religious fascism ruling Iran hangs and executes people basically on three charges:
The first and most important charge is political opposition.
Since three decades ago, tens of thousands of people have been executed only because of their opposition to the regime. They were accused of various unjustifiable and invalid charges without any due process of the law.
Based on the clerical regime’s penal code, anyone who is a member or supporter of the PMOI or in any way affiliated to it is considered a mohareb (someone who has waged war on God) and the punishment for a mohareb is death. The number of those who have been executed for their dissent is by no means small, and countless young people have been executed for protesting the nationwide oppression.
Islam or in the international law do not consider fighting for regime change to be a crime; it is the fundamental and inalienable right of any nation to overturn oppression and injustice.
Others are executed on drug charges. The mullahs hang a considerable number of Iran’s youths on this charge. But those executions violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Just this past month, the UN Secretary General declared that applying the death penalty to offenses such as drug-trafficking are not permissible under international law.
The Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner on Human Rights have denounced these executions.
And the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes proclaimed that such charges are not punishable by death.
Needless to say, in many cases, this charge has been basically proven false and has served as a pretext to justify political executions.
The mullahs’ third excuse for executions is that they claim to be implementing Islamic decrees.
A large number of our compatriots are executed based on the medieval law of retribution which contradicts Islam’s message of clemency and compassion. The dynamism inherent in Islam and the Quran rejects this inhuman justification. Therefore, both claims to Islam and combatting drugs are hollow. The mullahs’ sole objective is to terrorize the society and stifle social protests.
They have turned homicide into a common, daily routine.
The public hanging of convicts in front of their families, and even their children, crushes their hearts, minds and conscience.
Executions, torture, stoning, amputations of limbs, and eye gouging have been institutionalized and turned into law in this regime.
Yes, the existence and rule of this regime depend on executions because if there are no more executions, there would be nothing to prevent the eruption of public fury and seething social uprisings by the people.
Without executions, how and by what means could the mullahs deny people their freedoms and instead step up suppression, intimidation and all sorts of restrictions into the most private angles of people’s lives?
Without executions, how else could the mullahs increase the prices several folds every day, squander the public’s wealth and revenues in regional wars and plunder them in a life of luxury?
Despite such horrific oppression that feeds into the social potential for explosion, the ruling mullahs must know that they will be ultimately toppled by the Iranian people and their organized resistance.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Western governments expand their political and business relations with the religious fascism ruling Iran as if this catastrophe is merely a domestic issue.
Ironically, such relations are the worst form of interference in the internal affairs of Iran and, of course, serve the interest of the mullahs.
Ignoring the Iranian people’s human rights and freedoms is the basic cause of the failure of western policy not only in Iran but also in the entire region which has been victimized by the ruling mullahs’ export of fundamentalism, repression and terrorism.
This failure also manifests itself in the nuclear deal. Predicating the agreement on respect for the Iranian people’s human rights could have forced the regime into a full retreat.
When the mullahs are given free reins in the brutal executions of our nation’s children, they step up their threats to the region and the world.
Therefore, we say to Western governments:
Make all relations with the Iranian regime contingent upon the end to death penalty.
Pressure the mullahs’ regime to free all political prisoners.
Refer the case of 1988 massacre by this regime to the International Criminal Court.
Respect the Iranian people’s resistance for freedom.
As for the mullahs’ main target of killing and massacre in recent years, namely the PMOI members in Camp Liberty, deliver on your promises to protect them.
Specifically, the inhuman siege on Camp Liberty and especially its medical blockade, must be lifted.
Camp Liberty’s dossier and its management must be taken out of the hands of elements affiliated to the Iranian regime.
The dispatch of Intelligence Ministry agents to Liberty, under whatever pretext must end; this is a prelude to massacre.
And the government of Iraq must facilitate the sale of the PMOI properties in Ashraf to fund the expenses in Liberty.
Dear friends,
Our plan for future is an Iran without the death penalty and devoid of torture. Our plan is putting an end to torture and all forms of human rights abuse in Iran.
The Iranian Resistance declared years ago that it calls for abolition of death penalty and an end to torture and all forms of rights abuses in Iran.
Our plan is to revive friendship, conciliation and tolerance.
Our plan for future is to put an end to the mullahs’ religious decrees. We reject the inhuman penal code and other abusive laws of this regime. We believe Retribution is an inhuman law.
We advocate laws that are based on forgiveness, compassion and humanity.
The Iranian Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi ordered the release of thousands of Khomeini’s agents arrested in the battles of the National Liberation Army of Iran --many of whom had committed murder against the PMOI-- without the slightest violation of their human rights.
Yes, this is an enduring tradition of the Iranian people’s resistance.
Our plan is to institute an independent, dynamic and free judiciary.
Our plan is to defend democratic values, freedom, equality and sanctity of every citizen’s private life.
No one will be arrested arbitrarily; torture is banned; no defendant is deprived of the right to defense and having a defense attorney; the principle of presumption of innocence is respected and no one, especially no woman, will be deprived of having access to justice when subjected to violence, aggression and abuse of her freedoms.
Our plan for Iran’s future is that no one should be denied his/her freedoms, rights or life because of having or not having faith in a particular religion or for abandoning it.
Our plan is for all citizens to enjoy genuine security and equal rights before the law.
Yes, we are seeking a new order based on freedom, democracy and equality.
We have chosen to persevere and fight on to let our people enjoy a life in freedom and prosperity, so that no youngster under 18 years of age would have to wait in the corridors of death in prison to reach legal age for execution; so that no mother would ever shed tears of grief for her executed child.
Our motivation for resistance till victory is not spite and revenge but our love for freedom and human rights. This is fuel sour steadfastness. And the secret to this endurance is nothing but being prepared to sacrifice and pay the price.
Look at this book of martyrs. Look at the resistant prisoners. Look at those who stand proud at Liberty Prison. Look at our compatriots who support this Resistance the world over inthe largest-ever international campaign of our time.
These are all glad tidings for Iran’s freedom.
This plan is not a dream, but will certainly become reality in the future Iran.
The sacrifice of those executed, the suffering of those imprisoned, and the sacrifice and endurance of pioneers of freedom in Liberty, are a calling on every one to rise up to create such a bright future.
I wish you all success.
Thank you very much.
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