May 25th marks the 52nd anniversary of the martyrdom of the founders of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saeed Mohsen, and Asghar Badizadegan, along with two PMOI Central Committee members, Mahmoud Asgarizadeh and Rasoul Meshkinfam.
Less than seven years after its founding, the PMOI lost its founders. But five decades later, the movement is stronger than ever, with members and supporters across the country and the globe.
May 25th is a significant day in the history of the PMOI, and indeed in the history of the Iranian people’s struggle. The sacrifices they made paved the way for generations of PMOI members and supporters who followed them.
Mohammad Hanifnejad was a great revolutionary who discovered profound and transformative truths in the sphere of struggle and revolution. At a time where the Shah had obliterated all paths of political reforms and the mullahs had seized religion in their fundamentalist views, he found a way to continue the struggle for freedom. While the mullahs were trying to draw the line between believers and non-believers, he that the primary demarcation line lies between the oppressor and the oppressed. This was that united all freedom-loving people in a struggle to overthrow the despotic rule of the Shah.
Hanifnejad was the first to establish professional struggle as a scientific and organized effort, and on this foundation, he founded an organization that became the genuine hope of the people for achieving liberation and freedom.
Each of these was indeed a major revolution in the struggle for freedom. Furthermore, Hanifnejad was the pioneer of selfless sacrifice. When it came time to pay the ultimate price for freedom, he and his co-founders, Mohsen and Badizadegan, did not shy away from laying down his life. After their arrest, the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, brutally tortured them and tried to force them to repent. They were told they would be spared if they renounced their struggle for freedom. But they did not back down and eventually, the Shah regime executed them on May 25, 1972.
The example they set at that time, when their nascent organization was in a precarious position, ensured that the movement and struggle for freedom would stay alive. A look at the current position of the PMOI and comparing it with the fate of currents and groups that adopted the logic of self-preservation and cost-free tactics, political maneuvering, and opportunism clearly reveals this reality.
On the foundation of Hanifnejad’s sacrifice, a generation was nurtured that proudly and steadfastly endured the torture chambers of the Shah and SAVAK to the gallows and firing squads of the mullahs’ regime, never shying away from paying any price.
Hanifnejad was the founder and teacher of the steadfast generation, which, under no circumstances and under no pressure, would abandon its ideals and beliefs; because they have faith to the core and know that only by paying the price, especially at the highest levels of the movement’s leadership, can they serve the impoverished and oppressed people of Iran.
His faith resounded through the halls of the notorious Evin prison on May 25, 1972, as Hanifnejad knocked on his cell door and called out to the torturers: “I am ready! Why don’t you take me?”
The steadfastness of Hanifnejad and his cofounders later echoed in the epic resistance of PMOI members, who during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners. While butchers like Ebrahim Raisi thought that they could break the spirit of resistance by carrying out mass executions in Iran’s prisons, PMOI members were often heard mocking the executioners by shouting: “I am a Mojahed! I am a Mojahed! Come and take me too!”
They mocked the regime’s executioners and embraced their death, knowing that their sacrifices would not be in vain and would lead to the victory of the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom. They had inherited this conviction and faith from Hanifnejad. They believed that revolutionaries always see the sun of freedom, even if the sky is covered with dark clouds.