Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, August 9, 2020—One the Iranian regime’s documentary makers, Iman Goudarzi, acknowledged that the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) has succeeded in gaining appeal among women and girls in Iran. While the regime’s state-run media try to portray the MEK as an unpopular and dead movement, Goudarzi acknowledged that the movement is gaining popularity across the country and the regime’s own officials are witnessing the growing role of the MEK in organizing protests across Iran.
Goudarzi also expressed regret that the regime did not make any documentaries about the MEK before the post-elections nationwide uprising of 2009, and that Hassan Rouhani had adopted a resolution in the National Security Council to prevent any activity regarding the MEK.
Iman Goudarzi:
“Unfortunately, in the country’s media and writings have a wrong perspective on the MEK, and it is portraying their structure as old and outdated. We say to everybody that it is a dead movement while we are witnessing their role in protests across the country.
“Mr. Rouhani adopted a resolution in the National Security Council to forbid any activity regarding the MEK. Unfortunately, until 2009, we didn’t make any documentary about the MEK.
“Most of the members of the MEK were graduated from universities…. The MEK managed to show a new face of women to young girls… many academics and even young students and teenagers were attracted to this organization and a major part of those arrested in the 80s were 16- and 17-year-old teenagers.” (Daneshjoo news agency, August 5, 2020.)
The misogynist nature of the regime
Since seizing power in Iran after the 1979 revolution, the mullahs made misogynism a key pillar of their rule. From forced veiling to restrictions in education and employment, the regime went to great lengths to deprive women of their most basic rights and force them to remain at home. The one organization that fought for the rights of women since the beginning of the revolution was the MEK. After the revolution, the female members of the MEK played a key role in providing a role model for girls and women in Iran, showing them that they do not have to bow to the pressure and inhuman rules of the mullahs and can stand up and fight for their rights.
In the 1980s, the mullahs’ regime executed and tortured thousands of women and young girls for being supporters, sympathizers, or members of the MEK. Based on a fatwa of regime’s then Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, the lives, property, and honor of the MEK members and supporters was deemed “halal” to be taken away from them. Khomeini’s henchmen in prison have tortured thousands of women in the “residential unit“, “the graves”, “the coffins” and “the cages,” and death corridors. This did not deter the resolve of the women of MEK, who set an example of resistance in the dungeons of the regime.
The resistance of MEK women
In an international virtual conference in Ashraf 3 on the 39th anniversary of the beginning of the resistance against the mullahs’ regime, Massoumeh Malek Mohammadi, 63, a deputy Secretary General of the MEK explained how she witnessed Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) opening fire on the peaceful demonstration of MEK supporters in Tehran in June 1981.
She became acquainted with the MEK during the anti-monarchic 1979 Revolution when she was a college student. She started her political activism as a sympathizer of the MEK.
Massoumeh Malek Mohammadi was arrested on January 20, 1983 and incarcerated in Evin Prison and endured vicious tortures for three years.
“Like tens of thousands of PMOI members and supporters, I spent the early years of the 1980s in prison. The stories of Khomeini’s henchmen committing inhuman crimes against their prisoners have been told to some extent. But little is known about our sisters and how courageously they resisted and endured the tortures in jail,” Massoumeh Malek Mohammadi explained and added that “I witnessed part of the tortures and killings in prisons.”
The leading role of women in the Iranian Resistance
For many years, the Iranian regime tried to silence the voice of the MEK through mass executions, tortured, and spending billions for propaganda campaigns, but today regime’s own officials, experts and researchers are acknowledging that it failed. MEK’s internal support and expanded network is growing by day and this is worrying for the regime.
While the regime continues to suppress women’s rights in Iran, women have continued to play a key role in leading the resistance of the MEK against the tyranny of the mullahs.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the opposition coalition to which the MEK belongs, is also led by a woman, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who is a vocal defender of equal rights for women and men. Mrs. Rajavi’s ten-point plan for the future of Iran calls for “Complete gender equality in political, social, cultural, and economic rights, and equal participation of women in political leadership; abolishment of any form of discrimination; the right to choose one’s clothing, and to marriage, divorce, education and employment; prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext.”
The MEK and NCRI fight for everything that the Iranian regime has taken away from Iranian women. It is no wonder that the regime’s own analysts are afraid of the appeal that MEK has among Iranian women.
