“I call on my fellow countrymen and women to rise up in support and solidarity to expand the movement to obtain justice.”
Honorable dignitaries,
Dear friends,
Sisters and brothers,
I am very pleased to see you, the representatives of the Iranian communities. We have gathered here to convey the voice of Iran’s profoundly discontented society.
In recent weeks, a powerful social wave has emerged against the Velayat-e Faqih regime in Iran with the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners lying at its core. In fact the people of Iran have turned this into a central issue in their protests to the criminal and murderous regime and a pivotal demand for the establishment of freedom.
Let us go back to those horrifying days:
Exactly 28 years ago, when Khamenei was the regime’s president, Rafsanjani was the regime’s speaker of parliament and the acting commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, and Rouhani was his deputy, tens of thousands of political prisoners were languishing in prisons across the country.
Some of the prisoners had been arrested when they were only 16 or 17 years old. Now after seven years, they have grown up to become 23 or 24-year-old young men and women. Some of them have finished their sentences and some have only a few months left.
Yet, instead of releasing the prisoners, an ominous specter has begun its rounds in all prisons. Khomeini’s representative delegations question each and every one of the prisoners. Their main question is whether they support the People’s Mojahedin or not? In a matter of a few weeks, prisons turn into stages for mass hangings.
In the corridors of death, prisoners walk to the gallows with cries of hail to Massoud Rajavi. Some sing the anthem of Freedom.
How many are they? Initially, they are a few thousand. In subsequent weeks, they become several thousands, and a few months later, their numbers swell to exceed 30,000.
Their endurance illuminates this part of Iran’s history, without aging despite passage of time.
Here is the Prison of Arak. The warden tells prisoners: ‘Do not ever think that you will survive to be welcomed with flower wreaths by your people.’ Ghassem Bastaki, a wrestling champion, answers: ‘When people come with bunches of flowers, we are prepared to be seen among the martyrs.’
This is Evin Prison. Monireh Rajavi, 38, with two young daughters. Having completed her six-year incarceration, she is executed instead of being released. Her only crime is that she is the sister of the Resistance’s Leader Massoud Rajavi.
And here is the death corridor of Evin Prison. Mahmoud Hassani, a Tehran University student of economics, is walking in a group of 60 prisoners. He is whispering his own poem:
In the darkness of night,
When you see a bright meteoroid in the sky
Remember the burning flames
Who were extinguished in the cold nights of Evin
To let stars dawn in the morning
This is one of the cellblocks of Ahwaz Prison. Two mullahs, two executioners, shout: ‘You must take your stance. On one side is Khomeini and on the other is Massoud Rajavi. Which side are you on?’
A young woman cries from the back of the ward: ‘Long live Massoud, death to Khomeini!’
She is Sakineh Delfi, 26, from Abadan.
Prison guards attack her upon hearing her cry; they badly beat her up and seriously injure her, to no avail. All the cellblock is now roaring.
From the 350 inmates in this cellblock, 349 are hanged.
Here is Cellblock 9 in Gohardasht Prison. In the death corridor, one of them is asked: ‘Where is this?’ He responds: ‘This is the end of the line and I have made my decision.’
The prisoner is the 25-year-old Mehran Bigham.
These are the hills near Orumiyeh Lake. A large number of political prisoners have been brought here. The Revolutionary Guards are beating the prisoners on the head with clubs and iron rods until they die. Their cries have attracted villagers to the location. One of them is Bahman Shakeri. He has been in prison for seven years and he finished serving his sentence two years ago.
Here is Hall No. 19 in Cellblock 3 of Gohardasht Prison. The prison’s guard is angry because of the painting on the wall. The painter is soon sent into the line of prisoners going for execution. His name is Akbar Latif.
And now, we are outside the Masjid-Soleiman Prison. A 4-year-old girl called Tanin is holding a bunch of flowers and waiting for her daddy. But prison guards give her a Quran and a set of clothes and tell her that they belonged to her father, the courageous prisoner Shahrokh Namdari.
Here is Gohardasht Prison. A prisoner sends her message by tapping on the wall: “Friends, they have given me 20 minutes to write my last will. They are executing everyone here. Send my regards to the Mojahedin.”
Her name is Zahra Khosravi.
And here is the torture room. The lashes of the whip strike one after the other, but no one hears any cry from the prisoner. The torturer pleads, “We don’t want any information from you. Just scream!” But the prisoner keeps silent. Soon afterwards, she is placed on the death row. Her name is Azadeh Tabib. A young, joyful and patient woman who has repeatedly defeated her torturers.
28 years on, when the dialogue exchanged between the executioners and Mr. Montazeri is revealed, we hear one of them admitting that he had been wrecked by the resistance of young Mojahed women.
Now, the Mojahedin are walking, one by one, through those blood drenched corridors: One of them is Ashraf Ahmadi, a political prisoner under the Shah; another is Fatemeh Zare’ii, the PMOI candidate in the parliamentary elections in Shiraz; three others are from the same family: Hossein, Mostafa and Massoumeh Mirzaii.
In those days, Khomeini had issued a decree: “All of those imprisoned in jails across the country and continue to persist on their support for the Hypocrites, they have waged war on God and are condemned to death.”
Khomeini and his accomplices wanted to do away with the notion of resistance for freedom. So, not only they exterminated vast numbers of Mojahedin and other resistant prisoners, but they concealed all the information on this enormous crime and denied it all together.
They have not yet revealed any information on the locations of these victims’ graves. The Khavaran cemetery which was discovered through the efforts of families of the victims, is today the most sacred monument for those who gave their lives for freedom. We send thousands of salutes, from here to Khavaran whose pure soil is colored with blood and tears.
Dear friends,
The public revelation of the audio file of Mr. Montazeri’s remarks sparked a confrontation between the people of Iran and the illegitimate and blood-thirsty ruling regime. The dispute is over all the things whose cornerstones were built in the course of the massacre in 1988. As a result:
• A new wave has emerged within the Iranian society, a wave of wrath, protest, query, and a general movement to obtain justice.
• The regime has been cracked at numerous points. Serious strife over this issue forced the mullahs’ parliament into an unusual recession.
• Khomeini’s edict for the massacre was questioned by the clergy and seminary students, and the majority of the regime’s senior clerics refrained from defending the decree.
Accordingly, we challenge the ruling regime and say: Do you not consider the blood-thirsty Khomeini as an Imam and a saint? Then why is it that you avoid publicizing his decree in your media?
The least is to show the manuscript of his edict for the massacre of the Mojahedin on your state television.
Publicize the minutes of the trials of those executed.
Announce the names of members of the commissions that held the trials in all of the provinces.
Hand over the last wills of the victims of the massacre to their families.
Publish the complete list of names of the victims and the locations of their graves which have been concealed to date.
And to the regime’s internal factions and proponents of reform within this religious dictatorship, we say, if smearing the Mojahedin ensures your safety and security, do not spare any opportunity to do so. But you must condemn the massacre in 1988. After all these years of complicity and collaboration in the regime’s evil doings, for once, distance yourselves from this colossal atrocity.
And to the clerics in all the seminaries, we say: break your long silence over the 1988 massacre and do not evade your responsibility.
To the international community and western governments, we say:
Standing up to the violations of human rights in Iran is also the responsibility of Western governments because its consequences do not remain within Iran. The terrorism and fundamentalism emanating from it, have been hurting defenseless people in Nice, Paris, Brussels, etc. Make your relations with the Iranian regime contingent on end to executions in Iran. Put Khamenei and his accomplices on trial in an international court for committing crime against humanity, particularly in 1988. And respect the Iranian people’s Resistance for regime change.
And finally, I call on my fellow countrymen and women to rise up in support and solidarity to expand the movement to obtain justice.
Demanding justice for the martyrs is part of the campaign for the overthrow of the clerical regime and must extend to the final destination.
Only in the past few weeks, the campaign inside Iran managed to identify a number of members of the death commissions and obtain new names and documents including the photographs of a number of victims of the massacre.
We must drive the mullahs to a point where they would not dare again to repeat such crimes. One-hundred prisoners were executed over the last month. They included 25 Sunni political prisoners from Kurdistan. Then there was the execution of three of our Arab compatriots. These killings must be stopped and the murderous regime must be toppled.
I call on freedom-loving Iranians, and all members and supporters of the Iranian Resistance, in Iran and all over the world, to expand the movement to obtain justice for the victims of the 1988 massacre. You must insist on this demand and persist and campaign until justice is done with regards to the human rights abuses committed by the mullahs’ religious tyranny.
Dear friends,
What happened in the course of the recent crisis was not merely a revelation of the executioners’ confession to the massacre of prisoners. The main incident was Khomeini’s renewed death and the demise of the spirit dominating the clerical regime on the one hand, and the rejuvenation of the Iranian Resistance on the other.
This was clearly pointed out by Khamenei when he said, “The PMOI lovers inside the country wish to purify them and present their image as legitimate and innocent while distorting the image of Imam (Khomeini).”
The Assembly of Experts, the highest institution in the Velayat-e Faqih regime, also declared in its official statement that they intend to “undermine the Islamic regime, the principle of Velayat-e Faqih, and the exalted status of the leader… among the people, on the one hand; and on the other, to clean the image of the PMOI by presenting them as victims of injustice.”
In 1989, Khomeini elaborated on the most important reason for the ouster of Mr. Montazeri in his edict, where he said, “Since it has become clear that after me (Khomeini), you (Montazeri) will hand over Iran to liberals and through them to the Hypocrites, you have lost the competence and legitimacy for future leadership of the regime.”
Subsequently, the regime’s officials repeated their claim of having annihilated the PMOI/MEK and the Iranian Resistance, thousands of times, but were frustrated in the face of the Mojahedin’s 14 years of steadfast endurance in Ashraf and Camp Liberty.
Two days ago, it was the third anniversary of the mass executions of 52 PMOI members in Ashraf. In the raid which was carried out on the orders of Khamenei, seven including six women were taken hostage. There has been no information on the hostages to this date.
The massacre in Ashraf was part of a larger plan by the Iranian regime to annihilate the Mojahedin altogether. But the plan failed and today, once again, the regime’s leaders are primarily concerned about the status of the Mojahedin in Iran and among their people.
Fellow compatriots,
Twenty-eight years after the massacre of political prisoners, the movement to obtain justice for them, and the wave of general respect and admiration for them attest to a fundamental truth.
The truth is that the blood of those pure souls is still running in the veins of our nation and not a single drop of it has been wasted, that their suffering and perseverance was not in vain.
The truth is that the mullahs and their accomplices’ falsities declaring resistance for freedom as useless, were discredited. Those who concealed the massacre, or attempted to justify and legitimize it, or blamed the Mojahedin for it, are now exposed to history’s ridicule.
They thought that no one would ever hear the cries of those freedom fighters from those execution theaters and silos. They thought the zenith of humanity and honor could be buried in torture rooms and solitary cells.
But the blazing sun of truth rose from the depth of the dungeons, from the darkness of the execution theatres, from the containers which carried the blood-drenched bodies, and from the mass graves which were covered by lime and cement, because the perseverance and sacrifices for freedom can neither be annihilated nor denied.
Today, these sufferings and battles have culminated in blocking the regime’s way and opening the way for freedom.
This steadfastness has borne fruit in the strength and progress of the resistance movement on the 51st anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Mojahedin organization of Iran and is going to establish a republic of freedom and equality; a republic based on separation of religion and state, on equality of women and men, on equal rights and autonomy for ethnic minorities in the framework of a united Iran, and on abolition of the death penalty.
History always shows us the greatness of men and women who made it. And these 30,000 have made Iran’s history towards freedom.
Hail to freedom
Hail to the martyrs
Hail to the people of Iran
