Linda Chavez, former White House Director of Public Liaison moderated the Great Gathering in Paris

Ms. Linda Chavez: “Friends, great lovers of freedom, my brothers and sisters, it is a pleasure to be here once again with you in Paris to celebrate all for regime change, all for freedom. The last time that we met one year ago in these halls in Paris, there had been an election in Iran and Hassan Rouhani had been elected president. Something that was greeted with great optimism in the West, that was heralded in the newspapers, that was greeted by many Western governments as some sign that there was going to be a new Iran. Well we have not seen a new Iran, we have not seen any moderation from the Rouhani regime. Instead what we have seen is increased crackdown, public executions and more persecution.
We are now faced with the prospect, as various governments are negotiating and a July 20th deadline is looming in terms of nuclear negotiations. But I will tell you that no matter what happens in those negotiations, no matter what piece of paper is or is not produced at the end of that time, we will not anything in terms of more freedom in Iran and peace and stability in the Middle East, and indeed the future of peace in the world unless there is regime change in Iran.
Unfortunately, it is also been one more year that we have seen the deterioration of things on the ground for those 2400 brave people who are in fact kept in what is nothing more than a prison camp in Iraq, namely Camp Liberty. And if things were bad one year ago in Camp Liberty, today they are in fact worst. We have seen more brutal attacks and since the last time we met we have seen 52 brave persons executed at the hands of those aligned with the Maliki government and at the direction of those in Iran. We have seen the kidnaping of individuals whose fate we still do not know. We have also seen in the last few weeks, a terrible deterioration of condition on the ground in Iraq generally, but more specifically at Camp Liberty. On June 12th UNAMI left, despite its directions to be there to oversee the protection of those residents. On June 15th we saw the UNHCR and UNAMI both having vacated the premises of Liberty and they have not yet returned. We have also seen that for the last 10 days, Iraqi forces who were supposedly on the outskirts of Camp Liberty to protect the residents, turn their machine guns not against those who would attack Camp Liberty, but against the residents of Camp Liberty. We have seen the western T-walls of the camp, officers of the Ashraf suppression committee who are there in fact to begin an attack when they see the most opportune time on the residents of Camp Liberty. We have also seen at the request of the Iranian regime that they have a plan in place, that if in fact there is movement on the ground towards Baghdad, that those who are in Camp Liberty will in fact be slaughtered. At the same time, the regime is making the absolutely absurd allegation that the residents of Camp Liberty are building tunnels underneath in order to escape and join the forces of those who are attacking the Iraqi Government. This in an outrage, this is a lie, this is a fabrication, and it is a fabrication that is in fact being put forward to justify an attack on those residents. Finally, the concrete bunkers that have been purchased, that were there to protect those residents of Camp Liberty are not in fact in place. There are 17500 T-walls that have been sent there, that have been piled up outside the police station in Camp Liberty. Only 4%, seven hundred and fifty of those have actually put into place.”