Paris, July 1, 2023: Coinciding with the gathering of global leaders and legislators at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)’s Headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise for a significant assembly, a grand rally of Iranians and supporters of the Iranian Resistance took place in Vauban Square.
Freedom-loving Iranians and supporters of the Iranian Resistance united to express unwavering solidarity with Mrs. Maryam Rajavi‘s ten-point plan for bringing about regime change in Iran and establishing freedom and democracy.
Mr. Patrick Kennedy, former US House Representative, addressed at the grand rally in Paris to the demonstrators.
The full text of Patrick Kennedy, former US House Representative, follows:
Hello my friends!
How are my Ashrafi friends?
So good to be with you.
As you all know, this weekend in the United States, we celebrate July 4th, which is American Independence Day. In two weeks, here in France, on July 14th, you will celebrate French Independence Day. And this coming year, the Iranian people, thanks to Madam Rajavi, will be celebrating Iranian Independence Day.
I’d like to have my family come up for a minute. Would that be alright to have my wife and children? This is Nelly. This is Owen. This is Nora. This is Harper. This is my wife, Amy. And this is Marshall. So, last week, I took my children to Normandy, because it was Normandy when the whole world was waiting to see if we could fight the fascism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
And thank God for history’s sake, that the world came together, and they fought and on D-Day, the world was able to start defeating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to liberate the world from World War II. I teach them their history because it’s important that they understand that if we had not fought Hitler, Hitler would have won, and we would be living in a different world today. I tell them this history because today we are facing Hitlers of today. Hitlers like the mullahs in Tehran, who are none other than religious fascists, no different than Adolf Hitler. They are trying to kill both their own fellow countrymen, just like Adolf Hitler did, and they are declaring war on the rest of the world.
Iran, under the mullahs is the number one sponsor of terrorism anywhere in the whole world, is the mullahs in Iran. But the mullahs are not content to just kill people around the world as the leading sponsor of terrorism, they are also the number one country in the world for killing their own people in their own prisons and torture chambers.
So, we must win. We must get Madam Rajavi, and we must believe that the ten-point plan that she has for a new Iran is going to be the future that provides not only freedom for the people in Iran, but for freedom for people all over the world.
So, this last week in Germany, they celebrated the 60th anniversary of my uncle, President John F. Kennedy, speaking in Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. He went to Berlin because that is where freedom was put to the test. He said at that famous speech, Ich bin ein Berliner, because at that time he wanted the whole world to know that it didn’t matter whether you lived in the United States, or you lived in Berlin or you lived anywhere in the world, we were all one people because we all as human beings want a safe and secure future for our children.
And so that is why I have been on the side of our friends in Ashraf. That is why I have been on the side of all of my friends from Iran and all the Iranian people, who together are no different than me. You have children, you do not want those children to grow up in a country where they can disappear in the middle of the night because the mullahs have captured them and taken them into their torture chambers and disappeared like the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 members of the MEK /PMOI in 1988.
And even in this last year, during the uprising, young people all over Iran were taken hostage and prisoner.
None of you wants to live in a country where your children can be made to disappear. That is not a free country, that is a fascist, totalitarian, brutal regime. And that is what the mullahs have in Iran today, and that must change.
I want my children to grow up believing that they can prosper and be free, just as you want your children and grandchildren in Iran to grow up and prosper and be free.
We all want the same things out of life, and yet we all fight the same forces of totalitarianism and fascism that are now being displayed in Ukraine, that are being displayed in parts all over the world.
But we are here today to say, just as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And that is why I do not have to be from Iran to care about what’s going on in Iran, because I could easily have been born in Iran, and I could easily be growing up in this totalitarian regime. My children could have been growing up in this totalitarian regime.
So, I am here today to tell you that I am with you in your fight for a new and free and democratic and pluralistic Iran under Madam Rajavi.
I want to thank my colleagues in France because we have freedom here in France. We have a strike right now at the Eiffel Tower, that’s freedom, my friends. We have protests going on all over France right now, that’s freedom, my friends, to be able to say your part, to live in a country where you do not have to fear speaking your mind and to not have to worry about being imprisoned and tortured, that is freedom.
As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. We might not all like all the things that go on in democracy, but they’re sure better than living under a totalitarian regime like the Mullahs’ regime in Tehran.
So, I just want to thank you all and ask you to stay organized and mobilized, because times are changing, and those times are changing in Iran, we saw it with the protests all over in the last year and a half. And who was it that was organizing all of those events and helping to organize those events? It was the MEK, PMOI, that was helping. And if you do not think the MEK is a threat, all you need to do is ask the Mullahs who they think the biggest threat is, and they all say it’s the MEK. That’s what the mullahs are saying.
So… Thank you.
And I just want to conclude by saying that every generation has to fight for freedom. And our fight today is in many parts of the world. But certainly, it is focused heavily on making sure that we change this brutal dictatorship which has soiled the legacy and memory of the Persian people.
The Persian people are a proud civilization that helped start civilization. The Persian people are a people that celebrate freedom and education and a middle class, which has all been destroyed by the mullahs. And we cannot replace the mullahs with another monarchy. We cannot replace the mullahs with another dictatorship like the Shah. We have to bring democracy and not replace the mullahs with another form of tyranny.
We need to bring pluralism and civil society and democracy, and that is embodied in Madam Rajavi’s 10-point plan for a new Iran.
That is why we don’t want another Shah because whether it’s the mullahs, they thought they were helping to take all the popular will which was rejecting the Shah in what they end up doing, they replaced the Shah with another dictatorship. That’s not what the people of Iran were rebelling for where the revolution in 1979 was about freedom, it was not about replacing the Shah with another dictatorship.
And we ultimately see Madam Rajavi, and the PMOI and MEK return triumphing to a free Iran, we will finally realize the full future of Iran as a country that is long finally awaited a received the freedom that they fought for, for so many generations.
God bless you; God bless Iran, and thank you all for protesting for freedom.
Thank you very much.
Man Irani hastam… Man Ashrafi hastam… thank you.
