On December 27 and 28, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) held their midterm session in Paris, with the sessions presided over by the organization’s President-elect, Maryam Rajavi.
As a result of restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic, and flight cancellations, many NCRI members in various countries across the world, and Ashraf 3 in Albania joined the session through virtual means. Many supporters and allies of the NCRI also took part in the first day of the sessions, with some of them giving speeches.
The NCRI said, “In her opening remarks at the NCRI session, Mrs. Rajavi said the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei installed Ebrahim Raisi, the henchman of the 1988 massacre, as president (in 2021) and subsequently intensified repression, arrests, executions, and pressure on political prisoners.”
While the Coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Iran and severely impacted the lives of the Iranian people over the past year, major uprisings have broken out every four months in the country. The Iranian people have stood together to fight for their rights and have proven to the Iranian regime that their methods of violence, unannounced arrests, forced confessions under torture and the demonization of the NCRI and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) are ineffective and futile.
Maryam Rajavi made a reference to the Justice Movement for the victims of the 1988 massacre in Iran during her speech. She urged that the movement will “continue its activities until the truth about all the massacres throughout Iran is revealed and all the officials and perpetrators of this genocide and great crime are exposed and brought to justice in the courts of the Iranian people in our country.”
The NCRI said, “During the trial of Hamid Noury, one of the henchmen of the 1988 massacre in a Swedish Court that began in August 2021, everyone witnessed how the henchman explicitly stated that if he failed to refer to the MEK using the derogatory epithet of ‘hypocrites’ or ‘sect’, he would be arrested and punished by the regime upon his arrival in the country.”
The regime has made it clear that even the simple uttering of the MEK’s official name is a line that no Iranian should cross. Maryam Rajavi explained that during the court proceedings in Stockholm, the regime and its agents across Europe made sure that they did all they could to distort the MEK’s image.
Discussing the depths of the Coronavirus pandemic in Iran, Maryam Rajavi stated that the number of victims who have lost their lives due to the virus ‘has now reached half a million people’, with students and children being among the numbers. She put the blame on the Khamenei, saying that in an attempt to preserve the regime, ‘he has sacrificed the lives of the Iranian people’.
She said, “By sending people to the Coronavirus killing fields, in the midst of sanctions, Khamenei and the regime’s former president Hassan Rouhani adopted the strategy of inflicting mass human casualties in an attempt to protect their regime from the threat of looming uprisings and the regime’s overthrow. The same strategy was deployed during the unpatriotic Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and the 1988 massacre.”
Earlier this month, nuclear talks took place in Vienna. Maryam Rajavi referenced the fate of the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stating that the developments only highlight that the regime’s strategy all along was to buy time to advance their nuclear program in the race to obtain a bomb capable of mass destruction.
She said, “The mistaken policy of appeasement and doling out concessions to the mullahs’ regime must be mitigated and corrected by reactivating the six United Nations Security Council resolutions. Nevertheless, I repeat that the ultimate solution and the correct approach (to contain the regime’s nuclear program) is to stand by the Iranian people and their uprisings and Resistance movement.”
Concluding the meeting, the NCRI said, “NCRI members also praised the persistent struggle waged by Resistance Units in some of the most difficult circumstances compounded by the regime’s suppression and the spread of the Coronavirus within Iran. These Resistance Units keep alight the flames of uprisings and the inevitability of the regime’s overthrow.”
