Zamaswazi Dlamini- Mandela, Advocate of women’s rights, addressed at the 2nd Day of The Free Iran World Summit on July 11, 2021.
Madame Rajavi, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a pleasure and honor to talk to you today. In keeping with the theme, solidarity with the women of Iran in the struggle to secure basic fundamental human and gender rights.
It is important for us all to remember and draw strength, that despite the adversity we confront in our crusade to secure our inalienable human rights, we shall and will not capitulate to the torture, violence and barbarism brought upon us, just like the women everyone are experiencing and are currently being subjected to, and capturing the history of our liberation struggle against apartheid.
It is usually the faces of men that are presented as the heroes to the world. But it was often women who embraced the idea of mass campaigns, and went to jail for the protests long before amended. Alongside the comrades, women enjoyed unimaginable loss, humiliation, detention interrogation, banning orders, house arrest and murder in the struggle for dignity, equality and freedom.
Under the current dictatorship in Iran, women are unable to leave their houses without being accompanied, unable to attend school, unable to work unless permitted by their husbands and are mandated to wear hijabs whenever in public. This is despite Iranian women being at the forefront of the revolution, and a piece done by CBC Radio Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in March 2019, titled The Stolen Revolution: Iranian woman of 1979, centered on how the regime had betrayed the women of Iran.
Mere weeks of the Ayatollah Khamenei power, Iranian women marched to show their fury at the new regime, which now seem to be turning against them. The rallying cry which brought 10s of 1000s of Iranian women together onto the streets of Tehran on March 8, 1979, was we didn’t have a revolution to go backwards.
The women’s support is at the main opposition to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq who are Muslims, but we’re at the forefront of defending the rights of women to choose their own attire. Suppression of women in Iran has been institutionalized. The mullahs’ Sharia laws have been used to oppress, subjugate, humiliate, abuse, undermine, and strip the women of Iran, their dignity, just like apartheid did to the black woman of South Africa.
The genocide of some 30,000 young men and women who were killed because of their political beliefs against the system. We call upon the international community to condemn and demonize such acts against the many lives lost. They need to support everyone against this brutal regime. We must acknowledge the brave women and men who have laid their lives at risk against the system.
The National Council of resistance of Iran led by the president like Mrs. Maryam Rajavi is the Iranians’ people’s opposition to the current regime. It is a four decade old coalition of democratic forces that have persevered against the mullahs’ fascism. Mrs. Rajavi advocates a 10-point plan for the future of Iran.
This impressive plan affirms the people’s sovereignty in a problem founded on universal suffrage and tourism, support social, religious and political freedoms, seeks justice for those massacred in purpose of torture and the death penalty, ensures gender equality pursues the independence of the judiciary employs equal opportunities within a free trade market economy and provides for non-nuclear one as well as the protection of the environment.
The regime ruling Iran must be held to account by world governments and the United Nations for its heinous crimes against humanity. Now it’s time to hold Ebrahim Raisi to a conference role in the 1988 massacre of MEK supporters and other political prisoners. Now is not the time for silence and inaction.
We must forge your way forward together and find a collective way against Iran’s regime for the freedom and prosperity of this generation and the next. As my grandmother remarked, “There is no longer anything I can do. There is nothing that the government has not done to me, there isn’t any pain I haven’t known.” As the mother of the nation, she showed strength and the invisible spirit is done against a brutal, racist and oppressive system.
In conclusion, what I have tried to emphasize is if we as women want to drive meaningful change together to bring about human rights and equality, we can only achieve this if we bring about meaningful systemic, structural and prevalent societal changes, which requires a paradigm shift in our societal system and belief system. I thank you.
