July 12, 2021 — I am very pleased, honoured and moved to address you today, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on this important day to celebrate a free Iran.
Mrs. Rajavi’s work and proposals are indeed part of a democratic and universalist vision that would apply to a country whose history, whose tradition, whose culture and whose civilisation are thousands of years old and have meant a great deal to all the civilisations of the world, of the planet.
As a universalist, very attached to the defence of rights, also attached to the defence of the rights of humanity, I can only agree with your approach. To allow Iranian men and women to have an extremely precious asset, which is freedom. The freedom to choose one’s leaders, the freedom to choose one’s destiny, the freedom to choose one’s religion, to choose one’s spouse, to choose the education one wants to give to one’s children, to choose one’s profession, to choose one’s way of life, whatever it is, and whatever one’s desires and tendencies are.
These are things that are very difficult today, I think, in Iran. I say ‘I think’ simply because I have not been there and I am someone who likes to talk about what he has seen. I have not seen it, except through images, through films. The situation in Iran, because I am interested in it, I know how much the defenders of freedom are persecuted there, how much women are in subjugated positions and the difficulty, the rigour of the regime that has now been imposed on the Iranian people for some forty years.
The recent election of Ebrahim Raisi obviously does not make things any easier and everyone can only be very attentive to the cry of alarm launched by Amnesty International demanding that the crimes committed by this person be referred to the international criminal court.
As a democrat, a republican, attached to all these universalist values, I can only say to the Iranian men and women who have done me the honour of listening to me today, how much I stand by them, how much I support them, how much I understand their struggle and how much I wish that the Western democracies would be more courageous in expressing their principles when it comes to talking about Iran.
Iran is a large country and it is understandable in a geopolitical universe that is uncertain that some leaders choose to be cautious. Caution is certainly necessary, but it does not lead to a policy and, above all, it does not make it possible to defend the values of democracy, freedom, individual rights, physical integrity and freedom of choice.
For all these reasons, I want to say here how important I think it is that liberal democracies, since today we are also dealing with liberal democracies, but at least the liberal ones should be courageous, should assert their values because this is not only what their peoples expect, but it is what the peoples who are fighting for freedom in the world also expect.
It is not a question of paternalism or of giving lessons. We have no lessons to give, but rather experiences to share, values to defend, which are those that make us human.
I will conclude by saying that at a time when all of us Earthlings are facing dangers that none of our predecessors on this planet have ever experienced in this form. It is absolutely essential to make humanity; that is to say, to work together on common and therefore shared bases, to save humanity, because it is humanity that is in danger, not the planet, it is humanity that is in danger. Of course, authoritarian regimes, regimes that refuse freedoms and rights, cannot support these policies.
That, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, is what I wanted to say to you today, and I would like to thank you once again for allowing me to speak before you.