July 12, 2021 — Madam Maryam Rajavi, I agree, you are the future for a free Iran.
Ladies and gentlemen, Distinguished guests, I’m very glad that I can take part in such important event like Free Iran Global Summit. For every country, human rights should be the most important value.
Over the past four decades, religious dictatorship has destroyed Iran and brought war and terrorism in the Middle East. While the Iranian youth are desperately needed to flourish the country’s economy, they are in jail because they demanded their basic human rights.
Therefore, it is time for the International community to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people who are calling for freedom and democracy, in order to rebuild their country and live in prosperity.
The international community, and especially the EU, cannot remain silent in the face of such outrageous treatment of human rights defenders in Iran. The whole world should urgently call on the Iranian authorities to release those arrested for peaceful activities immediately and ruthlessly and to stop abusing the justice system to silence activists. Trials of human rights defenders take place in an atmosphere of fear and lawyers face numerous abuses. The authorities are trying to arbitrarily restrict their ability to visit clients or contact them privately, or delay access to case files. Human rights lawyers who speak out against torture and unfair trials have also faced merciless harassment, disqualification and imprisonment.
In my speech, I would like to draw attention to the very bad economic situation in Iran in connection with the actions of the Iranian authorities. Iran’s economic situation is dramatic.
It should be noted how negative actions of authorities, influence on society. It’s high poverty line: Sixty million Iranians live on the poverty line and 38 thirty-eight million live in slums. Food products have experienced the three-digit share and we see large disproportion between men and women. In the Covid pandemic crisis, there are already 11 eleven million unemployed, six and half million workers have lost their jobs and it was 70% seventy percent were women.
Iran’s situation at the beginning of the third decade of the 20th century is systematically deteriorating and there are no indications that it will change for the better in the near future. The continuation of economic sanctions is the introduction of a humanitarian catastrophe and further impoverishment or radicalization of Iranian society. A further rise in unemployment and the economic and social consequences of the pandemic could spur masses of people to mass protests, which result in fatalities.
Iran must be a democracy and think about Iranian society and now I appeal for this.
Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation for the speech.