BIOGRAPHY OF MARYAM RAJAVI

Date of Birth: December 4, 1953Place of Birth: Tehran, IranMarital Status: Married to Massoud Rajavi, 1985Current Position: President-elect, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)Education: Metallurgical Engineer, Sharif University of Technology, TehranChildren: a daughter Ashraf, and a son Mostafa

Political Activities:

• Official in the student movement affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), (Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK) against the Shah’s regime (1973 to 1979)

• Official in the social department of the MEK (1979 to 1981)

• Candidate for Parliament (1980)

• Joint-leader of the MEK (1985 to 1989)

• Secretary General of the MEK (1989 to 1993)

• President-elect of the parliament-in-exile National Council of Resistance of Iran (1993-present)

Early Days

Maryam Rajavi was born into a middle-class family in Tehran. One of her brothers, Mahmoud, is a veteran member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and was a political prisoner during the Shah’s regime.

Her older sister Narges was killed by the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, in 1975. Her other sister, Massoumeh, an industrial engineering student, was arrested by the clerical regime in 1982. Pregnant at the time, she was ultimately hanged after undergoing brutal torture.

Rajavi joined the MEK as a young woman. Following the 1979 anti-monarchical revolution, she ran for a seat in Parliament from Tehran during the first parliamentary election in 1980. But, due to widespread voter fraud by the new fundamentalist regime, none of the opposition candidates made it into Parliament. Despite the fraud, Rajavi received over 250,000 votes.

President-elect of the NCRI

In 1993, during its plenary session, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition whose members include a number of Iranian opposition organizations and prominent personalities, elected Mrs. Rajavi as the President-elect for the period of transitioning power to the Iranian people.

The NCRI acts as a parliament-in-exile and a legislative assembly.

As the President-elect of the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi has mounted an extraordinary political, social, cultural and ideological challenge to the ruling mullahs in Iran. Under her leadership, women have risen to hold key positions in the Iranian Resistance. Over half of NCRI members are women. They occupy various political, diplomatic, social and cultural positions in the Resistance.

Mrs. Rajavi has made numerous speeches regarding the real message of Islam, which revolves around tolerance and democracy, in direct contradiction of the reactionary and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. She believes that one of the most important differentiators between these two entirely contradictory views of Islam focuses on attitudes toward the status of women. Among her published works are: “Islam, Women, and Equality,” “Women, the Force for Change,” and “Women against Fundamentalism.”

Against Fundamentalism

In 1994, during a speech delivered at the Oslo city hall, Mrs. Rajavi warned about the octopus of religious tyranny and Islamic fundamentalism whose heart beats in Tehran. She said: “Fundamentalism has turned into the greatest threat to peace in the region and the world,” adding, “The mullahs ruling Iran are pursuing their expansionist agenda and exporting crises and tensions by exploiting the religious beliefs of over a billion Muslims.”

During a June 21, 1996 speech entitled, “Women, the Voice of the Oppressed,” delivered at a conference in London’s Earls Court, Rajavi said, “The issue of women and the equality movement is linked to the struggle against reactionary ideology and fundamentalism. For women are not only pioneers in the equality movement, but also the main force for progress, peace and social justice. In my view, humankind can only rid itself of the evil phenomenon of reactionary outlook and fundamentalism if women would assume their leading role in this global campaign and employ all forms of democratic struggle to shut the door on any form of appeasement and compromise with the misogynous and inhumane mullahs in Iran.”

The Third Option

In December 2004, during a speech at the European Parliament, Maryam Rajavi proposed the Third Option, a clear prospect to resolve the Iranian crisis, which had caused anxiety on a global scale. 

She said: “In response to the Iranian crisis, two options are regularly proposed: Either compromise with the mullahs’ regime, in a bid to contain or gradually change the regime. Western countries have pursued this policy in the past two decades. Or, the second option, overthrowing the mullahs by way of a foreign war, similar to what occurred in Iraq. No one is interested a repeat of the Iraqi experience in Iran. But, I have come here today to say that there is a third option: Change by the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance. With the removal of foreign obstacles, the Iranian people and Resistance would have the ability and the readiness to bring about such change. This presents the only way to avert a foreign war. Offering concessions to the mullahs is not the alternative to a foreign conflict and will not dissuade them from pursuing their ominous intentions.”

International Solidarity with the Iranian Resistance

Today, in the eyes of the Iranian people, Maryam Rajavi is the pioneer of the struggle for democratic change in Iran. In recent years, she has led a global movement comprised of some of the most celebrated political and social personalities, including former U.S. government officials and secretaries in the political and military arenas, as well as political personalities and parliamentarians from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. This international movement has attained significant victories in support of regime change and establishment of freedom and democracy in Iran through its support and recognition of the Iranian Resistance and the organized opposition in Camps Ashraf and Liberty. The movement has gained international credibility and legitimacy.

International Campaign to Delist the MEK

Another front in the struggle led by Maryam Rajavi was a major campaign to remove the MEK from terrorist lists in Europe and the U.S. while exposing secret deals in the context of appeasing the clerical regime. These efforts led to the delisting of the MEK in the United Kingdom in 2008 and the European Union in 2009, as well as the dismissal of terrorism charges in the June 17, 2003 dossier by a senior French Investigative magistrate in May 2011 and the revocation of the MEK’s terrorist designation in the United States in September 2012.

International Campaign in Defense of Resistance Members in Ashraf and Liberty

In 2009, the U.S. government transferred the protection and security of over 3,000 Resistance members in Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi government. On the orders of the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attacked Camp Ashraf in July 2009, April 2011, and again in September 2013, killing over 100 residents and injuring more than 1,000 in the process. Subsequent to these attacks, the residents of Ashraf were transferred to Camp Liberty under the auspices of the United Nations. They were attacked several more times by missiles and rockets, as a result of which dozens were killed and many more were wounded. The objective of the clerical regime and its puppet government in Iraq through these attacks was to completely eradicate the Iranian Resistance.

Mrs. Rajavi led an international campaign in support of Iranian Resistance members in Ashraf and Liberty, which included hundreds of statements issued by human rights organizations, numerous reports and statements by UN-affiliated organizations, and statements by thousands of parliamentarians around the world, in addition to multiple resolutions passed in parliaments and international institutions. Efforts in the U.S. led to the adoption of a 2016 resolution in Congress calling for the provision of security for the residents of Camp Liberty.
http://www.maryam-rajavi.com/en/about/biography

Human rights in Iran is not just a domestic problem – MEP

MPs Europe  José Inácio Faria

The United Press International published on Thursday an opinion piece by José Inácio Faria, a Member of the European Parliament from Portugal, on the Iranian regime's human rights abuses and the steps the international community should take in response.

Mr. José Inácio Faria MEP wrote:

Last week, together with 270 other colleagues in the European Parliament, I signed a statement condemning the ongoing, rampant human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We have called on EU and Western governments "to condition any further relations with Iran to a clear progress on human rights and a halt to executions."

Iran is today the world leader in number of executions per capita. It has also been declared by the U.S. State Department as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The rate of hangings has increased in recent years with the arrival to power of the so-called "moderate" president, Hassan Rouhani. Nearly 1,000 people were put to death in 2015 alone, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Ahmad Shaheed, who declared it as the highest number of executions in Iran in 27 years.

In the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, morality police and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have intensified their efforts to root out and punish various forms of deviance from the country's repressive religious laws, including the forced veiling of women and the criminalization of labour unions and other forms of peaceful gathering. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime's unwavering support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has made Iran part of the problem rather than a solution to the Syrian war.

Iran's fingerprints are also deepening in Iraq, where Iranian-backed Shiite militias have recently been accused again by international rights organizations of systematic torturing and killing of the Sunni population in the battle to take over Fallujah. This will further alienate the Sunnis and drive them toward extremist groups such as the Islamic State.

And as if to illustrate the danger of being caught as a bystander in the middle of Tehran's contest for dominance of the region, Iraq is also the site of a community of exiled Iranian dissidents, who have been stranded since 2012 in the former U.S. military base of Camp Liberty. Described by the UN as a "detention center," the camp has been the target of attacks utilizing Iranian-made rockets, as well as an ongoing blockade of medical supplies and other lifesaving provisions.

When the defenseless camp residents who belong to the main Iranian opposition PMOI were forcibly relocated to Camp Liberty from Camp Ashraf under a deal overseen by the UN and United States, it was done with the promise that they would soon be relocated to stable homes, presumably in Europe and North America. Four years and dozens of deaths later, no nations other than Albania have made a significant effort to relocate those people.

At the same time, following the nuclear agreement that has provided the Islamic Republic with extensive sanctions relief, several EU countries have both sent and received political and trade delegations and have actively pursued investment in Iran without any precondition.

As it has been admitted by the U.S. president and other Western officials, and given the dominance of the IRGC over the Iranian economy, there's little doubt that most of the money, instead of being used for the well-being of Iranian people and the development of the country, is funneled directly to support terrorist groups in the region.

On July 9, together with other many other parliamentarians and political figures from around the world, I will attend a rally organized by the Iranian democratic opposition led by Maryam Rajavi. In doing so, we will strive to reassure the Iranian people that not everyone in the West has forgotten their righteous struggle for freedom and democracy.

Iran's human rights record is of global significance and it is very much the responsibility of Western nations to address that issue.

In fact, our essential values as Europeans ought to be reason enough for us to demand that Iran improve its domestic human rights as a price for any expansion in trade relations. But as foreign investment gives Iran the opportunity to reach its hand further across the region, it should be clear to us that the stakes are much higher than we might have once imagined. And if we refuse to respond to this situation, we will bear responsibility for the loss of innocent lives not only in Iran but also in Syria, Iraq and other places in the region where Iranian proxy fighters seek dominance.

José Inácio Faria, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament, is member of Friends of a Free Iran group 

http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/human-rights/20569-human-rights-in-iran-is-not-just-a-domestic-problem-mep