At the 2023 Free Iran Summit, David Jones, Member of the UK House of Commons, conveyed the support of British parliamentarians for the Iranian Resistance. He spoke of the regime’s obsessive focus on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI), demonstrating the organization’s effectiveness in countering the regime and offering a clear alternative plan for Iran. David Jones stressed the need to protect the rights of the Iranian resistance movement, including the PMOI, in every country. The UK Committee for Iran Freedom is committed to upholding these rights in the UK.
Here is an excerpt from Mr. David Jones’ speech:
I bring with me greetings from supporters of both Houses of the British Parliament. We are gathered here today still shocked by the disturbing news of the Albanian police raid on Ashraf-3 last week. And we all send our sympathy to the large number of residents who were injured in this raid. We remember in particular Ali Mostachari, who tragically lost his life. But the question arises, what was the motivation behind this raid? Why did this happen?
Now call me cynical, but I think it is not unreasonable to say that there are people in Tehran who would not have been at all unhappy with this Albanian police raid on Ashraf-3.
The recent mass protests in Iran have demonstrated the strength of popular support for the PMOI and this is a source of significant concern for the regime, which will stop at nothing in its attempts to undermine, discredit and, they hope, neutralize the democratic opposition movement in that country.
The regime’s obsessive and unwavering focus on the PMOI merely serves to demonstrate the PMOI’s effectiveness in countering the regime’s authority and exposing its vulnerabilities. The uprising also exposed the emptiness of bogus political alternatives, especially those tied to remnants of the Shah’s rule.
Propaganda attempts to portray these groups as leaders of the uprising proved unsuccessful. The Iranian people, who endured years of oppression, imprisonment and political executions under the Shah, will not return to such a dictatorship.
I had the privilege, about three months ago, of making my second visit to Ashraf-3, when I told the residents that you were at the forefront of the fight against the regime and that you were instrumental in mobilizing the Iranian people to defend their rights and claim for themselves and their children the future of the country they love.
The remarkable sustained growth of PMOI networks within Iranian society is an undeniable fact. The regime knows that the PMOI has the forces of unity, a well-organized structure and the ability to mobilize nationwide protests, and it also knows that the PMOI is the only organization with a clear alternative plan for Iran.
This is why the regime is trying every trick to eliminate the formidable opposition that is the PMOI. But our role today, all of us, must be to make clear our insistence that the rights of members of the Iranian resistance be protected wherever they are, whether in Albania, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy or the United States. In every country, they have the right to engage in legitimate political activity, to speak out against Iran’s systematic human rights abuses, and to shape their plan for the country’s future, and any reasonable democratic country should be only too happy to protect those rights. In the UK Committee for Iran Freedom, we will do everything in our power to ensure that these rights, these freedoms, apply to the PMOI in the hard work it does in the UK.
This article is originally published on fr.ncr-iran.org
