Free Iran Rally

Yesterday, Tuesday September 20th, the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, in Manhattan, New York City hosted several protests, while the annual World Summit was taking place at the United Nations building across the street. Different groups from the Iranian, Syrian, Tibetan, and other communities, each separately, was holding a rally in an effort to express their demands for freedom and democracy, sovereignty, human rights or other causes to the United Nations’ 2016 Summit.

Among all the above groups, the Iranians had the largest population. They were in fact, the supporters of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), Mullahs' regime's main opposition group. Hundreds of Iranian men and women from all age groups and ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds from across the United States and Canada gathered together at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to express their grievance regarding violation of human rights in their motherland, Iran. During Mullah Rouhani's presidency the human rights situation in Iran has worsened to the extent that more than 1000 people have been executed since the past year. Last month for instance, in one of its biggest mass executions, the regime hanged 25 Sunni activists from the province of Kurdistan.  

The Iranian diaspora gathered in New York City on Tuesday also to convey this message to the U.N. that Mullah Rouhani (present at the summit) does not represent their people and country.  He, however, represents a religious fascist dictatorship that does not have any regards for humanity.  Another message that the Iranians were trying to deliver to the U.N. Summit was that they were no longer able to stand almost four decades of tyrannical oppression by the fascist Mullahs and wanted a democratic regime change.  While holding the lion and sun Iranian flags, yellow color banners, and the images of the Iranian opposition leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian protestors were shouting slogans such as "stop executions in Iran, Now, Now, Now; terrorist Rouhani out of U.N. Now, Now, Now, or Rouhani, Assad, ISIS, No, they are terrorists they must go."

During the rally, Joseph Lieberman, a former United States Senator from Connecticut, Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-American pastor from Idaho, who spent some time in the regime's notorious prisons, a delegation from the Syrian Democratic Opposition Movement, and a delegate representing the Iranian Youth Organizations made speeches.  For instance, in his speech Senator Lieberman congratulated the PMOI for its recent victory and expressed his support for the cause of the Iranian protestors, which is a popular regime change in Iran.  During the rally also, a message from Mrs.  Maryam Rajavi was read by one of the speakers, in which Mrs. Rajavi supported the anti-Rouhani protest and encouraged Iranians to continue their struggle for freedom and democracy.

The most emotional and touchy part of the event was a dramatization of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran, acted out by a youth group. Dressed as regime's prisoners and prison guards, the young actors demonstrated how the regime brutally tortured and murdered thousands of prisoners in the summer of 1988.  The dramatization, which was accompanied with a deeply sad music made a lot of the audience sad and tearful.

Despite all the limitations the Iranian Resistance was experiencing on Tuesday including high level of security and traffic around the U.N. plaza, which made transportation and mobilization difficult for the rally participants and a limit of only three hours to hold a protest gathering at the plaza, the resistance held a spectacular anti-regime rally. This well organized and well planned demonstration, indeed, could be considered as another victory for the PMOI and its supporters, this year!

Iman Moridi,

September 21, 2016