11 February is an official national holiday in Iran: it
commemorates the revolution that ended the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979.
One of the leading forces of the revolution was the Mojahedin Organization of
the People of Iran (MEK Iran, or Mujahedin-e Khalq), whose current president is
Maryam Rajavi. From Paris, she directs in exile the opposition against the
dictatorship of the mullahs who assumed power immediately after the revolution.
This dictatorship continues to this day.
Rajavi spoke with the German editor Ilya Tüchter.
Mrs. Rajavi, where were you on 11 February, 1979?
Maryam Rajavi: That day and the previous days I was in
Tehran. While the Ayatollah Khomeini tried to remove the youth from the scene,
the main force of the antimonarchical revolution, immediately after the fall of
the dictatorship on 11 February, we began to organize these young lovers of
freedom, especially the students. We did this together with some members of the
People's Mojahedin Organization who had recently been released from the Shah's
secret prisons.
At that time, did you ever think that Iran would become a
new state of injustice instead of a democracy?
Knowing the new rulers, especially Khomeini, we knew that
they were retrograde and antipuralist with their own reactionary interpretation
of Islam. For this reason we made efforts to educate and organize the people,
especially the young people to prevent the access to power of this reactionary
force and prevent the imposition of total repression. However, I did not
imagine at that time that a dictatorship, which is a hundred times more
bloodthirsty than the previous one, would take power. Only two years after
Khomeini's rise to power, the number of political detainees reached hundreds.
In June of 1981, only 28 months after the mullahs took over the government,
they began to destroy an entire generation. In Tehran's Evin prison, 400 shots could
sometimes be heard in one day, which means that 400 people had been executed
there.
She fled from her country and leads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), founded in 1981. "Therefore you are fighting against the
regime of the mullahs for 34 years. Do you sometimes doubt that one day you can
return to your country? "
Maryam Rajavi: No, I have never doubted that the religious
dictatorship of Iran will be overthrown by the Iranian people and their
resistance. And all those who have had to leave their homes in the fight against
this regime will return to the country.
What is your goal for Iran?
Maryam Rajavi: We want a republic based on secularism,
pluralism and gender equality; a society based on respect of the human rights,
with the abolition of the death penalty, torture and without the absurd Sharia
of the mullahs; a non-nuclear Iran. Our objective can be summarized in three
words: freedom, democracy and equality. This goal carries within it the
strength of victory.
Even Europe faces Islamic fundamentalism. For years your
movement warns about that.
Maryam Rajavi: Islamic fundamentalism is an authoritarian
ideology that seeks to survive through misogyny, religious discrimination and
the export of terrorism. The birth of this political Islam occurred when
Khomeini came to power in Iran. After the 1979 revolution, this case became the
force that motivates fundamentalism in Islamic countries. Its antithesis is a
democratic and tolerant Islam in which we believe; an Islam whose message is
mercy and freedom. This is the main motto of the Mujahedin-e Khalq.
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