The low turn out this year compared to last year when the ceremonies also coincided with the fasting month of Ramadhan was strikingly visible. At least 10,000 participants were Afghan refugees who received money and food staples for their participation.
Consistent with their routine every year, the regime had issued orders, compelling various groups of soldiers from nearby base camps, families of the war victims, factory workers, high school students, and government employees to show up. A few soldiers said their leaves had been canceled and that they were ordered to take part in the ceremonies.
Anti-riot police and special forces of the Guards Corps were stationed around the Revolution square and at all the intersections and roads leading to the Azadi square. They were in patrol cars and vans equipped with machine-guns.
For the first time, no portraits of Rafsanjani, whose presidential term ends in a little more than a year, were any where to be seen. This important political development signaled Rafsanjani's political demise and Khamenei's upper hand in the upcoming Majlis elections.
Mr. Massoud Rajavi, the President of the National Council of Resistance, said yesterday's demonstrations in Tehran was a political setback to the mullahs, indicating the Iranian people's rejection of Khomeini's heirs. Recalling the enthusiastic gatherings of Iranians in Dortmund, Germany, (June 16, 1995) and in Oslo, Norway, (November 2, 1995), the NCR President said: Had Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance's President-elect, and not Rafsanjani, been speaking in Tehran's Azadi square, everything would have been different.
In his message on the seventeenth anniversary of the fall of the shah's dictatorship, beamed into Iran via the Resistance's radio and television, Mr. Rajavi reviewed the mullahs' record in various fields. He said the mullahs have executed 100,000 political dissidents and waged a war that left one million dead and one trillion dollars in material and economic damage. Their disastrous economc policy left $50 billion in foreign debts.
Mr. Rajavi declared: After 17 years, the mullahs' regime is devoid of any social base and political legitimacy and is rapidly approaching the zero hour. The mullahs are facing a very precarious situation. The boycott of the Majlis elections by the Iranian people and the Resistance has aggravated their internal differences and deepened their political and economic crises.
The NCR President called for an international boycott of the terrorist, religious dictatorship ruling Iran and the recognition of the Iranian Resistance's democratic alternative and its President-elect.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris February 12, 1996
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