Recent Speech By Marzieh

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends, Sympathetic Companions,

I come from a land over whose blood-red earth the hawk of oppression, murder, misery and torture has spread its wings. A land whose springtime and gardens lie plundered under viscous autumn's attack. A land whose smiles and joy have given way to grief, so rrow and sadness. An ancient land, now the nesting grounds for the owl of destruction. A land forced to die a slow death. Ahmad Shamlou, Iran's renowned poet, speaks of this land of heart-rending pain and sorrow:

They smell your mouth, lest you have said the words I love you. They smell your heart. These are strange times, my dearest.

Do you see the catastrophe?

"The canary is being roasted over a fire of lilies and jasmine." I was a canary, a song bird. The butchers ruling over Iran stopped me from singing for fifteen years. A canary lives only to sing. If you take away its song, it will die, fluttering about, a s I did for fifteen years, eating my heart out. Like the frog trapped in the sea. If it opens its mouth, the salt water will kill it. And if it doesn't, it will die of anguish.

My pain was to be a woman and a singer. The dark-minded turbaned rulers of Iran are the arch enemies of women. Women who sing must bear a double torment. Life is so bleak for women in Iran. Words fail me; I cannot convey the suffering endured by the women of my homeland. Unless you have drawn a breath under the evil shadow of clerical rule, you cannot really comprehend the plodding pain they endure.

How to understand why in just one province, so many women have committed suicide, some by setting themselves afire?

Where in the world do girls of 12 and 14 burn themselves alive?

Where does one hear about a father who kills himself after killing his five daughters?

Little girls, 8, 9 years old, are raped. Young girls in prison are raped before their execution. 113,000 arrests in one year for letting a strand of hair stray from beneath one's scarf.

What can I say? Everyone knows of this scandal. The clerical regime is infamous. It is despised the world over. You all know fully well that life for the women of Iran is a burning hell. The booklet Iran: Subjugation of Women makes it clear how well you know of their suffering.

But all that I have said is but one side of the story. In this frozen sea, a volcano is about to erupt. The people of Qazvin rose up in demonstrations against the ruling mullahs in August. For two days, the city was theirs, and not a single government off ice was spared from the wrath of the protesting populace. The demonstrations in Mashad, Shiraz, Tabriz, and other Iranian cities show that the people will take no more. The medieval regime grasps onto its power only with the force of arms, prisons, and to rture. These instances of popular resistance show that Iran's people not only have not died under this severe repression, but are intent on overthrowing this evil regime and ridding the world of its terrorism, backwardness, and medieval mentality.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Iran's women have not died under the oppression of this anti-woman regime. Right now, Iranian women, shoulder to shoulder with Iran's men, are working to uproot the mullahs' regime. I have the honor of here referring to a woman who has rightfully been cho sen by the Iranian Resistance as the President of the free Iran of tomorrow. In contrast to the mullahs, who have brought only sadness, sorrow, death and destruction, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Resistance's President-elect, strives to bring hope, joy, prospe rity and laughter back to devastated Iran. She leads the powerful Resistance of Iran, and for all Iranians, men and women, she is the focus of hope for liberty and freedom.

Inspired by this woman, who is the fountainhead of hope for a future liberated and prosperous Iran, I cry out here: Regardless of the wishes of Khomeini and his criminal heirs, we are alive. We shall resist, until the day of hope, life and democracy retur ns to Iran. We expect all those who love democracy to help us.