MEK has a growing influence on the protest movement in Iran.

A documentary maker who makes documentaries for the Iranian regime, Iman Goudrazi, thinks that the regime is underestimating the appeal of the MEK to women at its peril. Goudrazi says that the regime’s propaganda tries to portray the (PMOI / MEK Iran) as an organization that belongs in the past and that has little real appeal, yet this is inaccurate. Goudrazi points out how the MEK has a growing influence on the protest movement in Iran.

Goudrazi says that he regrets the fact that the regime has failed to make any documentaries about the MEK and has even attempted to censor any information about the MEK.

Goudrazi was reported by the Daneshjoo news agency as saying “unfortunately, in the country’s media and writings have a wrong perspective on the MEK, and it is portraying their structure as old and outdated. We say to everybody that it is a dead movement while we are witnessing their role in protests across the country.

Mr. Rouhani adopted a resolution in the National Security Council to forbid any activity regarding the MEK. Unfortunately, until 2009, we didn’t make any documentary about the MEK.

Most of the members of the MEK were graduated from universities…. The MEK managed to show a new face of women to young girls… many academics and even young students and teenagers were attracted to this organization and a major part of those arrested in the 80s were 16- and 17-year-old teenagers.”

The MEK has persisted in fighting the misogynism of the regime

The mullahs have ignored the role of women in Iranian society and have pursued a misogynist line, forcing Iranian women to wear the veil, restricting their right to become educated or have jobs, and attempting to keep them in the home. The MEK has on the other hand fought for the rights of girls and women to play an equal role in Iranian society.

The regime even targeted women in the 1980s, arresting, and executing many who took part in protests. The Supreme Leader of the time, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa that denied the right of MEK members and supporters who were female to have property or retain their honor or lives. Many thousands of MEK women members were tortured and executed. However, this did not deter these women from showing their opposition to the regime.

MEK women’s’ resistance

Massoumeh Malek Mohammadi, a 63 survivor of the horror of the regime’s vicious crackdown on the MEK in the 1980s spoke at the Free Iran Global summit held at Ashraf-3 in Albania on July 17^th this year. She is now the Secretary-General of the MEK. In her speech, she recounted the way the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) fired on peaceful demonstrators in June 1981 in Tehran. Massoumeh Malek Mohammadi was arrested in 1983 after spending several years since the 1979 Revolution as a MEK activist. She was incarcerated in the Evin Prison in Tehran and endured many instances of torture.

As she recounted, “like tens of thousands of PMOI members and supporters, I spent the early years of the 1980s in prison. The stories of Khomeini’s henchmen committing inhuman crimes against their prisoners have been told to some extent. But little is known about our sisters and how courageously they resisted and endured the tortures in jail. I witnessed part of the tortures and killings in prisons.”

How women became leaders in the Iranian opposition

Many of the regime’s officials have admitted that the regime’s attempt to silence women members and supporters of the MEK has utterly failed. Even though the regime has wasted its time arresting, torturing, and executing women in Iran, their support for the resistance movement has grown and now they play a leading role in the movement.

The main opposition to the Iranian regime, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is itself led by a woman, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi.  Mrs. Rajavi is a steadfast defender of the rights of women. She has devised a ten-point plan for Iran that calls for the following advances in the rights of women:

• complete gender equality in political, social, cultural, and economic rights;
• equal participation of women in political leadership;
• abolition of any form of discrimination;
• the right to choose one’s clothing;
• prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext;
• the right to choose marriage, divorce, education, and employment.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the regime is growing concerned that the MEK is becoming more and more appealing to Iranian women.