Amineh Qaraee, 34, and her brother Ehsan, 28, who recently fled fundamentalist persecution in Iran to Norway, have a striking story. As children, they witnessed their parents’ arrest and imprisonment for supporting the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (PMOI/MEK), the main moderate Muslim group opposed to Khomeini’s theocratic rule.
Raymond Tanter, a professor of political science at Georgetown University and a former staff member of the US National Security Council writes today in The Hill about the Qaraee’s experiences and why most Iranians are opposed to the Tehran regime obtaining nuclear weapons.
“When I was just one-year-old my father got arrested, and two months later my mother got arrested with me and they took us to prison. There I had to live between people who got arrested and tortured just because they wanted freedom”, Amineh recounts.
“I spent some months in prison until they let my mother deliver me to my grandparents. My mother was in prison for more than two years and my father for four years.”
Soon after his release, Amineh’s father, a teacher by profession, was again arrested for his political opinions.
“Finally they informed us that they had killed my father and 30,000 other political activists even though all of them were sentenced to some years in prison, not execution”, she adds before breaking down into tears.
Watch the Video of Amineh & Ehsan Qaraee Describing Life in Iran and the Regime’s Crimes Against Humanity
The Qaraees are not the only relatives of victims of the mullahs left to deal with the torment of losing their loved ones. The Tehran regime has executed more than 120,000 political prisoners, mostly MEK supporters, in the past 36 years. Their families who live in daily agony number in the millions. An overwhelming majority of Iranians have been harmed or affected in some form by the regime in its 36-year rule.
Tanter explains that a robust, strong nuclear deal with Iran by the world powers with a strong inspection regime will manifest the Ayatollahs’ weakness and strategic deadlock and embolden Iranian people for their rights.
Yet, like many other Iranians opposed to the regime, Amineh and Ehsan are nervous that a “bad nuclear deal” allowing Tehran to go nuclear while duping the West would strengthen the regime. Such an outcome will lead to a situation where the Revolutionary Guards would feel strengthened and would suppress any dissent with even greater brutality. The world would then become silent in the face of all the crimes of this regime.
Amineh and Ehsan plan to join the largest-ever gathering by Iranian pro-democracy activists in Paris on June 13 in support of democratic change, organized by the main opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The council, led by its charismatic President-elect Maryam Rajavi, has a 10-point platform calling for a democratic pluralistic republic based on universal suffrage, freedom of expression, abolition of torture and the death penalty, separation of church and state, a non-nuclear Iran, an independent judicial system, rights for minorities, peaceful coexistence in the region, gender equality and commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some 100,000 people took part in a similar rally last year.
The rally will also draw several hundred international lawmakers, personalities and former US officials of both Democrat and Republican administrations, who support Maryam Rajavi’s platform. There will be a strong show from parliamentarians of Arab countries who ardently support a change of regime in Tehran that would transform their Shiite neighbour into a peaceful partner. Parliamentary delegations from across Europe will also be present to support the call for democracy.
According to Amineh, “The huge gathering in Paris on June 13 introduces the alternative to the rule of mullahs in Iran.”
“We can learn from the history that our resistance and its members, who have made so many sacrifices to bring about freedom and democracy to Iran, and we won’t stop until we achieve these goals”, Ehsan says. This is a struggle that the world community should support, or else the whole world will be held to ransom by the criminal mullahs with nuclear weapons.
The grand gathering in support of democracy and a non-nuclear Iran will be broadcast live on June 13, 2015 on www.ncr-iran.org.
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