Speaking at the Women: Force for Change, Free Iran 2025 international conference in Paris, Dominique Attias, Chair of the Board of Directors of the European Lawyers Foundation, delivered a powerful address, declaring, “Nothing will weaken the resistance of Iranian women.”
Attias dedicated her speech to Maryam Akbari Monfared, a political prisoner who has endured 15 years behind bars for her ties to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). She condemned the Iranian regime’s relentless torture, executions, and persecution of women, highlighting Monfared’s isolation and repeated sentence extensions for demanding justice for her family members executed during the 1988 massacre.
She praised the unwavering defiance of Iranian women—political prisoners, protesters, and resistance activists—who continue their struggle despite brutal repression. Attias also reaffirmed support for Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan as a roadmap to democracy and gender equality in a free Iran.
The conference underscored the crucial role of women in Iran’s resistance, with Attias emphasizing that their determination remains unshaken, inspiring a growing movement for freedom, justice, and an end to dictatorship.
A translated version of Dominique Attias’s speech follows:
Madam Rajavi, you have spoken to us about these women who have sacrificed their lives for freedom, for the cause, for Iran.
You have moved us to tears, and today I would like to speak to you about one of them—a woman whom I admire to the highest degree. I will address her directly. Her name is Maryam Akbari Monfared.
Maryam, Maryam, can you hear me behind the walls of the sinister Qarchak Prison, where you were transferred on October 22—one of the worst prisons for women in Iran?
I dedicate my speech to you because, to me, you symbolize the immeasurable courage of all Iranian women, from the youngest to the oldest, both inside and outside the country.
Dominique Attias, President of the European Lawyers Foundation
Mrs. Attias paid tribute to political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared, who has endured 15 years of unjust imprisonment. She called for the international legal community to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its… pic.twitter.com/Pl6jYXs1FU— Women's Committee NCRI (@womenncri) February 25, 2025
You are one of the longest-held political prisoners in Iran—more than fifteen years, more than fifteen years. A mother of three daughters, you are serving a sentence in the prisons of the mullahs’ regime.
Imprisoned since 2009, you were held for a long time in solitary confinement under the false charge of “Moharebeh” (enmity against God) after a sham trial that lasted only fifteen minutes.
Your only crime? Your ties to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
Initially sentenced to ten years, you should have been released in 2019. However, your sentence was extended by five more years for “insulting the leaders.”
In 2016, you dared to file a complaint with the Tehran prosecutor regarding the extrajudicial executions of your siblings, whose faces you see here.
From Evin Prison in 2018, you wrote to me: “The Islamic Republic has brought Iran nothing but death, plunder, and spilled blood.”
Without rest, without pause, you denounce the tragic situation of Iranians. In 2019 and 2021, you wrote letters exposing the murder of protesters.
Indomitable, Maryam, you pay a heavy price for your struggle. Not a single day of freedom in fifteen years. You have not seen your daughters grow up, not touched them, not smelled their scent, not followed their education.
Is there a worse torture for a mother?
In July 2024, the regime ordered the confiscation of your property and that of your relatives.
.@AttiasDominique: For 40+ years, women have fought and sacrificed. Many died in exile, never seeing home again. But their fight was never in vain. Victory is near.https://t.co/gnDxpclkWt#WomenForce4Change #FreeIran2025
— SIMAY AZADI TV (@en_simayazadi) February 22, 2025
You were supposed to be released on October 12, but your sentence was extended again by three years—three long years, under absurd accusations such as “propaganda against the system” and “insulting the leaders.”
But what do these mullahs and their bloodthirsty henchmen think? That their treatment of you will make you break, serve as an example, scare Iranian women? They do not know them well.
In prison, Maryam and her sisters in misfortune, many of whom are political opponents and PMOI/MEK members, continue the struggle.
Every Tuesday, she protests against executions—singing in the prison yard, refusing to move all night, organizing hunger strikes. No matter the repression in response.
In cities and villages, as Madam Khaji mentioned, the Resistance Units established by the PMOI—many of whom are women—fight back against the mullahs’ repression: setting fire to regime symbols, writing protest slogans, hanging banners, and displaying posters.
She continues every day, waiting for the day of reckoning, the day to take up arms. Listen to them hum the song of the partisans, modeled after the French Resistance song during World War II:
“Oh, do you hear the dark flight of ravens over our plains?
Oh, do you hear? Yes, yes, yes…
As the partisans’ song says, the enemy will pay the price of blood and tears.”
This song is also sung in Ashraf 3. The women and men there dedicate all their energy to supporting the forces inside Iran and fighting for its liberation.
.@AttiasDominique commends the courage of #Iranian women, especially those in @Mojahedineng, who sacrifice everything for #freedom. She highlights the plight of Maryam Akbari Monfared, jailed since 2009 after a sham trial, calling attention to the fight against oppression. pic.twitter.com/6QQtFeMeCv
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 12, 2024
I warmly salute them and thank them for honoring me with their friendship.
Nothing will weaken the resistance of women.
They may be Kurds, Baluchis, Tajiks, Turkmen, Azerbaijani Turks, or of different religious practices, but they all share the same fate—suffering from institutionalized discrimination in a climate of misogyny, as you have all described so well.
And indeed, the compulsory hijab is only the tip of the iceberg. The key to gender equality is first and foremost the legal elimination of all forms of discrimination.
That is what you understood long ago, Madam Rajavi, and so did your companions in this struggle.
The Ten-Point Plan for the future of Iran is a magnificent roadmap toward democracy.
In a free Iran, all the girls and women who risk their lives in the Resistance Units will finally be able to look back at this dark past as a distant memory.
For more than forty years, generations of women have fought and continue to fight.
Some have died in exile, never seeing their homeland again, never avenging their fallen comrades. Many have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice their personal lives for this greater cause—the liberation of their homeland.
But all these sacrifices, as you have said, are not in vain. Victory is near. The dream of a free Iran is on the verge of realization.
Women are still here, always here—even on February 8, when we were all together at a great gathering in Paris. We stood beside them then, and we stand beside them today.
In December 2022, when the uprising was at its peak following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, Maryam Akbari Monfared called for resistance from Semnan Prison, where she had once again been transferred.
She said: “Do not remain silent. Scream!”
You were right, Maryam.
We are not silent and will never be silent.
With you and all Iranian women, until the final victory, we will shout endlessly:
“Woman, Resistance, Freedom!”