Ladies and gentlemen it seems that every time we gather we begin the event and the ceremony with a memorial service, and I suspect that in your head and in your heart you probably say to yourselves when will it end? I suspect as a sense of disappointment, perhaps anger, fear, but I think all of us should be inspired by the fact that those who have been subjected to the torture and murderous rampage of the mullahs and Maliki and his cohorts, do not fear, they are not disappointed, they are not looking for an easy way out. Fear, repression, it’s not part of who they are. They are Ashraf, they are Liberty, and we are all of them. And so no matter how you feel about starting these events, very important events I might add, with a memorial service, hopefully we will derive the energy and inspiration and perseverance and the same commitment that they bring every day to their survival. It’s not just that they survive, it’s the idea that they promote, it’s the idea in their head and their heart that they seek to survive in a free, just, independent and non-nuclear Iran. We need to remember that.
We also need to remember that the struggle for freedom and justice and liberty is not without pain, suffering, sacrifice and death. So we need to be as persevering as relentless as they are. So I thank you for continuing to support these events and continuing to support your brothers, sisters, loved ones and family members and even those who do not know in the MEK, and hundreds of thousands of Iranians who one will celebrate, and hopefully we will all be there together, a free, democratic, self-ruling Iran.
I am reminded of the conversation we had with Dan Freed when I suggested we get together some people on the phone and we need to do something about the residents in Ashraf, and so many people were on, and I would bring you greetings from many of those people who were on those series of phone calls for over a year. It was Louis Freeh, Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Attorney General Mukasey, Jim Jones, and the list goes on and on and on. We had multiple conversations and we had the conversations on the line with Martin Kobler from the UN and Dan Freed from the US Department of State and repeatedly, constantly they reassured us and promised us if these individuals, if the MEK would move from Ashraf to Liberty, safety and security and humane conditions would be provided at both locations.
There was a four-part agreement and the reason so many of us take this very personal is that we believe we are ultimate accountable and responsible for facilitating the move from Ashraf to Liberty, that we are partly responsible for the assurances we gave to the hundred people left, now martyrs all, 52 plus 7 who are unaccounted for, as well as those injured, because we gave them the assurances, because the US and the UN and Iraq gave us the assurances for the safe, secure and humane treatment at both locations. I’m tired of saying that these are broken promises, assurances that were not kept. They lied to us and at the end of the day, at the end of the day, and people have talked about this before, truth will prevail and justice will prevail. So we gather again and we assemble today to call upon our government to not only keep its promises and its assurances, we call on the UN to make designate Liberty as a refugee camp, oversee the provision of food and fuel and essentials. It’s been a concentration camp for years and conditions have not improved. Its about time we kept those promises, its about time we kept more importantly our word. Shame on us, shame on us. And in spite of all this, we have the ideological tsunami in the region called ISIS, and we have a president who has publicly admitted he doesn’t really have a strategy to deal with it. Think about the sweep of the Iranian influence in that region and it is undeniable that they are as responsible for the chaos and the carnage as any other country in that region. That is a red line unlike the red line in Syria that the President had drew before and ignored. This is a red line that should never be crossed. They cannot be part of any solution.
I’ll tell you what we need to do. We need to support al-Abadi. He needs to go to coalition government. We need to supply the Kurds, we need to continue to support the Iraqi forces who, if there is a coalition government, can reach out to the Sunnis and the tribal leaders, many of whom who have been absolutely tortured and challenged by the Maliki government, and I might ask and suggest we pick up the phone and call the Saudis, and call the Jordanians and others in the region who have the same interests as we do to deal with ISIS. We can deal with Syria later, but we have to deal with ISIS, but we should never ever think about making the Iranian regime, the theocratic suppressive state as part of any solution in that region of the world. They are the problem.
It was a magnificent statement from some incredibly courageous men and women here, young and old, we are all Ashraf and we are all Liberty.