Amir Emadi
My name is Amir Emadi and I am a proud son of an Ashrafi. I am also a cousin or nephew of 20 Ashrafis now in Camp Liberty. Ladies and gentlemen, once again giving me the honor to speak to you and share with you my thoughts.
Today I’d like to remind you of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, and I would like to communicate the reality Iran’s leader’s face when up against the MEK. You know the last time you saw me I was in tears from my father’s death. Iraqi security forces attacked Camp Ashraf at the behest of the Iranian regime on September 1st, 2013. They took away my father 175 days ago, and I’ll never get the chance to ask him about the simple things in life. I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years and now I won’t even get the chance to see his grave because it seems like Khamenei is so afraid of my father’s dead body that he had it and 51 others secretly buried.
You know a few weeks after the attack a reporter asked me if I was afraid if my activism in being in front of cameras, that would worsen my family’s situation in Iran and Camp Liberty? You know what I told her? I said the thousands of Ashrafis chose to fight. My father began a journey because of Khamenei’s bidding and Maliki’s doing. He’s dropped his flag but he chose to fight and I’d be damned if I didn’t pick up his flag from the ground, dust it off, and claim it for him.
So I asked her do you agree that it is a bigger tragedy if I do nothing. If we let them fight alone, now that the remaining Ashrafis are imprisoned at Camp Liberty? I must repeat to President Obama, the US is legally and morally responsible for the safety and security of the residents of Camp Liberty. That responsibility requires you to guarantee access to medical supplies, food and basic human needs that they have been deprived.
My message to Brother Massoud Rajavi, Khomeini and Khamenei murdered over 100,000 for the generation you had reared. But we are taking their place. Just as you were their mentor and teacher, you are our mentor and teacher, and we continue to fight because we identify with the ideal for which tens of thousands of members and sympathizers of the Mojahedin Khalq have made the ultimate sacrifice, this includes my father.
The MEK’s vision of a democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic is shared by my generation inside Iran and abroad. I know this because I have talked to them thanks to social media. The platform offers the people of Iran everything that the Iranian regime has denied them, individual freedoms, gender equality, unrestricted access to information and the Internet, freedom to choose their education, occupation and more. It is a platform above all democracy and democratic ways, as they are practiced by the MEK itself. And here lays Iran’s dilemma when facing the MEK.
So, Mr. President, instead of standing with the mullahs, as you have been doing for the past 6 years, you should stand withthe Iranian people as they stand for Liberty.
We as Iranians, all of us, are quite capable of changing this theocracy. We only want America to stand neutral in the confrontation. And you know much of what we consider valuable in this world arises out of these lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds creates greatness and beauty. But we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong. We misread them, we misinterpret them, and ladies and gentlemen, giants are not what we think they are, some like in our struggle against the regime, with the battle between David and Goliath, that may be true, and if it is then to Khamenei I say this on behalf of the people of my generation: If we are David, then we have thrown our stone at what we once thought was a giant. If we are David, ladies and gentlemen, then we have weakened the Goliath. We, the Iranians. Now Khamenei, you have misread our power; Khamenei, you have misinterpreted our strength; we will prevail and build a thousand Ashrafs in the entire way.
Chant:
We will build one, two, three, a hundred, a thousand Ashrafs.