Standing in solidarity
Pro-Democracy gathering in Paris

Pooya Dayanim
June 10, 2007
iranian.com

This week Paris will host the greatest gathering of Iran’s pro-democracy forces ever assembled to overthrow the Islamic Regime through a non-violent civil disobedience movement.

The Iran Solidarity Assembly (“Hambastegi Melli”) of Paris has been an enormous undertaking that has been three years in the making. Over two-hundred political luminaries will attend the invitation-only event. However, millions of Iranians will be following the proceedings with the help of Voice of America, Radio Farda, Radio Israel, The BBC and independent Iranian broadcasters such as: Channel One, Pars TV and Radio Sedaye Iran.

The Iran Solidarity Assembly includes representatives of virtually all of Iran’s various political, ethnic, social and economic groups who have assembled together for the first time ever to ask the free world to stand in solidarity with them as they begin to coordinate the efforts of pro-democracy forces inside Iran to over throw the Islamic regime.

The attendees include representatives from the following political families: the Socialists, the Liberal Democrats, the Republicans, the federalists and those who support a parliamentary monarchy similar to those of Spain, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All in all, over thirty-five political parties will attend. Many of the supporters of Iran Solidarity supported the Iran referendum movement when Khatami was in power and the world still did not recognize the danger of the Islamic Republic.

The attendees will also include the leaders of various tribes and ethnic groups of Iran including: Koomaleh and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.

However, by far, the most important and unique aspect of the assembly will be the presence of various social and economic groups from Iran who have struggled in isolation to protect the very limited rights and freedoms that they have left. The assembly will have representatives of the following groups: the women, the students, the various ethnic and religious minorities, political prisoners, teachers, journalists and bloggers, dissident clerics, civil rights attorneys, laborers, union members and doctors and nurses.

Iran Solidarity hopes to unify and coordinate the various efforts of these different groups to attempt to organize an independent, home-grown, grass-roots civil disobedience movement that will help the various groups coordinate to allow the Iran Solidarity Movement to reach a critical mass that will cause the toppling of the Iranian regime.

Iran Solidarity will seek to address the desire of the overwhelming number of Iranians for freedom by unveiling a credible, all-inclusive leadership that will for the first-time provide the people of Iran with an alternative that they can believe in and fight for. Iranians do not want Ahmadinejad and theocratic rule. However, they have never been presented with an alternative that they can support and fight for. Iran Solidarity will change that.

The free world has been faced with two undesirable options: appeasing a nuclear-armed terrorist state that wishes to destroy the world or war. The people of Iran are presenting the world with a third choice: a secular democratic Iran living in peace with its neighbors and the world.

Lets help the people of Iran. Lets stand with the Iran Solidarity Movement. Your messages of solidarity will be transmitted to the people of Iran. Comment

Pooya Dayanim is a foreign Affairs Advisor to Iran Solidarity. He is a past member of the seven-person executive committee of the Iran Referendum Movement, a post to which he was elected unanimously. He may be contacted at: Dayanim@aol.com.