WINNIPEG — Sayeh Hassan, an Iranian pro-democracy activist and criminal lawyer living in Toronto, told a student conference that “Iranian people are no longer satisfied with reforming [Iran’s] existing Islamic regime, but want regime change entirely.”
Sayeh Hassan [R. Spivak photo]
Wallenberg Day program focuses on Iranian threat
She said that the media often try to paint Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rival, as a “reformer” who is in favour of regime change, but that’s not the case.
Hassan, 29, said that all Iranian presidential candidates, including Mousavi, were “hand-picked” by the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader of Iran, and would not have been approved if they had been advocating for “real change in Iran.”
Hassan spoke at the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg’s fourth annual Raoul Wallenberg Day Student Conference, which is held in conjunction with the Gray Academy of Jewish Education.
If he were to come to power in place of Ahmadinejad, “Mousavi will just extend the life of the Islamic regime, but not lead to real reform,” and the formation of a democratic republic of Iran, Hassan said.
Mousavi was the prime minister of Iran “when 10,000 political prisoners were summarily executed in the summer of 1988,” she added.
Hassan told The CJN that as a result of openly calling for Iranian regime change in Canada, and writing on her blog, shiro-khorshid-forever, at www.shiro-khorshid-forever.blogspot.com, she has “received a lot of threatening anonymous e-mail from people associated with the Iranian regime.” The writers say, “If you don’t shut up, we’ll shut you up.”
Hassan added that it’s difficult for journalists reporting from Iran to speak about the desire for regime change, as the reporter could “be thrown out” of the country.
Hassan, who left Iran with her family to live in Turkey when she was seven, because her father was “a political activist who had to leave,” said that it “was good I left Iran, otherwise I’d be in prison now.”
From her contact with activists in Iran and watching YouTube videos, Hassan said it’s clear that people are directly “attacking the foundation of the Islamic regime.”
She said that for the first time in Iranian universities, students have raised Iran’s current flag, without the Islamic regime sign in the middle, adding that activists in some Iranian cities have also raised the pre-Revolutionary green, white and red Iranian flag, which has the symbol of a lion and sun in the middle.
Hassan said that the appearance of the lion and sun flag indicates people are harking back to days when Iran wasn’t controlled by an Islamic regime.
She added that “religious minorities including Baha’is, Christians and Jews are systematically oppressed and abused by the Islamic regime.”
She told The CJN that there are many different political parties and groups abroad that could form a democratic government in Iran, as well as numerous monarchist groups, Communist groups and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an Islamic socialist organization that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. “The Shah’s son [son of former Shah of Iran] is one of the opposition abroad,” Hassan said.
“If there is a revolution and people are able to participate in a free and democratic election, a secular and democratic leader may rise from inside Iran. That would be impossible at this point, because any opposition will be jailed and eliminated immediately,” she added
Hassan said it’s “terrible” that U.S. President Barack Obama’s is dialoguing with Iran. “By saying, ‘Let’s have a dialogue,’ he is accepting the legitimacy of the regime.”