The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and their Resistance Units carried out anti-regime activities in 310 areas of Iran during May, calling on Iranians to boycott the presidential elections on June 18.

This is a massive uptick from April when this campaign began in earnest, where 250 places saw this type of anti-regime activities. The boycott quickly became a nationwide effort with the overarching chants of “A strong no to the religious dictatorship,” “We’ve heard so many lies that we won’t vote anymore”, “Our vote is regime change and boycott of the sham elections,” and “Down with Khamenei”.

Here are just a few of the cities that saw these demonstrations:

  • Ahvaz
  • Arak
  • Behbahan
  • Doroud
  • Esfarayen
  • Fariman
  • Hashtroud
  • Hamadan
  • Kashan
  • Khorramabad
  • Kermanshah
  • Kerman
  • Kahnuj
  • Lahijan
  • Mashhad
  • Rasht
  • Shahriar
  • Shiraz
  • Shushtar
  • Sanandaj
  • Sabzevar
  • Shahrekord
  • Semnan
  • Shahsavar
  • Tehran
  • Tabriz
  • Yasuj
  • Yazd
  • Zahedan

They installed posters of Resistance leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, as well as slogans supporting both the Resistance and the election boycott. These activities were supported by people across the country and inspired them to carry out their own anti-regime actions, including the boycott of the election.

Iranians began a social media campaign on May 18 to denounce the election, explaining that the frontrunner – Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi – had a major role in the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners. Their hashtag, ‘Raisi the henchman of 1988’, was the second trending topic on Persian Twitter with over 130,000 tweets in the first few hours. The English-language hashtag #BoycottIranShamElections also proved very popular.

All of these activities were intensely brave because Resistance Unit members and supporters risk arrest, imprisonment, torture, and more, just for political activism. The reason is that the regime wants to create an atmosphere of fear to prevent further protests that could lead to an uprising. Two 29-year-old MEK supporters were recently sentenced to death for their political activities.

The Iranian opposition wrote: “Since June 1981, when the mullahs opened fire on peaceful protesters in Tehran, the Iranian Resistance has stated that the regime is incapable of reform and it must be overthrown. Since that year, the repression of opponents of the mullahs’ regime in Iran has not stopped for a single day. Thousands of dissidents have been jailed or executed and the people have faced an ongoing massacre. In recent years, the world has witnessed a bloody crackdown on three major anti-regime uprisings in Iran.”