The revolutionary
mass struggles,
will pave the way to smash the prison doors
and free the political prisoners!
Zeinab Jalalian, Sepideh Gholyan, Esmail Bakhshi, Mojgan keshavarz, Soheil Arabi, Nasrin
Sotoudeh….
These and hundreds more whose names have
not been in any media, are political prisoners! The Islamic regime of Iran has
captivated tortured, forced to false confession, threatened, murdered, executed,
etc. these prisoners in order to create terror among the people and desperately
save itself!
Thirty-one years ago, the repressive
Islamic regime of Iran tried to consolidate itself by suppressing the freedom
seeker, militant, revolutionary and communist forces. The execution of tens
of thousands of the best generation of fighters in society in the 1980s, the
intensification of women's inferiority, the suppression of national minorities
served this purpose.
This suppression, was also a good service
to the imperialists. That’s why, the imperialists remained silent over that
brutal massacre. The silence of the imperialists at that time was an
affirmation to one of the world's most cruel regimes. The massacre of a
revolutionary generation promised to the imperialists that they could continue
their world system of oppression and exploitation by relying on the Islamic
regime!
The regime’s purpose over that brutal
massacre of the political prisoners in the 80’s specially those revolutionary
leaders who came out of the peoples struggles against reactionary regime of the
Shah and had an important role in featuring the path to overthrow the Islamic regime
of Iran; was to deprive the people and various movements, of their leaders.
If the regime consolidated itself by this slaughter,
today it wants to regain legitimacy and save their shaky system from being overthrown; by imprisoning the labor, women, environment, oppressed
minorities, students, teachers and other activists, and prevent the spread of
these movements, deepening the revolutionary consciousness and demands. While
the regime is struggling for its life, it is determined to create terror among
the people by brutal suppression on the one hand, and on the other hand to show
the imperialists that they can still control the society with their naked repression.
But today the situation has changed!
Today, millions of people in the lower class of society are eager for the full
revolutionary overthrow of this regime. Those who chanted slogans of ‘‘down
with Islamic regime’’, ‘‘no to reformists, no to fundamentalists’’ and so on in
irreconcilable fight against the Islamic regime, and in large part smashed the illusions
of choosing between the bad and the worse.
Unlike the 1980s that the Islamic regime
thought they could subdue half of society to be obedient women by razor and
acid throwing, to force hijab on them; instead , women, in medieval prisons and
in larger prison of society, sowed the seeds of struggle by fighting and
resisting the regime and its anti-women laws, at the heart of which was the
compulsory hijab. A seed that, during the forty years of women's struggle and
resistance against compulsory hijab and other forms of violence against women, grew into a young but loaded seedling in the aftermath of January 2018 when the forms of
struggle intensified and women removed hijab in the streets. This seedling has
shown that rebellious women by removing hijab and propagating it throughout the
society, by not fearing of arrest, fines, torture, and heavy prison sentences,
are hoping for a society in which women's bodies neither belong to state, nor
religion, nor men.
With the regime being in a deep political,
economic and social crisis and facing an international sanction; attacking
women and their basic rights and detaining women's rights activists is on the
agenda of all the ruling reactionaries. That is why a large proportion of
political prisoners in the current situation are women. Islamic fundamentalists
in Iran are also aware of the strategic role and position of women in
abolishing rotten and old relations and establishing new ones. They see that
the accumulated anger and hatred in women’s participation in all movements especially
forced hijab, could destroy their system, if it is released. Now, more than
ever before, the radical women's movement and its activists not only must bring
the issue of the fight against forced hijab, separation of religion and state
and other demands, into other campaigns, but also must capture the flag of
struggle for the freedom of all political prisoners. Because putting forward these
demands in the labor movement, student movement, teachers' movement, and so on,
will help to spread the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the oppressive and
anti-woman Islamic regime and will paves the way for smashing the prison doors
and releasing the political prisoners!
The call for "unconditional release
of all political prisoners" in all campaigns and movements, with the
slogan "we neither forget nor forgive", can clear the boundary with
all reactionary groups in power, all opportunist and pro-imperialist forces.
Because fulfilling the demands to bring to trial all the perpetrators
of criminal massacres of the 1980s and summer of 1987, as well as the freedom
of all political prisoners, has a direct link to the revolutionary overthrow of
the Islamic regime and the establishment of a new and revolutionary society. A
society in which no one is imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their
dissent.
8 March Women Organization
(Iran-Afghanistan)
Campaign to fight state- domestic- social violence
against women in Iran
August 2019
www.8mars.com / zan_dem_iran@hotmail.com / www.youtube.com/8marsorg
www.facebook.com/8marsorg / https://t.me/eightmars