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

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