Support the courageous upsurge of Iranian people against the Islamic Regime!
The political crisis that has shaken Iran during the last two weeks exploded after the obvious and unbelievable fraud in the so-called presidential election. Angry people have been protesting under the rain of bullets and extreme threats of the regime, promising even more brutality.
As evidence indicates, the ruling faction of the Islamic regime didn’t even bother to count the votes of the people. They just issued the numbers in favour of the hated Ahmadinejad, declaring him president for the second time.
The women and men outraged by this insulting disregard of their vote are angrily shaking the pillars of the despotic religious regime.
The majority of those who voted, in fact voted to change a situation where it was no longer possible to breathe. But the people’s experience bluntly showed them and the whole world that their votes for the ruling power were worth absolutely nothing. The people’s struggle increasingly targets the whole system.
What has been going on in the last two weeks in Iran did not develop overnight. It is a reaction to 30 years of oppression, deprivation and repression by a religious regime against women and different oppressed sections of the people. Now it is the people’s turn to respond and they are responding with anger and rage in an unprecedented way. They have courageously overcome extreme brutality and continue to beat the drums of their heroic struggle. The intense fight among the different factions of the regime and the election fraud just played the role of a catalyst in forming this volcano of mass upsurge. If the people started their struggle by demanding their vote be counted, now they shout ‘death to Khamenei’ and the whole system, ‘down with the Islamic Republic’.
The women were the first section of the masses to be targeted when the Islamic regime came to power. The compulsory wearing of the Hijab (the Islamic veil) and other forms of discrimination against women have been one of the daily tasks of the regime’s thugs over the last 30 years. Nonetheless, over the last 30 years, women have never stopped their struggle. Only a month after the establishment of the Islamic regime, women held their first demonstration and have continued to oppose the regime in various ways. Over the last 30 years the hatred of women for this system has accumulated. It is no surprise that we see such a large proportion of protestors are furious women. It is no surprise that young women are in the forefront of most of the struggles against this brutal regime.
The whole world is watching. The brutality that took the lives of our bravest daughters and sons, the brutality that injured hundreds others and arrested around a thousand protestors.
The scene of the last moments of the life of the young woman Neda Agha-Soltan, shot by snipers of the Basij forces, broke the hearts of millions of Iranian people, outraged and angered the youth, moved the whole world and showed the extent of viciousness against the people by a reactionary fundamentalist regime. Neda was targeted in the same way that women in Iran as a whole are targeted.
We the 8th March Women’s Organisation, who have been fighting for women’s rights in Iran are inspired by this courageous struggle and fully support this upsurge of youth. We consider ourselves to be part of this. In the face of tremendous pressure, the people of Iran, especially women and youth, are fighting tooth and nail to keep their struggle and the struggle of all our people alive. This is their only hope.
We call on all freedom loving people, all those disgusted by the discrimination against women, all those outraged by the brutality against the people and the violation of their rights and all those who care about freedom and liberty for the people on a world scale, to give their support to this struggle in every way possible.
8 March Women’s Organization (Iran – Afghanistan)-UK
24 June2009
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