On The Occasion Of The 17th Anniversary Of The Massacre Of Political
Prisoners In Iran
It happened 17 years ago in
September 1988 in Iran.
One day all the contact of the political prisoners from outside world was cut.
No newspapers, no radio or television. No visits. Even the connection between
prisoners became severely restricted and punished. Every night the guards came,
called out 100s of prisoners and killed them in cold blood. The systematic
massacre of the political prisoners went on for little over a month. In
September 1988 over ten thousand young women and men, mostly in their teens and
twenties, were killed behind the walls of prisons in Iran.
The great majority were in
their teens or twenties. Some of them had few years left of their sentence;
some had already finished their sentence but were not released because they had
refused to bend to the will of Khomeini. The phony trials had lasted one or two
minutes, sometimes there were no trials. Their “crimes” ranged from disagreeing
with the Islamic Republic of Iran and refusal to repent from their past
political activity, to not believing in God, or refusing to do the Namaz (Islamic prayer).
They were shot, machine gunned
or hanged. But hanging was by far the executioners’ preferred method: it doesn’t
produce blood and the blood of hundreds killed each night was too much for the
cynics to clean. The bodies were thrown in meat trucks and taken to a remote cemeteries. One of such cemeteries in Teheran
was that of Bahais (a minority and persecuted religion
in Iran).
The cemetery is called Khavaran and the Islamic
Republic calls it “the Place of the Damned”. The bodies were dumped in mass
graves, on top of each other, with clothes on, and very near the surface…. All
this was done at night, so that nobody would see, so that this heinous crime
would be hidden from humanity. But somehow this came to open and ever since that
cemetery has become a gathering point of the families and friends of those who
put their lives for their dreams of a better world. It has also become a
testimony to the murderous cruelty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
When this massacre took place,
the states in Europe and US turned a blind
eye. There was no cry against injustice; there was no talk of “respect for
human rights” or “democracy”. Hardly a word on this massacre made it to the
media. Their silence was a tacit agreement to the crime. The Islamic Republic
wished to effectively get rid of any talk of revolution, and kill any hope of liberation;
the Western governments were hoping that this will enable them to tighten their
grip on Iran,
for more oil, more globalization and more profit.
Today, 17 years after the
massacre of political prisoners, people in Iran are again rising for their
rights. Women take to the streets for freedom and equality. Kurdish people rise
up against national oppression. Workers strikes are becoming common place.
Nurses and teachers demand a change in their atrocious conditions. Again the
prisons of Iran
are getting vastly populated with those who protest. And again the execution
squads are put to work. But the heroes of democracy in the West talk about
nothing but the so-called weapons of mass destruction, hardly any media
coverage on those recently arrested and executed, and no asylum for Iranians
who flee the inhuman conditions.
Join us in commemorating the
17th anniversary of massacre of political prisoners in Iran. Add your
voice to the people of Iran
in their struggle against the Islamic Republic and for another world free of
all oppression.
8 March Women’s Organization
(Iranian – Afghanistani)
September 2005
Contact: Zan_dem_iran@hotmail.com
www.8mars.com