Announcement of the 20th Conference on the Killing of Political Prisoners
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s
The impact of the killing of dissidents in the 1960s on political organizations and parties
The history of Iran has been a bloody one, always accompanied by cruelty, murder, slaughter, and repression. In order to exercise autocratic rule and secure their political and class interests, rulers have used repression, murder, and slaughter as a tool to sterilize people’s rights, subjugate society, and push back progressive movements.
The 1980s were the peak of these atrocities in the contemporary era. From the very first days of seizing power, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in order to consolidate its position and establish class and religious tyranny over society, placed the suppression of the people’s revolutionary demands on its agenda. It began its repression by attacking independent press, women’s demonstrations, and military attacks on Kurdistan, the Turkmen Desert, and Khuzestan in 1979 and 1980. The Islamic Republic knew that in order to complete the work of the revolution and completely defeat it, it had to destroy political opponents, especially those who had watered the revolution with their struggles in the 1960s and 1971s. Therefore, in furtherance of its repressive goals, with a predetermined plan, it chose June 30, 1981, to massacre opponents and destroy political organizations. Between 1987 and 1994, it arrested, tortured, and executed tens of thousands of supporters and members of revolutionary organizations throughout Iran. The exact number of those executed during these three years is still not known due to the reign of repression and censorship in Iran, but so far about twelve thousand names and details have been recorded. Continuing its crimes, the Islamic Republic continued to execute opponents in the later years of the 1980s, and massacred more than four thousand political prisoners who had survived the massacres of the early 1980s and were still captives and imprisoned by the government in inquisition courts for two to three minutes by asking three questions between the months of August and September in the summer of 1988, thus bringing the general and nationwide killing of opponents that had begun on June 30, 1988, to a peak in 1988.
Despite all these atrocities, the struggle for change and transformation in society has continued in various forms in different historical periods, and at two historical points in the contemporary era, people rebelled against the rulers. But what happened that the governments ruling Iran were able to re-establish tyranny and establish their dictatorship? Is this a sign of the power of repression? What factors prevent the people, and before them, political organizations and parties, from confronting the oppression of the ruler? What impact did the killing of opponents in the 1980s have on the political life and activities of political organizations and parties, society, and the Iranian revolution? Who were the main victims of the massacres of the 1960s? Could the forces opposing the government have prevented the killing of opponents in the 1980s by adopting different policies?
Leaders and cadres of five leftist organizations and political parties, Ebrahim Alizadeh (Communist Party of Iran), Ali Sadeghi (Ranjbaran Party of Iran), Abbas Tavakol (Fedayeyan Organization-Minority), Hamid Taghvaei (Communist Labor Party), and Hassan Hessam (Revolutionary Organization of Workers of Iran (Ra Kargar))-Central Committee, will answer these questions and turn this important chapter of Iran’s bloody history in a program organized by the Iranian Political Prisoners Center (in exile) in Stockholm on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the massacre of political prisoners in the 1960s.
Other guests on the program will be prominent Iranian songwriter and playwright Iraj Jannati Ataei and exiled singer Gisoo Shakeri.
Date: Saturday, September 21, 2013, 5:00 PM Central European Time and 7:30 PM Iranian Time.
Location: Stockholm, Husby Turf Auditorium
The program will be broadcast simultaneously on the global Paltalk network.
Address: Iran Kanone Zendanian Siasi
Category: Middle East
Iranian Political Prisoners’ Association (in exile) – Stockholm Branch
Announcement date: August 3, 2013