Shahin Pooya
Who can I tell about this anger that kills generation after generation?
“Those who have persisted in their hypocritical stance in prisons across the country are enemies and sentenced to death.” “In all the above cases, if anyone is on the side of hypocrisy at any stage, their sentence is death. Quickly destroy the enemies of Islam. Regarding the handling of the status of the cases, in any case, the fastest possible verdict is the desired one.”
With this order from Khomeini, the executioner and leader of the Islamic Republic regime in the last days of his life, the largest mass killing of political prisoners in Iranian prisons began.
In the space of one month, from August 28 to September 10, 1988, more than five thousand political prisoners who were serving their prison terms and some who were awaiting or on the verge of release were sentenced to death in trials lasting only a few minutes, based on the judgment of a three-member panel of Khomeini’s confidants: Nayiri, Pourmohammadi, and Morteza Eshraghi, and were immediately hanged or shot.
The killing of political prisoners began in early August with the Mujahedin, and continued in September with leftist and communist prisoners, and continued until the autumn of that year. The last survivors of the long list of convicts were put before death squads in the winter of 1967. The victims of this great massacre were leaders, cadres, members and supporters of communist and leftist organizations and parties, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, and the parties and organizations of Kurdistan.
Political prisoners who were massacred in the summer of 1988 were generally buried in mass graves. Many of these graves are still unknown to their families. The Islamic Republic regime has refused to provide the families with the location of their graves for all these years. Since the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 until today, the Islamic Republic has tried to bury this horrific crime with its victims. The struggle and resistance of the families and the discovery of mass graves in Khavaran and several other places in Iran prevented the regime from achieving this evil goal.
The killing of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 was the culmination of the killing of opponents of the regime in the prisons of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s. In the early years of the 1980s, the regime of the Islamic Republic arrested, tortured, and executed thousands of its opponents, or kidnapped and murdered them. The exact number of those killed in prisons in these years, as with the killing of political prisoners in the summer of 1981, is not known. Numerous and scattered names and lists have been published by political organizations and parties, democratic institutions, and human rights organizations, with a total of twelve to fifteen thousand names recorded.
All these years, the regime has tried to erase the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1967 and the killing of opponents in the early 1960s from the memory and mentality of society, the people, and history through repression and the passage of time. The resistance and struggle of families to identify the graves and keep the memory of their loved ones alive by holding Nowruz ceremonies and anniversaries of the Khavaran massacre and at family gatherings prevented the regime from achieving its goal of erasing the memory and mentality of the society and the people of these crimes. However, the repression and repression in Iran during these years have been to such an extent that the general public of Iran is still unaware of these crimes and their extent in the 1960s.
The memorials held abroad are actually part of the struggle of a generation that witnessed the bloodiest crimes in Iranian prisons during its lifetime, a generation that, despite all its weaknesses and shortcomings, its dispersion and different political positions, has played a significant role in combating forgetting. Holding memorial ceremonies abroad, when it is not possible to hold them in Iran, is of particular importance in combating forgetting.
The silence of the perpetrators of this crime has become part of the crime itself. An agreement has committed all factions of the regime to continue to cover up this great crime. Silence regarding this great human tragedy has led to the daily continuation of this crime.
Many survivors of the massacre of dissidents in the 1960s have covered their faces with dirt, and the dust of old age and the passage of time has settled on the grieving faces of many others. But the hope that with the passage of time the survivors of this crime will also be silenced has never been realized and will never be. Now the children of those thousands of dead have themselves come forward and demanded justice. The new generation is pursuing this justice with the same strength as the previous generation and alongside it. The massacre of dissidents in the 1960s is no longer just a matter of thousands of families who lost their loved ones, but has become a social question for the younger generation in Iran.
The colorful supporters of the Islamic Republic regime are trying to prevent this question from becoming public in society. They say that “Khavaran” belongs to the past, that it was a moment in the history of the Islamic Republic and has passed. But this is not true. “Khavaran” is the identity card of the Islamic Republic and is being reproduced with it. Today in the nameless graves of plot 302 of Behesht Zahra and tomorrow somewhere else. Those who produced Khavaran are still at the top of power and are doing to the young and freedom-loving boys and girls of Iran what they did to the revolutionary generation in the sixties.
The new and young generation of today’s society has chosen and pursued the same ideals that their predecessors sought to create; the cry for freedom, equality, and justice that was stifled by the killing of opponents in the 1960s.
Today, the streets and alleys of Iran are filled with the cries of a generation that is unwilling to continue living under the cloak and turban of capital and its green and black claimants. Wave after wave comes to finally crush the towers and ramparts they have built against it and uproot the rule of crime and the criminals of the religious and capitalist world. Then, aged mothers will smile again, their grieving hearts will be comforted, and they will find their fallen children in the thriving youth of today.