Presenter: Shahin Pooya
The mother took the clothes and said, “You dragged me from Karaj to Evin for seven years, and every time I asked when my daughter would be released? You said, ‘Soon.’ Now you’re just giving me her clothes without even giving me the address of her grave?! I’ll hang her clothes on the threshold of our house so we don’t forget what you did to us.”
Those who hanged and shot thousands of men and women in prisons, those who handed over thousands of young girls and boys to death squads, those who consider the oppression and persecution of the people as a guarantee of the survival of their disastrous government, those who want the killing of thousands of men and women to be forgotten, should know that the mothers, fathers, wives, children, sisters, brothers and the masses of the people whose children were handed over to death squads in the prisons of the criminal Islamic rulers will never forget this brutal crime and will not forgive its perpetrators and causes. Those who hope that with the passage of time, these horrific criminals and this deep social wound will be forgotten, should know that we neither forget nor forgive these crimes.
We would like to welcome you, dear friends and supporters, to the 20th gathering on the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s. We hope to hold another commemorative program together, in memory of the fighting men and women who were handed over to the death squads in the prisons of the Islamic Republic.
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.
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 1981 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 1981s by adopting different policies?
The program’s speakers will be in a roundtable discussion that will answer these questions and turn this important chapter in Iran’s bloody history.
We will begin the program with a minute of applause in memory of and in honor of those who died in the regime’s prisons. Then, our dear friend, artist Fariborz Fakhari, will perform pieces in memory and in honor of the thousands of male and female fighters who were murdered in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. After him, our friend, artist Roya Sadeghi, will perform the song “O Prisoner” accompanied by Arash’s piano.
The next part of the program will be a political roundtable with the participation of comrades Ebrahim Alizadeh (Communist Party of Iran), Abbas Tavakol (Fedayian Organization-Minority), Hamid Taghvaei (Labor Communist Party), Hassan Hessam (Revolutionary Organization of Workers of Iran (Worker’s Path)-Central Committee), and Ali Sadeghi (Ranjebaran Party of Iran). The roundtable will last three hours.
Ahmad Mousavi, a former political prisoner and survivor of the 1960s, will moderate the roundtable.
After the roundtable discussion, we will have a fifteen-minute break.
Renowned Iranian songwriter and playwright Iraj Jannati Ataei is the first guest of the second part of the program.
Exiled singer Giso Shagri is the second guest in this section.