“Life is not what we have lived, but what we remember and how we remember it in order to tell it.”
As we get closer to the end of summer and the beginning of fall, the memories of our dear friends and comrades who have passed away come alive in our minds and souls.
After the Islamists took power, just a few months after the revolution, they set about defeating the revolution and destroying its achievements. They began by killing people in Kurdistan, Khuzestan, and the Turkmen Desert. They arrested, tortured, and executed anyone who had taken an active part in the revolution. They put political organizations to the sword. They turned the 1960s into the darkest decade in Iran’s contemporary history with the widespread killing of supporters and members of political organizations. Anyone who had survived the massacres of the 1960s was sent to the death squads during the months of August and September of 1967, by order of Ruhollah Khomeini.
In February and March 1987, thousands of political prisoners who were serving or had served their sentences and were still being held in prison were re-interrogated. They created files for them, categorized them, and separated their cells. The Islamic Republic had been negotiating with the Iraqi regime for several months and knew that it would soon have to accept peace. It knew that after declaring peace with Iraq, the political prisoners held in its prisons throughout Iran would be a problem for it. The Islamic Republic knew that the demand for the release of political prisoners would become a social demand after the war. The release of all those prisoners after the disastrous defeat in the eight-year war with Iraq and their return to the people would have made society uncontrollable and would have led to political and social turmoil. Therefore, it had planned to kill them about a year before killing them. The massacre was carried out in the summer of 1967 on the orders of Khomeini, the great executioner of the Islamic Republic.
According to available statistics, the Islamic Republic executed one person every eight minutes in the first three years of the 1960s. It initially published the names of the executed to create fear and panic in society. After that, during the killing of political prisoners in the summer of 1967, it continued to kill political prisoners in secret. From then on, and especially the killing of prisoners in 1967, it became a red line for the government, and no one among its insiders was allowed to talk about it. The Islamic Republic was and is so afraid of the public announcement of this killing that even some members of the death commission who killed the prisoners in the summer of 1967, including Pourmohammadi, denied involvement in the killing and his membership in the death commission. Following the holding of the first stage of the People’s Court of Iran Tribunal in June 2012, which was widely publicized in Iran and brought the killing of political prisoners into the public consciousness, some ayatollahs, such as Dastghayeb, Sanei, and Khazali, demanded an explanation for the killing. Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Propheti, a security official of the Islamic Republic, published an article titled “Behind the Scenes of the Show Trial of the Iran Tribunal,” which was published in all the press and media of the Islamic Republic, in which he admitted to the killing of political prisoners and defended it. The same year, the Baztab website, owned by Mohsen Rezaei, also tried to exonerate Khamenei of the killing of political prisoners by posting an article on its website. Baztab had written that after Khomeini referred the order to kill leftist and communist prisoners to the Expediency Discernment Council for final determination, Khamenei, who was the president at the time, opposed the order and saved thousands of leftist and communist prisoners from execution.
Recently, Montazeri’s family released an audio recording of Montazeri’s conversations with members of the death commission. This audio recording led some regime operatives from both the conservative and reformist factions, as well as members of the death commission, such as Pourmohammadi, who had always denied involvement in the killings and membership in the death commission, to take a stand and admit to killing prisoners. Montazeri, without mentioning the killing of thousands of political prisoners in the early 1960s, refers to the killing of political prisoners in 1967 as “the greatest crime in the Islamic Republic.”
The Islamic Republic expected that, with the passage of time, the brutal killings of political prisoners in the 1960s would be forgotten.
However, the policy of public anti-amnesia and cover-up measures such as the Iran Tribunal, which was widely reflected in Iran and internationally, brought the killing of political prisoners into public opinion in Iran. As this incident entered society and public opinion, the issue of thirty years of denial of the incident also entered society and set the stage for a public indictment against the Islamic Republic. Now, it is not only the political prisoners of the sixties, the families of those who lost their lives in this decade, and members of opposition political organizations and parties who want the case of this crime to be opened and clarified. The demand to investigate this crime has become a social demand and from now on, it will catch up with the Islamic Republic more quickly.
Dear friends, colleagues and companions, hello.
Welcome to the 23rd gathering on the killing of political prisoners and the 28th anniversary of the commemoration of the thousands of fighting men and women who died in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. This year marks the 23rd year of our gathering on the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s. The gatherings in Stockholm are a meeting place for us, advocates, who believe that the only way to prevent a repeat of the atrocities that have occurred in Iran over the past 36 years, especially in the 1960s, is to administer justice and create a new and humane society based on social justice and equality.
We will begin the program with a minute of applause in memory and in honor of the thousands of men and women who died in the prisons of the Islamic Republic and in the face of this regime. Then our dear artist comrade, Fariborz Fakhari, will perform a beautiful piece on the soprano saxophone. He will perform the memorial service for the fallen. After him, my dear friend Peywand will present a short article about the book Iran Tribunal, written by Babak Emad, which was recently published by Baran Publications.
In the first part of the program, Ms. Fatemeh Jokar, a former political prisoner and family member of those who died in prison in the 1960s, will give a forty-five-minute speech on the topic of “Prison Children.”
In the next part of the program, our dear friend Golrokh Jahangiri will perform several songs and compositions with her lovely voice.
In the second part of the program, Ms. Najmeh Mousavi, an exiled poet, writer, and translator, and editor of Arash magazine, will give a forty-five-minute speech. The topic of her speech is “A Comparison Between the Memories of Women’s and Men’s Prisons in the 1980s.”
Mr. Ali Negahban, writer, literary researcher, and translator, will be the next speaker, delivering a forty-five-minute speech on the topic of “A Comparison Between Women and Men Prisoners in Fiction Literature Abroad.”
In the second part of the program, between two lectures, Faribazz Fakhari will perform another piece.