Program Introduction
Shahin Pouyan
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I am the red cry of liberation.
Sing my name, mother, in the eastern sky.
I am the bloody flag of freedom.
Sing my name, my wife, in the eastern sky.
I am the Red Dawn of Liberation.
I am a prisoner, under the eternal soil of Khavaran.
Sing, O heroic people, my name in the eastern sky.
We have come together again. We shout out loud again; neither the passage of time nor the passage of life, and until the day we remain, let us not let the dust of life cast a shadow over our historical memory. Let us not let the memory of our comrades who were drowned in their own blood at the hands of the ruling hill farmers be forgotten.
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 suppression and persecution of the people as a guarantee of the survival of their disastrous regime, 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 rulers of the Islamic Republic will never forget this brutal crime. Those who hope that with the passage of time, these horrific criminals and this deep social wound will be forgotten, should know that it will not be long before the masses of the Iranian people will hold the perpetrators and those responsible accountable and bring them to justice.
We welcome you, dear friends, supporters, and comrades, to the 27th gathering on the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s. We are holding this program in a situation where the coronavirus has swept the entire world, affected all areas of life, killed a large number, and caused serious damage to a large part. Following these conditions, we were also forced to move the program from the hall and the real world to Zoom and the virtual world. However, this has also had an achievement in its own context. This year, we have guests who have not been able to directly participate in our anniversary programs before. The programs that are held in connection with the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s in the months of Shahrivar and September play an important role in preserving our historical memory and play a direct role in the advocacy movement regarding this killing. It is important that these programs be held as often and as magnificently as possible.
The Center for Political Prisoners of Iran (in Exile) has been trying to do this for years and has been able to take positive steps in this direction, examining various aspects of killing, torture, and repression in and outside prison, and discussing and examining the effects of killing on various political, social, cultural, literary, artistic, and other areas. However, this would not have been possible without the cooperation of a large number of political prisoners of the 1960s, experts, specialists, and technologists from various social fields, and freedom-loving Iranians who have been with us in our programs all these years. Since 2015, we have been able to broadcast our programs directly from television to Iran. In fact, since Paltalk came to the virtual world, we have been able to take our programs from the theater to the outside world and to Iranians in more countries. We, and certainly others, were able to inform a wider range of people about the events of the 1960s and the killing of political prisoners in this decade, and to involve wider segments of the population in these programs and the advocacy movement.
In these twenty-seven years, Iranian society has gone through very bitter events. Social and political repression, arrests, torture, and executions of dissidents and protesters against the government continued. The justice movement also lost a large number of militant mothers who were the foundations of this movement. In these years, we have witnessed the rise of fathers and mothers who never forgot the murder of their children by the criminals of the Islamic Republic, and who sought justice until the last moments of their lives, demanding the trial of the perpetrators and those who ordered the murder of their loved ones.
We, too, continue on our path, determined to stand by our covenant with our comrades who were imprisoned in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic. We will never, even for a moment, stop fighting against the integrity of the Islamic Republic and fighting to build a new society free from prison, torture, execution, and class oppression.
However, alongside the bitter and painful events of all these years, hopeful social events also occurred, the most prominent of which is the revolutionary action of the poor masses of the people against the entire Islamic Republic in January 1996, August 1997, and February 1998.
The program of the 27th gathering on the killing of political prisoners in Iran will consist of two parts; in the first part, six political prisoners of the 1960s, Mohammad Khoshzouk, Mersedeh Ghaedi, Ahmad Mousavi, Fatan Jokar, Hamid Haghshenas, and Tahmineh Gashtasbi, will portray various aspects of life in prison in the shadow of repression and killing. Our comrade, Mohammad Khoshzouk, will be the first speaker of the program, speaking for twenty minutes. The other comrades, Mersedeh Ghaedi, Ahmad Mousavi, Fatan Jokar, Hamid Haghshenas, and Tahmineh Gashtasbi, will speak in two sessions, each session lasting ten minutes.
In the second part of the program, Majid Kazemi, a young generation artist, singer and composer, will have two performances. In the next part, saxophonist Faribar Fakhari and guitarist Hossein Kordin will perform a piece together.
We will begin the program with a minute of applause in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the 1960s and the four decades of repression, executions, and massacres of the Islamic Republic. Next, Rafiq Fariborz Fakhari will perform a soprano piece. Following this performance, Fariborz Fakhari and Hossein Gordin will perform a joint piece.
We need to make a few technical adjustments so that we can run the program smoothly. To avoid sound interference in the program, especially those sounds that may occur in the background, we have to turn off the sounds after the music in the first part of the program and open the microphone only for those who are performing the program. We are also turning off “screen sharing” for this reason.
The program has four admins, each of whom is responsible for a part of the technical work. Dear audience and invitees, we ask that you contact the program officials via “chat” with “Besi”. He is responsible for answering your questions and comments.
Now it is appropriate to remember Navid Afkari, who, like thousands of other political prisoners, was unjustly sent to the death squad by the criminal Islamic rulers. Navid was a young wrestler who was born in 1972 in a hard-working family in Shiraz. From the beginning of his youth, he turned to sports and wrestling while studying, and worked as a laborer alongside his studies and sports. Navid quickly went through the stages of championship in wrestling and advanced to the vice-championship of the Iranian national youth team. Like millions of young people born during the Islamic Republic, he was protesting against the unbearable conditions that the Islamic Republic created for the masses of the people, and along with his two brothers, Habib and Vahid, he joined the ranks of opponents and protesters of the Islamic Republic and rebelled against it. Navid and his two brothers were arrested by the security agents of the Islamic Republic for participating in the protests of Mordad 1997 and subjected to brutal torture. The interrogators and torturers of the Islamic Republic forced Navid to confess to the murder of a regime security official. The Islamic Republic sentenced Navid to death twice. Once for war and once for retaliation. The issue of Navid’s death sentence quickly became global. The Islamic Republic, which sought to take revenge on the people for their opposition to the Islamic Republic, had failed to execute the three young men it had sentenced to death for participating in the November 1992 protests, so it hastily executed Navid in Shiraz’s Adel Abad Prison, despite widespread international protests, without the knowledge of his family.
The Islamic Republic should know, and it knows very well, that killing people will not save it from the inevitable collapse that awaits it, yet it kills to postpone its death.
People do not mourn the death of their heroes. With the death of each hero, hundreds of heroes fill his place. People become angrier in their struggle against the Islamic Republic and more determined to overthrow it.
They say we failed again. We couldn’t do anything for Navid. They killed Navid and the tyrant won again. Let’s remember, the game is that the dictator always wins, except once. The dictator only fails once, and that one time is his downfall.
In memory of our fallen hero Navid Afkari, let’s listen to his final words together.
Now, in honor of Navid Ghahraman and thousands of other heroes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the four decades of the shameful and hateful rule of the Islamic Republic, we stand up and remember, and we applaud for a minute in their honor.