Shahin Pooya
I have cried with you in the bright solitude.
For the sake of the living,
And I have sung with you in the dark cemetery.
The most beautiful songs
Because the dead of this year
They were the most loving people alive.
Comrades, friends, supporters, and distinguished audience, welcome to another program of remembrance and commemoration of the thousands of political prisoners who were hanged in the prisons of the Islamic Republic in the 1960s. This program is our twenty-second gathering on the killing of political prisoners in Stockholm. The Stockholm gatherings are a meeting place for us, the justice seekers, who believe that the only way to prevent a repeat of the atrocities that have occurred in Iran over the past thirty-five years, especially in the 1960s, is to implement justice and create a new and humane society based on social justice and equality.
Thirty-four years ago, the Islamic Republic’s agents turned the 1960s into the bloodiest chapter in Iran’s contemporary history by launching a nationwide crackdown on political opponents and killing thousands of fighting men and women. They began the killing of opponents with mass executions in 1960 and reached their peak in the summer of 1967.
In the summer of 1967, in an attempt to eliminate the prisoners who had survived the massacres of the early 1960s, the prisons were closed and their communication with the outside world cut off. Then, the prisoners were handed over in groups to death squads and finally buried en masse and secretly in unmarked graves throughout Iran.
The repression and killing of political prisoners in the 1960s was not limited to eliminating opponents and establishing tyranny and dictatorship. This killing affected all aspects of people’s lives and society.
Continuing our examination of the aspects and scope of the impact of the killing of political prisoners on various social spheres, we have dedicated the 27th anniversary program in Stockholm to the impact of the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s on art. In today’s program, together with a group of Iranian art activists, we will examine the context of this onslaught and the impact of repression and imprisonment in Iran on art.
We will begin the program with a minute of applause in memory and in honor of the thousands of men and women who were killed in prisons by the reactionary regime of the Islamic Republic. Then our dear friend, artist Fariborz Fakhari, will play a beautiful piece on the soprano saxophone. He will perform in memory of the fallen. After him, my dear friend Panav will give you a brief introduction to today’s topics.
In the first part of the program, Vansha Rudbaraki, Nasser Rahmani Nejad, and Jamileh Nedai will speak, respectively, about the impact of repression and imprisonment, especially in the 1960s, on the art of painting, theater, and cinema.
In the second part of the program, Iraj Jannati Ataei, Hadi Khorsandi, and Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh will speak, respectively, about the impact of repression and imprisonment, especially in the 1960s, on songwriting, poetry, and composition.
At the end, we will perform a couple of songs and group chants with you.
The news was short. Shahrokh Zamani, a worker imprisoned as a result of the pressures exerted on him in the prison of the brutal, barbaric government and the capitalist and reactionary system ruling Iran, died following a stroke. Shahrokh Zamani’s crime was fighting for workers’ rights. The ignorant and criminal government of the Islamic Republic could not tolerate him and threw him in prison. He also eventually joined the camp of fighters who were murdered in Iranian prisons.
In memory of him and the fallen and freedom-loving heroes of the 1960s and the decades that followed, we stand and applaud together for a minute.
Welcome to the virtual program of the 22nd gathering on the killing of political prisoners.