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, without even giving me the address of her grave, you are just giving me her clothes?! I will hang her clothes on the threshold of our house so that we will not forget what you did to us.”
Thirty-three years have passed since the killing of political prisoners in the summer of 1967. Forty-seven years have passed since the mass and widespread executions of political prisoners in the early 1960s. Since then, Iranian society has been subjected to many incidents, and dissatisfaction and opposition to the Islamic Republic have reached their peak, and more and more segments of the people, whose lives, livelihoods, and rights have been violated, have joined the ranks of the struggle against the Islamic Republic and the status quo. As the struggles of the masses of the people have expanded, the Islamic Republic has also expanded its repression to the same extent and has brought murder and slaughter from prison to the streets. What is most noticeable in the protests of the masses of the people in recent years is a cry that has been buried in the throat, a cry for justice, a struggle to rebuild a society whose foundations are based on justice and equality.
Although the demand for justice was born during the Islamic Republic, with the first bullets that the Islamic Republic fired into the hearts of its opponents, its scope expanded throughout Iran with the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s, with the murder of young people in January 2017, in the summer of 2018 and November 2019, with the cries of the mothers of Khavaran, with the cries of the mothers and families of loved ones lost during more than four decades of the Islamic Republic’s rule. Today, demand for justice in Iran is linked to the work, bread, and life of the people, with social movements such as the people’s struggle movement against the Islamic Republic, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the student movement, and has become widespread and widespread on a societal scale and has become a campaign strategy for establishing justice. The vast mass of millions in Iran believe that justice will only be possible during the Islamic Republic’s lifetime if the oppressors, tyrants, and murderers are brought to justice for their actions, removed from power, and a new society is established in which no one is prosecuted for their thoughts, for expressing their opinions, for their clothing, for their gatherings and protests, for their political and social organization and activity, in which bread, work, wealth, and the resources of society are distributed equally among the people, and no one is homeless, hungry, or barefoot, and everyone lives equally in prosperity and freedom.
We need to do a few technical things to be able to 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 and open the microphone only for those who are running the program. We also turn 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 guests, we ask you to contact the program officials via “chat” with “Besi”. He is responsible for answering your questions and comments. The program will be broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook simultaneously.
I would like to welcome in advance our dear guests, Shahrzad Mojab and Nasser Mohajer, Fariborz Fakhari and Hossein Gordin, who accepted our invitation to participate in this program, as well as our friends and supporters who have always been by our side all these years and participated with us in the anniversary programs, as well as our friends who have recently participated in this program.
We will begin the 29th gathering on the killing of political prisoners with a minute of applause in remembrance and in honor of the thousands of fighting men and women who died in prisons and during the struggle against the Islamic Republic in the 1960s and before and after. Then our artist friends Fariborz Fakhari and Hossein Gordin will play a piece in remembrance of the lives lost. Our artist friends will also perform pieces during the program.
Then, my dear friend Fatan Jokar will present to you a short report on the Nouri Court.
We will continue the program with speeches from our dear guests, Shahrzad Mojab and Nasser Mohajer.
Our dear friend Shahrzad Mojab will give a speech titled “Revolutionary Justice: Theory and Practice in the Context of Very Unfair Relations.”
Our dear friend Nasser Mohajer will give a speech titled “On Advocacy and Its Relationship to Social Movements.”
Each of the speaker friends will speak for thirty to thirty-five minutes.
We will have a ten-minute break after the speech.
After a break, our artist friends, Fariborz and Hossein, will perform pieces.
In the next part of the program, we will have a question and answer session for half an hour. Friends who have questions for the speakers, please write a five on the chat page. Due to the lack of time, we ask friends to keep their questions short and refrain from discussing other issues.
At the end, we will have a clip in which Iraj Jannati Ataee recites one of his poems.
Now, in honor of the thousands of political prisoners who were murdered in the prisons of the Islamic Republic in the 1960s and the decades that followed, we will applaud together for a minute.
My dear comrade Fatan presents a report on the trial of Hamid Nouri.
We begin the speech with our dear comrade Shahrzad Mojab.
Professor Shahrzad Mojab is a researcher, writer, political activist, and Professor of Education and Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the former Director of the Department of Women and Gender at the University of Toronto. Dr. Mojab has published numerous books and articles on the impact of war, displacement, and violence on women’s education and learning; gender, state, migration, anti-racist and Marxist feminist approaches to education; and women of revolution in the Middle East, some of which have been translated into Kurdish, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, German, French, and Swedish. Dr. Mojab’s recent books include:
* Kurdish Women: A Historical and Source Study in Collaboration with Professor Amir Hassanpour.
*Marxism and immigration
*Marxism and Feminism
*Learning from Marx: Race, Gender, and Learning
*Women, war, violence, and learning
An important feature of Shahrzad Mojab’s work is making the results of her research available to the public in various artistic forms. In this regard, she has done many works on women and prisons, which can be seen on the website “Resistance Art in the Middle East”.
We continue the program with a speech by our dear friend Nasser Mohajer.
Nasser Mohajer is a writer and researcher of contemporary Iranian history. After leaving Iran in 1983, he settled in Paris. He was one of the founders of the journal Aghashi Nost and was a member of its editorial board for nine years. From 1995 to 2000, he was the editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine Dounte. During his years of exile, he wrote in English and French, and mostly in Persian, ranging from cultural criticism and political essays to historical and sociological research. Some of his writings include: 23 Iranian short stories; The Prison Book in two volumes; The Inevitable Escape: Thirty Accounts of Escape from the Islamic Republic of Iran in two volumes; The Uprising of Iranian Women in two volumes with Mahnaz Matin; The Pik Saadat Nasvan magazine with Banafsheh Masoudi; In the Language of Law, Bijan Jazni and Hassan Zia Zarifi in the Military Court with Mehrdad Vahabi; Another Way, Narratives in the Life of the Iranian People’s Devotional Guerrillas in Two Volumes, with the collaboration of Touraj Atabaki and Bagher Momeni, A Traveler on the Endless Road in Two Volumes. His latest writings include The Voice of a Massacre and his joint writing in English with Kaveh Yazdani on the Great Break in “What Remains of Marxists” and “A Critical Hesitation on Neoliberalism” with Mehrdad Vahabi.
In this part of the program, we will be discussing questions and answers. Friends who are interested in asking questions to the speakers, please keep their questions short so that we have enough time for the next questions. Friends who have questions for the speakers, please write a five on the chat page.
The last episode of the 29th gathering will feature a speech by our dear friend Iraj Jannati Ataee.