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.
Shamlu
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 suppression and persecution of the people as a guarantee of the survival of their calamitous 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 Islamic rulers will never forget this brutal crime and will never forgive its perpetrators and perpetrators. 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.
First of all, dear friends and supporters, we are celebrating the Stockholm anniversary programs. With the hope that we will hold another memorable night together in memory of those who lost their lives in the sixties. We will begin tonight’s program with a minute of applause in memory and in commemoration of those who lost their lives in the regime’s prisons and the anthem “Ay Zendani” with the warm voice of Roya Sadeghi.
Following this, Hassan Hessam, an exiled writer and poet, will speak to us for forty minutes about the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s and will recite poetry. Our next program will be a documentary film about the first phase of the Islamic Republic’s trial, which was held in London for five days in June and received wide international attention. This trial forced the Islamic Republic to admit for the first time to the killing of thousands of political prisoners in the 1960s. After the film, we will have a twenty-minute break, and then Gita Rostam Alipour, the mother of Esmat, Hedeya Shamsi, Roya Ashraf Abadi, and Roya Rezaei Jahromi, five family members who testified in the London trial, will discuss the psychological, social, and political effects of the trial on families in a roundtable hosted by Bahram Rahmani, Secretary of the Iranian Writers in Exile Association. The program will culminate with the delightful voice of Gisoo Shakeri, a protest poet in exile.