Program Introduction
Shahin Pooya
In the wake of all the blood that has been shed on this land, may this life be our shame, may this bread be our shame, if we do not cry out; we will remember and not forget and not forgive, all the blood that the Islamic Republic has shed on this land. We will not sit and watch, we are gathered and the wave that is pouring like a mountain onto the shore.
Dear guests, distinguished audience, friends who are with us via live broadcast, hello. Welcome to the 30th Stockholm Conference on the Murder of Prisoners.
Thirty years ago on this day, we held the first gathering on the killing of political prisoners at Medborgar Platsen in Stockholm. Many of you may remember that program. That program was very different from the programs of the previous years that leftist organizations had organized together. For the first time, political prisoners, those who had themselves survived the killing of political prisoners in the 1960s, held the program and shared their experiences and memories. The advocacy, which had not been discussed abroad until then, became the main pillar of the anniversary programs and seminars that the Iranian Political Prisoners Association (in exile) has held in Sweden and several other countries, including Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, since that date.
In these thirty years, our effort has always been to open the case of the crimes of the Islamic Republic in the 1960s and to discuss and examine all dimensions and aspects of the killing of opponents in the 1960s and its impact on various sectors of society and the people, including universities, political, cultural and artistic parties and organizations, and subsequent generations. In these thirty years, we invited about two hundred people, including political prisoners and families of those who died in the 1960s, lawyers, writers, poets and artists in various artistic fields including theater, cinema, painting, and students and youth who were active in the student movement and social movements in Iran and were forced to leave Iran, as well as leaders of five left-wing political organizations and parties, activists and young experts in the fields of law and anthropology, to advance these discussions.
In these thirty years, while exposing the crimes of the Islamic Republic and helping to better understand what happened in political prisons in the 1960s, we have introduced new innovations in anniversary programs that were not common abroad before us. Among them, we can mention the holding of artistic programs, including music, theater, poetry readings, and protest dance, as part of the suppressed voice of the dark years in Iran. Holding three national and international seminars in London and Stockholm and holding a large protest march in Stockholm are among the programs that the Iranian Political Prisoners in Exile Center has held throughout these years on the anniversary of the killing of political prisoners.