Leftists were key to bringing about the Islamic Revolution in Iran…not long after they were executed in thousands by their Islamic allies they helped bring to power as reported in this Leftist publication in 1988, now long forgotten….

A 30 November report of the representative in Europe of the Fedayeen Majority  denounces the “extensive massacre, resembling only those seen in Nazi death camps”. “The massacre of political prisoners has taken place in the prisons of Tehran, Isfahan, Kerman, Khoram Abad, Gilan, Mazandaran, Hamendan, Gachsaran, Oromieh, Tabriz” and other cities. “Three hundred political prisoners have been buried in two mass graves in Khaavaraan cemetery (in East Tehran)…. In addition to daily execution of groups of political prisoners in Evin, a large number of them were murdered in a deliberate explosion and destruction of an auditorium where they had been assembled.”

And a 21 September 1988 statement of the Kurdistan Organisation of the Communist Party of Iran (Komala) said of the criminal mass executions of the “Islamic Republic”: “These turbaned dictators are looking for victory in the city streets and in prison cells to make up for their defeat in the war fronts of Iran and Iraq. They are trying desperately to extend their onerous life through terror and intimidation by setting up execution squads.”

From Moscow, Literaturnaya Gazeta (21 December 1988) reported on the “Massacre in Iran”, interviewing Iranian exile Bizhan Ekrami, who told of “an actual genocide” that was killing “the best sons of Iran”. Ekrami had a typed list of 147 names of activist, members of the intelligentsia and cultural figures, only a small fraction of those killed. “Iran is in mourning”, he said. There have also been protests in Iran in the midst of this reign of terror.  Die Wahrheit (30 December 1988), the organ of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin, reports that, according to information from the Muhahedin, “a large number of relatives of executed oppositionists held a sitdown strike in front of the Ministry of Justice in Teheran on Tuesday to protest mass executions in Iran.”

Once again, the Left are aligning themselves with Islamic extremists.

Once again, they protest in defense of Iran’s killer clerics…led by the Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, Medea Benjamin’s Code Pink, and DemocracyNow among others.

Perhaps, one day the ‘woke’ followers of these Progressive ‘thought leaders’ should heed the tortured cries of their ideological kin coming from Iran’s mass graves, and wake-up to the deadly horrors they are helping to engender…and to which, one day, they too will likely fall victim as they are, already, in Europe.

Is it any wonder than the old Nazi general Otto-Ernst Remer would only a few years later in 1993 laud Iran in an interview he gave to the Egyptian paper Al-Shaab:

“The Islamic system of Persia [Iran] is the only legitimate form of government of the muslim world…”

ALERT! Mass executions of leftists

BLOODY HORROR IN KHOMEINI’S IRAN

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 488, 6 January.

Reports coming out of Iran point to a mammoth new way of executions of leftist political prisoners now taking place in Khomeini’s jails.  Already, an estimated 1000 to 5000 have been hanged or lined up before the firing squads of the Islamic dictatorship and dumped in mass graves.  In some provincial cities, the entire prison population has reportedly been massacred.  Virtually every imprisoned leader of Iran’s pro-Moscow Tudeh Party has been executed, and supporters of People’s Mujahedin, the Revolutionary Workers Organization of Iran (Rahe Kargar), Iranian People’s Fedayee (Majority) and the Fedyaee Minority are said to have been killed in the thousands. It is now feared that the wholesale physical annihilation of political prisoners is planned by next month’s tenth anniversary of the mullah’s February 1979 seizure of power.

Following the cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war last August, the ayatollah’s regime in Teheran has turned the jails into killing fields for all those it sees as political opponents. Meanwhile, the ruling generals in Baghdad launched a “scorched earth” drive against Iraqi Kurdistan, razing three-quarters of the Kurdish villages and sending tens of thousands of Kurds fleeing over the border into Turkey, where the army has been waging a brutal war against Kurdish guerillas.  In Iran, Khomeini inaugurated his Islamic “revolution” by killing more than 10,000 Kurds, and in August unleashed a massacre of thousands of Iraq-allied Mujahedin troops inside Iranian Kurdistan.  As we wrote in October:

“The so-called ‘cease-fire’ negotiated by the United Nations may not have ended the savage and senseless war between Iraq and Iran.  But it has given these two self-proclaimed ‘revolutionary’ regimes the respite to concentrate their forces on what they do best: massacring their own peoples.”

–Workers Vanguard no 462, 7 October 1988

The international workers movement must raise an urgent cry of outrage against these unspeakable crimes being committed against opponents of the mullahs’ dictatorship! The bloodbath in Iran is part and parcel of Teheran’s efforts to “mend bridges” with Western imperialists, who are perfectly willing to see Iranian leftists slaughtered. Thousands of militants have already been killed and thousands more are marked for execution. They are already being held incommunicado; all family visits have been cut off. The left, labour movement and all supporters of democratic rights must mobilise internationally to bring worldwide attention to the mass slaughter now going on, demanding an immediate halt to the executions and freedom for the victims of Khomeini’s terror in Iran!

FIRING SQUADS MOW DOWN LEFTISTS

While the killings have reportedly been going on in secret since August, the magnitude and chilling horror of the massacre is now evident from the repeated accounts coming from every left group in Iran. The Independent reported on 6 December 1988 that “The British-based Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights said at the weekend that there were indications that more than 1,000 people had been executed since Iran signed a cease-fire with Iraq in August.” This report follows a “claim by the opposition Mujahedin organization that the death toll may be as high as 5,000”.

An Amnesty International news release on 13 December stated that it “has now received more than 300 names of prisoners executed in recent weeks and months, and fears that the real total could amount to thousands. Many of the victims were members of, or sympathizers with, the PMOI [Mujahedinl; many others were members of secular leftist groups such as the Rahe Kargar, factions of the Organization of People’s Fedaiyan, and the Tudeh Party…. A large number of those executed had been imprisoned for several years, and had been tortured, some having suffered similar treatment during the rule of the Shah.” Those killed include some who were held for years without trial and others who had been sentenced for distributing leaflets and “disturbing the peace” at political rallies in 1980-81.

The newspaper of the Communist Party of Britain, the Morning Star (1 December 1988), blazoned across its front page “Iran Executes Communist Leadership”. The paper reported: “At least 40 members of the Tudeh Party of Iran are known to have been shot in the past three weeks, as have leading members of

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the Iranian People’s Fedaian (Majority).” The article added that “in Evin, the main prison, there are rumours of mass killings, even the dynamiting of those jailed”. Among those killed were four Tudeh political bureau members including party deputy leader Farajollah Mitani, Manoucher Behzadi, editor of the party’s organ Nameh Mardom, Hossein Jodat and Ismail Zolqadr, as well as six central committee members and some 30 leading members of the party’s clandestine organisation.

Earlier, the Tudeh News (26 October and 23 November 1988) reported that political prisoners had been executed, especially Tudeh members as well as Fedayeen and Mujahedin supporters, after “having endured years of barbaric torture”. According to their families, the battered bodies of prisoners were buried in mass graves, some “so shallow that stray dogs can reach the bodies and tear them apart”. A 25 November “Statement of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran” began, “We are reaching out for your help”, and listed names of those executed, including Hassan Jalali, member of the executive board of the Association of Trade and Labor Unions of Tehran and Vicinity, and more than a dozen others.

A 30 November report of the representative in Europe of the Fedayeen Majority  denounces the “extensive massacre, resembling only those seen in Nazi death camps”. “The massacre of political prisoners has taken place in the prisons of Tehran, Isfahan, Kerman, Khoram Abad, Gilan, Mazandaran, Hamendan, Gachsaran, Oromieh, Tabriz” and other cities. “Three hundred political prisoners have been buried in two mass graves in Khaavaraan cemetery (in East Tehran)…. In addition to daily execution of groups of political prisoners in Evin, a large number of them were murdered in a deliberate explosion and destruction of an auditorium where they had been assembled.”

And a 21 September 1988 statement of the Kurdistan Organisation of the Communist Party of Iran (Komala) said of the criminal mass executions of the “Islamic Republic”: “These turbaned dictators are looking for victory in the city streets and in prison cells to make up for their defeat in the war fronts of Iran and Iraq. They are trying desperately to extend their onerous life through terror and intimidation by setting up execution squads.”

From Moscow, Literaturnaya Gazeta (21 December 1988) reported on the “Massacre in Iran”, interviewing Iranian exile Bizhan Ekrami, who told of “an actual genocide” that was killing “the best sons of Iran”. Ekrami had a typed list of 147 names of activist, members of the intelligentsia and cultural figures, only a small fraction of those killed. “Iran is in mourning”, he said. There have also been protests in Iran in the midst of this reign of terror.  Die Wahrheit (30 December 1988), the organ of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin, reports that, according to information from the Muhahedin, “a large number of relatives of executed oppositionists held a sitdown strike in front of the Ministry of Justice in Teheran on Tuesday to protest mass executions in Iran.”

And in New York, the “Committee in Solidarity with the People of Iran” (CISPI) published gruesome pictures of bodies thrown into the “Graveyard of the Damed” in Teheran.  “There are also reports that all political prisoners in the city of Hamadan have been executed by firing squads.” The true dimensions of the crimes that are being committed behind the prison walls of the Islamic Republic indicate that as many as 10,000 political prisoners have been executed within this past month alone.” In mid-December, representatives of the Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee joined protests in the United Nations and in Washington against the Iranian slaughter. It is urgent that worldwide protest be mounted now!

WAR AND REVOLUTION

In sheer number of victims, the bloodbath in Iran ranks on a par with the mass murder following the counterrevolutionary 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile. In Iran today we are witnessing a calculated programme of extermination to head off a social explosion in the wake of a protracted, reactionary war. According to the Independent, Rahe Kargar has information that “the executions were part of a concerted policy to annihilate the left so that it would not be able in future to exploit the popular dissent…. It said there was a two-stage plan to review the cases of all political prisoners by the 10th anniversary of the revolution next February. In the first phase, 1000 prisoners who had yet to be sentenced were summarily tried and sentenced to death. In the second phase political prisoners sentenced to jail terms were retried and executed if they failed to recant.”

From the beginning of the mullahs’, theocratic rule, torture and execution have been standard fare. Soon after Evin prison disgorged thousands of political prisoners from the torture chambers of the shah’s secret police, the SAYAK, it began filling again with the victims of the Islamic dictatorship. Kurds and Baluchis fighting for self-determination, followers of the Bahai religion, women who refused to wear the veil, homosexuals, leftists, were stoned to death, hanged, or shot by firing squads. A report on the condition of political prisoners in Iran by CISPI stated: “As the execution of virgin women is not allowed by Islam, young girls are systematically raped in prison before their execution….”

It is doubly tragic that many of those who are today being executed had joined the mullah-led upsurge against the bloody shah in 1978-79. The Tudeh, the historic leadership of Iran’s working class, delivered its base into Khomeini’s service. It betrayed promising proletarian actions, including strikes by the predominantly Arab (non-Farsi-speaking) oil workers of the south, leading them into the arms of Islamic reaction. At the time the international Spartacist tendency stood alone in proclaiming, “Down with the Shah, Down with the Mullahs! For Workers Revolution in Iran!” A year later the bulk of the Iranian left, having hailed Khomeini as an “anti-imperialist” liberator, supported their “own” ruling class in the Iran-Iraq war. Even as the ayatollah’s thugs threw leftists back into the same prisons where they had languished under the shah, as the regime persecuted women, homosexuals, ethnic minorities and workers, Tudeh and the Fedayeen Majority (along with the pseudo-Trotskyist HKE and HKS) rallied to the cry of defence of the fatherland.

The squalid slaughter of the reactionary Iran-Iraq war -in which the working masses of neither country had any stake in the victory of their “own” rulers -dragged on for eight ‘years and took over one million lives. It recalled the horrible imperialist carnage of World War I. From the very outset of the war, the international Spartacist tendency took the Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism on both sides, demanding, “Down with the colonels! Down with the ayatollahs! Turn the guns the other way!”

“But war is also the mother of revolution. And the Iraqi-Iranian conflict lays bare their real ‘border problem’: the oppressed nationalities that are divided by the artificial border separating Iran and Iraq, especially the Kurds and the ethnic Arabs who compose a majority of Khuzistan…. This war and the position of revolutionary defeatism will be an acid test for a revolutionary regroupment.” -“Iran/Iraq Blood Feud”, Workers Vanguard no 265, 3 October 1980

A defeat for either side would have opened revolutionary possibilities for the proletariat. War weariness was growing, and at one point, the American Communist Party’s People’s Daily World (27 June 1987) reported that a group of factory workers in Iran was circulating an appeal “to expose the ‘war-mongering and anti-worker nature’ of the Khomeini regime, and to struggle against the war by preventing recruitment, financial and material aid to the fronts, and refusing to work in arms factories.”

But in keeping with their subordination to Khomeini at the crucial time when the hated shah’s rule was decomposing, none of the major left tendencies in Iran adopted a perspective of struggling to transform the reactionary nationalist war into civil war against the Ba’athist colonels and the Persian Shi’ite ruling caste. At best, as the war dragged on some took a “pro-peace” neutralist posture. Now as the guns fall silent on the Basra-Abadan front, in Teheran they are belching fire against “infidels”, creating a “peace” of the graveyards. In postwar Iran, with the questions of Khomeini’s successor and the financial reconstruction of the war ravaged country posed, the executioner’s axe is falling on leftists, Kurds and even dissident mullahs.

 

 

The imperialist powers for the most part took a low profile in the Iran-Iraq war, playing off both sides against each other. In the interest of anti-Soviet warmongering, Reagan alternately armed the Iranians with US missiles, then (after that blew up in the Iran/Contragate scandal) engaged in repeated bloody confrontations, including the wanton massacre of 290 passengers aboard an Iranian Airbus last July. Iran’s rulers have made repeated initiatives to normalise relations with Washington, the former “great Satan”. Now these fanatical anti-Communists believe they can murder every leftist in the country and gain favour with the White House. And they’re right. The New York Times (2 January) reported: “American officials and Western diplomats said the executions would not hinder a move toward better relations.”

With the Iranian working masses bled and exhausted by the war, outbreaks of popular protest are a genuine threat to the bloodsoaked rulers. But in the absence of an authentic Leninist party, this opportunity to organise the masses has so far been squandered. A horrible price in human life is instead being exacted against the left in Khomeini’s prison hellholes. Only when the toiling masses of Iran and Iraq have communist vanguard parties forged in irreconcilable hostility to their “own” reactionary rulers can the massacres and repression be ended. It will take workers revolution to open the prison doors, to free the victims of Islamic reaction, liberate oppressed nationalities and stop the vicious cycle of bloodletting once and for all.

Sound the alarm! International mass protests are urgently needed now to stop the slaughter of Iranian leftists!