Iran: On the upcoming elections

5 June 2013. A World to Win News Service. The following is a statement from 8 March Women's Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan). Women's Vote: To Overthrow the Islamic Republic Regime In Iran! Women's Choice: For a World Without Oppression And Exploitation! Once again, the anti-women regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran is preparing for a so-called presidential election. Through a campaign of lies, the regime intends to draw the people to the ballot boxes, legitimise their rule and elect a new operator for their oppressive apparatus! All the factions of the Islamic Regime as well as the leaders of the imperialist states agree and are cautiously hoping for people’s smooth participation in the current elections, as they are all well aware that the burning hatred of the people can easily ignite into flames and destroy their system of oppression and exploitation. The ruling power is once again banking its hopes on the election. Although many illusions about people's participation in elections have been shattered due to the events following the people’s uprising in the previous election four years ago, elections still remain capitalism’s best tool for obtaining the "popular legitimacy" it needs. The aim of elections in repressive religious regimes such as Iran, as well as in bourgeois democratic countries such as the imperialist countries, is to cover up class antagonisms and make people believe that the only way they can have a say about their own destiny, the only political participation open to them, is to get involved in state-orchestrated elections (whether a so-called democratic and legal election process or an illegal rigged one), where what the maximum people can really do is just altogether go through the democratic rituals of "civil society". The question to be asked is this: Why would electing the "lesser evil" ever fulfil the class interests of the poor and oppressed people of the world? Have people around the world ever had a real choice? Did Egyptian women, after all their sacrifices in Tahrir Square to overthrow Mubarak, choose to be raped afterwards? Did women and the rest of Egypt's people choose Morsi? Was it the choice of Iranian, Afghani and Pakistani women to be stoned to death for falling in love? Have the workers of Bangladesh chosen to be the cheapest labour in the world or for thousands of them to be burnt or crushed to death under the rubble of collapsed factories? Have the workers in China, Taiwan, Mexico and so on chosen to commit suicide due to the tremendous pressures in the capitalist sweatshops? Have India's women chosen to be buried alive, or to be sold for almost nothing, or for their wombs to be hired out? Have the women in Brazil and India chosen to be gang-raped in buses? Have the people in Mali chosen to have French bombs rain down on their heads? Have the people in Iraq and Afghanistan chosen to be killed by US bombs? Have the people of Syria chosen to be blown to pieces by Western weapons and the Islamic fundamentalists? Have the women in America chosen to be killed due to the near elimination of abortion? Have the women in Eastern Europe, the Philippines etc. chosen to be sex slaves in Europe's brothels? Have the people of Africa chosen for their habitat to be a dumping ground for the world's industrial and nuclear waste? So what is the right to the so-called elections thrown at us, the oppressed people, really worth? What has it resulted in for us except misery, war, poverty, hardship, inferiority, oppression and exploitation? These elections are taking place when oppression, exploitation, and the subjugation and deprivation of women's basic rights have been one of the main longstanding pillars of the anti-women regime of the Islamic Republic, throughout its 34 years of existence, and to preserve this shaky pillar in today's critical conditions they are increasingly relying on intensifying oppression and patriarchy. In order to carry out this plan they are using anti-women laws, increasing the pressure of the security and military forces and even making new laws for that purpose. Although Iran's Islamic Regime has the privilege of being the first country on this planet that has organised military force to control women's bodies, it has not found that sufficient. The Islamic regime has also increased the pressure to impose compulsory Islamic dress codes on women, it is using gender segregation in universities and educational institutions, it is introducing new laws to tighten control on single women until the age of 40, by the sanctification of marriage and the family through the highest religious authority and the media, and by launching a house-to-house campaign to promote more children in families, etc. All this is being done to broaden and intensify violence against women and exert tighter control over this powerful rebellious and defiant social force and keep them away from the scene of struggle. The Islamic regime is well aware that they have lost their legitimacy amongst the people, but at the same time the regime intends to unite and further strengthen the traditional and backward section of the society by intensifying patriarchal relations in society. By looking at the situation of women in the Middle East in the past few decades, from Iran to Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, etc., it can be clearly seen how the imperialist powers have played a role through direct or indirect military or non-military intervention in establishing and strengthening religious governments in the region – and we women were the first victims of the establishment of these Islamic, anti-women states. We therefore have no doubt that our rights cannot be secured through favours from the Islamic fundamentalist governments or through their civil channels, meaning "elections", nor by depending on imperialist warlords and hoping that their reactionary parliaments and lobby groups will do us favours. There is no role for us in determining our fates and making a serious and fundamental change in women's position in society through relying on patriarchal and male-chauvinist relations, because we have absolutely no interest in safeguarding this rotten system. We deserve a society where people have a right to live in dignity, the right to eat, to work, and to better physical and moral health, where people have a right to be happy, a society where no one is hungry, where no one has to sell their body organs in order to live and no woman has to sell her body due to poverty or to abort because her foetus is female, where no woman shivers because she is scared of being raped and no family has to sell their daughter for bare survival, where no woman will be stoned to death because she falls in love, and where no religion, state or individual can control a woman's body, a society where no woman is forced to marry against her will or to send her child to war in the name of national pride, and no woman is humiliated, controlled and killed in the name of honour, a society where no woman experiences violence in any aspect of her daily life and everyone has the right to genuinely take part in determining their fate. We will be able to fight for the realisation of such a society only with a revolutionary consciousness and through an independent revolutionary organisation. We want a society in which people do not live to have a right to vote but live and struggle for the right to determine their path and their future, a society that humanity deserves, a society where the emancipation of women is a priority. Yes, we want to be free from gender oppression and subjugation, from oppression and exploitation. We also know well that the first step in building such a society is a persistent and uncompromising struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic Regime of Iran, and this will not be realised through the ballot box. Nor is it sufficient just to not take part or to boycott the election or adopt a negative attitude. The state's entire voting and electoral apparatus must be smashed. Yes, we women must settle the fate of the Islamic regime not by going to the ballot box but in the streets with our struggle to overthrow this regime!