"Protest against the president of the criminal Islamic Republic of Iran"

23 September 2013. a World to Win News Service. Hassan Rouhani, the new president of Iran, was due to address the United Nations General Assembly opening in New York on 24 September. Following is a statement and leaflet put out by "Activists of the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) in North America", which planned to hold protests outside the UN during Rouhani's appearance. On 24 September, Iran’s recently elected president, Hassan Rouhani, will give a speech at the United Nations. His trip to New York coincidentally falls on the same day on which Iranian political refugees all over the world are grieving the mass murder and execution of political prisoners in Iran in the summer and autumn of 1988. Rouhani’s cabinet members such as Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, Ali Rabii and Hamid Chiyan were directly involved in that particular mass murder. They are known to be cold-­blooded murderers and some of the worst among the Islamic regime of Iran. Pour Mohammadi is often referred to as the "president of death". He was directly and actively involved in the executions of political prisoners in the 1980s in Iran. He, along with many other members of Rouhani’s ministerial cabinet were responsible for thousands of death penalties which were delivered in less than a couple of minutes to the political prisoners of Iran in the 1980s. Iran's new president introduces himself as the people's "hope"! But in fact he represents a new alliance among different factions of the Islamic Republic regime. He has climbed to the seat of power with the support of the Sepah-­e-Pasdaran (the Revolutionary Guards, the main body of the regime's military forces), the notorious security establishment of the regime and the "leader" (Ayatollah Khamenii) himself. Rouhani was essentially chosen as president to perform several tasks essential for the survival of the Islamic Republic system. He must initially provide a false hope about "reforming the system" – a false hope to those who are suffering from expanding poverty and are fed up with political and social suppression and religious obscurantism. He should also assure the imperialists that the contradiction between the Islamic Republic system and the imperialists is not of an antagonistic nature and in fact the relations should be healed and Iran should be looked at by them as a reliable partner in controlling and exploiting the masses of Iran as well as in carrying out the imperialists' regional plans – given that those powers also ensure the survival of this regime. Iran's regime and the Islamic Republic system is an integrated part of the world capitalist system which is controlled by the imperialist powers. The feud between the Islamic Republic and the imperialist powers is in fact the fight and contradiction between two "rotten poles" within this system and there is no element of "anti-imperialism" on the part of the Islamic regime of Iran. In Iran, like the whole world, the majority of the people produce the wealth which is appropriated by a minority of parasitic capitalists. Like all other countries dominated by imperialism in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Iranian economy is totally dependent on the world capitalist system. The more it gets integrated into the world capitalist system the wider becomes the class chasm and political suppression of the masses. The regime in Iran is a theocratic regime which constantly attacks people's mind and body – especially women's. Political suppression is one of the pillars of this regime. In fact, its very existence depends on trampling upon the most basic political, cultural and social rights of the majority of the people of Iran. National oppression is another touchstone of this regime. In sum, the contradiction, between the Islamic Republic regime and the people of Iran is of an antagonistic nature. This reality brings about the necessity and possibility of a revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We, the revolutionary communists of Iran, know too well that if we do not mobilise and organise people in a movement for revolution, the reactionary, corrupt and crisis-ridden ruling classes of Iran will be able to survive through suppressing and deceiving people in different ways and manners, and therefore will get a new lease on life, and their rotten rule will last longer and destroy more generations. We are well aware that if the masses of Iran do not become conscious of and take up a revolutionary communist vision and programme which can enable them to really and radically change their conditions, then even if they rise up against this hated regime, without taking up that vision they will fall into the trap of some other reactionary forces or be wooed by the alternatives that U.S. imperialism has in pocket for the future of Iran. This would definitely turn Iran into another tragedy like the ones we are witnessing in Syria and Egypt, where people have become captives of warring rival reactionary forces, each of which have the backing of this or that imperialist power. There is only one solution: to overthrow the Islamic Republic system through a revolutionary struggle with the goal of destroying all of its reactionary class and religious relations and values and instead establish a new state which would be really by the people and for the people and would pursue the goal of organising a new society based on a new economy, new politics and new social relations – a kind of society that we communists call a socialist society and which we consider a road to achieve a kind of world without any sort of oppression and exploitation, a communist world. - end item- On the 25th Anniversary of the Massacre of the Political Prisoners in Iran 23 September 2013. A World to Win News Service. Following is a statement put out by the 8 March Women's Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) . In honour of the martyrs of the 1980s we are not going to observe even a single minute of silence! A quarter of a century has gone by since the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in June 1988. But in June 2013, the "responsibility" for the post of Ministry of Justice in the government of "action and hope" is being given to Pour Mohammadi. Mohammadi was the representative of the Ministry of Intelligence in a trio (together with Nayyeri and Eshraghi) in June 1988. This notorious group was known as the "trio of death". Mohammadi's posts were head of the Ministry of Justice in western Iran, then Revolutionary judge in Bandar Abbas in southern Iran with special authority to suppress protests and issue the death penalty against the political prisoners being held in Mashhad. Mohammadi was head of a group who executed women political prisoners for the first time and supervised the execution of virgin women who were raped before their execution in order to "prevent them from going to paradise". He supervised the execution of pregnant women and women who had just given birth. He was assistant to Fallahian (President Rafsanjani's minister of intelligence) and responsible for operations outside Iran. During his reign, numerous political figures were murdered: Dr Ghasemlouv in Vienna; Hossein Naghadi in Rome; Kazem Rajavi in Geneva; Fereidoon Farrokhzad in Bonn; Sadegh Sharafkandi and Nouri Dehkardi in Berlin; and many many more. The reality is that if people such as Rouhani and Pour Mohammadi had not performed their responsibilities successfully, how could the new rulers have resisted and confronted the waves of revolutionary and rebellious masses who were determined to change the world? With the mass murder, imprisonment and annihilation of a revolutionary generation who were determined to change the existing order, these reactionaries wanted to suppress the revolutionary spirit throughout society in order to thwart any real change. They committed their cowardly massacre of the prisoners because they were frightened of the unity between them and their comrades in the bigger prison – the whole of society – which was preparing the ground for the overthrow of the backward regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new IRI President Rouhani and their clique think that they can hang or execute the truth. This is impossible. That's why, in honour of the martyrs of the 1980s, we cannot halt even for a moment in proclaiming the truth. We will have no minute of silence! For many years, relatives of the martyrs, those who escaped their fate, together with other revolutionary and progressive opponents of the regime, have worked to expose the crimes of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s and to establish the truth. They have talked about the courage of those militants who persisted right to the end, who gave up their lives, but not their secrets. Today the slogan "We neither forgive, nor forget!" emphasises the just struggle of that generation and exposes the crimes of the Islamic Republic. This takes on particular importance at a time when those responsible for such horrific crimes are trying to hide their blood-soaked hands amidst talk of justice and tolerance, while a section of the so-called "opposition" activists are siding with them and actively throwing dust in the eyes of the masses, so as to blind them to the reality of what was, and what is. For the purpose of a search for the truth is not merely to expose the crimes of the past, but to show how to progress, how to forge the future. Indeed, the struggle in the prisons has a political and a class character, which itself is the continuation and concentrated expression of the class struggle outside prison. The massacre of the revolutionaries in the 1980s did not therefore just represent the murder of a large number of political activists, it was also the concentrated expression of the relationship between revolutionary struggle and the consolidation of the new reactionary regime of the Islamic Republic. One of the distinguishing features of the prisons in the Islamic Republic is that, in addition to conducting medieval physical torture, the IRI also carried out a systematic ideological attack on the thinking and outlook of the prisoners. The purpose of the rulers was not only to destroy a generation of revolutionary people, but through this to attack the most sensitive nerve in the society, with the aim of crippling society as a whole. This kind of torture and destruction took on more complex and broader dimensions. A government whose most important pillar was the subordination of women was forced to attack those who dared to break through the boundaries of the rotten social order, as they attacked these high-flying eagles and demonstrated that they are ready to break their wings and force them to accept a lower position than in the past. One typical example was rape. Rape as physical, moral and psychological torture was, and is, the norm of the patriarchal class formation of the Islamic regime, at every level. And in addition, in prison this also took on a religious character, as women were forced to submit their will to the rule of god. In Islam, the existence of women amounts to being merely a vagina, who surrender to the will of god and his representatives on Earth, meaning men. Breaking the spirit of these women who took up arms and fought for their liberation and who were ready to lay down their lives for the revolutionary cause was no easy task. But they had to be tamed and punished, made to obey the will of god and his representatives, as a threat to all women – and this took many forms, from forcing the hejab on communist and secular women, forced prayers, rape and punishment and torture in many different forms. This ideological discipline had to be conveyed into society as a whole. Women political prisoners had to be controlled and humiliated as wives and mothers, to re-affirm the honour and property of men. Today, although the rage we felt at the massacre of a generation of revolutionaries is an invincible motive force driving the search for truth, in order for a new revolutionary wave to rise again, we need a deep scientific summation of the reasons for the defeat of the revolution in Iran and around the world. Our rage and determination to get justice can be a driving force for lifting that wave. We will never forget the memory of the unconquerable resistance of the political prisoners massacred in the 1980s, and especially in the summer of 1988. They are and will be an important element in our struggle to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is true especially now, when a quarter of a century has gone by since that massacre behind the prison walls, yet the torture and murder within or outside the prison walls goes on – as does the resistance and struggle and the demand for change, for the emancipation of humanity as a whole, for building a world where no one will be imprisoned or executed for having an opposing opinion or ideas!