The issuance of death sentences for women political prisoners (Sharifeh Mohammadi and Pakhshan Azizi) is another and very dangerous leap in the “normal” process of repression by the Islamic Republic of Iran [IRI]. This leap in repression is meant to take revenge for the Jina uprising and for the majority of the people having boycotted the ruling criminals’ elections.

In response to Pakhshan's death sentence, the women’s ward of Evin prison unanimously announced: “We demand the nullification of the death sentence against Pakhshan Azizi. We call on all people to raise your voices together with us women political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.” Also, their message last week, in which they condemned the execution sentence against Sharifeh Mohammadi, they accurately pointed out that: “This is not only a death sentence for Sharifeh but a death sentence for all “us” labor, political, civil, human rights, and women’s rights activists. We see this sentence as a potential danger and a precursor to issuing more severe sentences in the future.”

The message of the women in Evin prison is clear: We will not tolerate [either] the IRI as a whole or the illegitimate rulings of their injustice-courts, and we will fight against all of it. This is a call to all the people who have a common interest in overthrowing the IRI. This call from imprisoned women should be taken as the framework and focal point of serious and consistent struggle against the IRI and its ongoing war on women. Women need conscious and combative comrades to join them in this ongoing war. What the IRI is doing against women is a reflection of the essence of what the IRI does to the whole of the society.

The regime's all-out war against women began from the start of its rise to power [in 1979], and is embedded in every facet of how the IRI functions. The theocratic-fascist nature of the IRI is reproduced through repression and vengeance against women who do not submit to its imposition of slave-like social relations. In other words, war on women is an existential necessity for the IRI, while smashing the [snake’s] head with a stone and overthrowing this regime is an existential necessity for women and all the oppressed and exploited people of [this] society. Failing to answer this necessity leaves the path open for an even worse situation. There should be no doubt about this fact.

The struggle against executions and repression is the frontline of our common fight against a regime that has no choice other than to carry out even greater repression—even though their repression has fueled the fight against the regime itself. The fight against executions as a tool of systematic state repression, and the struggle for the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners, are interconnected. Political prisoners are symbols of society's defiant rebellion against the regime and its crimes. Suppressing this defiance through state repression plays a strategic role in maintaining the IRI’s rule.

By imprisoning political activists, the IRI is trying to defuse the immediate danger of uprising and revolt—with all its consequences. It holds the prisoners hostage to ward off possible future danger, using them as bargaining chips to pressure society. And, at the same time, it hands down long prison sentences and executions as a way to preempt the daring rebellion of the entire society.  

This attack by the regime must be met with a very strong counterattack by all social movements and become the focus of broadly waged struggle. Opposing execution is not [merely] a moral demand. [It is] fighting against depraved politics and ideology and, in short, opposing the existence of this life-sucking system that destroys human beings. We must unite against the death penalty and the execution of anyone.

We condemn the false accusations of the IRI against our comrades. But these accusations and sentences carry a clear message: organizing activity and any form of coherent struggle against the IRI is the regime's red line.

The organization of a conscious struggle based on revolutionary theory is an inalienable right and an essential link in the struggle for the overthrow of the IRI. In order to break the atmosphere of repression and terror that the IRI is trying to impose, in addition to fighting for the release of political prisoners and to abolish the death penalty, we must support the people's right to political, trade union, and social activity and must expose the sentences being handed down.

This new wave of repression has another aspect: targeting [opposition] to women’s oppression and to national oppression, especially in Kurdistan. This, too, is a necessity that the Jina uprising has imposed on the IRI. The link between the struggle against the oppression of women and the struggle against national oppression—the legitimacy [of its demands] as part of the uprising and its popularity throughout the country—set off serious alarm bells for the regime. 

On the one hand, the IRI has always produced and reproduced all kinds of oppression, and on the other hand, it has used repression to try and prevent the development of an organic and serious connection between these struggles and the fighters in these battlefields. The IRI immediately took action to ward off this danger. The first step was to kill fighters in Kurdistan and Balochstan during the Jina uprising. They then issued an ultimatum to these communities by arresting and torturing them, and by issuing and executing death sentences in these [ethnic minority] areas. 

Now, by issuing these death sentences against women activists, this regime is trying to advance several goals at once—to suppress women, to suppress the struggle against national oppression, and to suppress any coherent organizing activity—with the aim of paralyzing and subjugating the whole society. The IRI imprisons and executes our people in order to plunge society into fear and paralysis. But we will not tolerate this!

The very low turnout in the recent elections once again conveyed the people’s message to the regime, that a valley of blood has separated the ranks of the people from the ranks of the IRI (both the reformists as well as the fundamentalists).

The struggles against the compulsory hijab and against executions are the two most important aspects of the people's struggle against the IRI. Both must be met with massive, conscious, and organized protest. The struggle against executions and for the immediate release of political prisoners must turn into a clear battle cry of millions of people against these atrocities. The anti-people insolence of the IRI must be met with an appropriate and furious response from society. 

Should we accomplish this, there will undoubtedly be a fresh and liberating atmosphere in the country and the seeds of hope for a fundamentally different future that is a thousand times better—and the determination to fight for it—will be planted in the hearts of the millions of oppressed and victimized by the IRI.

Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) 

August issue #153 of Atash/Fire Journal