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Golrokh Iraee from Evin Prison: Revolutionary Youth Will Not Accept Tyranny in Any Form
Political prisoner Golrokh Iraee posted an extensive letter on social media in response to IRI media attacks on progressive political prisoners. The English translation below is by IEC volunteers.
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My former cellmate, Bahareh Hedayat, sits in an online studio in Tehran provided by the Islamic Republic and declares solidarity with the monarchists. By stirring up the nationalist sentiment of a people whose nationalist tendencies were humiliated due to living under the shadow of a theocratic government, she is trying to destroy revolutionary forces and, by ignoring the regime's opponents, reduces the opposition to a monarchist movement.
We and they have always been different. Previously they had been active in the [IRI-]authorized student and party organizations. They were members of the Office for the Consolidation of Unity, that was founded by and acted at the behest of Ruhollah. They always sat at the table that the regime spread for them, and their political work followed in the footsteps of the murderers of the 1980s, who later declared that they had become reformists, in order to preserve the regime. They were not made into strangers in their own homes, like we were. Under the current repression, they have been allowed to register organizations and establish parties, and the possibility of engaging in political work was always available to them.
But we are among the excluded and outcasts. We did not change under government pressure, and we did not abandon our honor for a seat at the table that the regime had prepared, and we paid the price for our resistance by being ostracized from the authorized circles. The people remember, and are not deceived.
After December 2017, the reformists lost their social base forever. Twenty years of efforts by Khatami's followers failed. The reformist parties were dissolved, their offices closed or abandoned. The reformists lost their previous persuasive power. In addition to losing popular support, the reforms collapsed from within, leaving only a weak shell of its former self, which is unable to be the savior of the regime as it is before. This is especially true in a situation where the regime itself is on the verge of collapse. It is no longer possible for them to save the existing order and preserve the system by using loopholes and pressure valves. They must turn to the military. And, to preserve the power structure and save their authoritarian regime, the army must use the darkest methods.
It is about the survival or destruction of the system that is willing to make some changes. It can change its clothes, its words its slogans, in order to remain in power and to preserve the power structure itself.
Therefore, a coalition must be formed and this alliance is forged between the reformists and the monarchists — forces that have similar aims. Both seek the restoration of absolute power and seek authoritarian rule.
In the 1980s, we experienced the rule of the reformists, and have lived under the security, judiciary, and military forces in their service and their cultural activities. And, we are familiar with the monarchists, regardless of the historical period of their authoritarian rule, with their plans to revive SAVAK. Their reactionary and eliminationist slogans that point to the measures they intend implement, in order to reach a one-voiced/unified society.
It is not possible for them to flee from this accursed state into the embrace of another one, merely by explaining the similarities between "jurisprudential jurisdiction" and "royal jurisdiction. They must create an atmosphere of sentimental [nationalism] to negate the revolutionary atmosphere, and destroy or dismiss the revolutionaries. When comparing authoritarian regimes, one cannot fail to note rulers’ use of one or the other of these ideological tools (religion and nationalism) to consolidate the power and legitimacy required to establish and maintain their rule.
Let us not forget the "triangle of power" and the rulers' reliance on military and religious forces, which changed over time to the rulers' reliance on military force and nationalism; and the use that dictators have made of religion or nationalism to consolidate power and mobilize the masses. Unknowingly contributing to the formation of another authority places a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, and if we consciously beat such a drum, we have no other goal than opportunism and to take advantage of the humiliated feelings of the oppressed people.
The seeds planted by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the alliances he always had with the reactionary religious forces led to the elimination of progressive and revolutionary forces, and the rise of rule by the Islamists and the theocratic regime.
The revolutionary youth of Iran are the result of a seed that was planted through more than a century of struggle against oppression and exploitation in Iran, and each of them is a link in the chain of freedom fighters. Iran's revolutionary youth will not accept authoritarianism and tyranny in any form or guise and the platitudes of opportunistic intellectuals will not derail them from the path of the struggle against authoritarianism.
Golrokh Iraee
April 2025
Evin Prison
#No_Sheikh_No_Shah
Toomaj's "Typhus" Lyrics
Why did dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi have to go to court once again on February 18, 2025, now on charges for song lyrics?
Toomaj wrote Tifus (Typhus) in 2022. In 2024, while he was in prison with almost no outside contact, supporters released it in video form with clips from his other music videos without his involvement, as a way to keep his music in front of fans. The local prison and court authorities seized on the song as a pretext to pile on four new heavy charges (detailed in a 2024 IEC update) and keep him in prison after the Supreme Court had overturned the bogus charge of Corruption on Earth and death sentence.
The result of the hearing is not yet clear. Before the court appearance, Toomaj posted:
This court can be an excuse for me to say again: No one should be arrested, threatened, and subjected to psychological pressure for their beliefs and the expression of their beliefs. The existence of political prisoners in any country is a sign of the weakness of that country's government.
Below is an English translation of the first verse by IEC volunteers.
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Everyone knows you've got a big mouth,
Now you’ve bitten off more than you can chew,
The only answer you’ll get to Friday prayers,
Is the imam coming to sew your lips closed.
You’ve gotten comfy sleeping with the enemy.
But what ¬we serve up is not a fake, boy,
We dis chasing cheddar and Al Mahdi’s army.
When you kiss the ground and pray,
You fill up gasoline
For the tanks of the merchants of pain
You be the dealer for their blood-soaked gain.
Which way the wind blows, which way money lies,
That is the way that your flag flies.
Your sell-out crew does nothing more than
Lick the boots of whosoever holds power.
The relationship will never work out, whether
Reconciliation or engagement celebration
A pack of jackals under shepherd’s orders,
A blind gang looking for a road map.
You served just 9 months, and they released you.
That alone shows that you did a deal.
Became a tool who continues to be used
Your hands may be free but there’re shackles on your feet
You're a slave to the system, a prostitute propagandist,
Al-Haqq sell-out, as a matter of a fact,
You are nothing more than a rapper for the system...
They call me the “enemy of the system”,
I'm a rebel rapper, a warrior, and my base is people
I’ve got two tanks, don’t give a fuck about your might.
You have no clue what’s in the cities’ depths,
Where cops dare not enter and arrest
Where they are the ones on the run.
Nights I beat your godfathers and rob them of their sleep.
It’s not a game, it’s a war. Can't let your guard down,
Can't sleep a wink or close your eyes at night.
I hit them and curse them, I am your godfather's' nightmare.
You, though, are pitiful, you are shameful,
Your place is with the artless class, singing useless words
Rapping for Karbala [Shi'ite holy city in Iraq] must make your mouth dry...
Chorus:
We got plan, and a hell of a team, We piss on you and your gang.
This place is nothing but a slaughterhouse, where Rap is sung under gun,
It’s got a hundred years of history, and many hundreds of fallen feet.
Imminent Danger of Execution: Kurdish Woman Pakhshan Azizi
Pakhshan Azizi, sentenced to death, wrote that her crime is being Kurdish and being a woman.
Iran’s Supreme Court Branch 9, by denying her lawyer’s request for a retrial on February 6, has paved the way for this most brave and compassionate woman to be hanged at any moment.
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Pakhshan is a social worker who devoted more than ten years of her life to voluntary work serving refugee camps in Kurdish areas of Iraq and then Syria, where people suffered horrific attacks from both ISIS on one side and the Turkish government on the other. International organizations working in the area, like the Red Crescent, have sent letters verifying that her activity was voluntary social work, not militancy of any kind.
But at her family home in Iran in 2023, she was violently arrested, along with her family, and subjected to five months of solitary confinement and torture, which included numerous mock executions and being buried 10 meters underground, then dragged back out. In spite of this, she refused to confess to the lies her interrogators insisted on, that she was a member of a Kurdish opposition group with an armed wing, that she had returned to Iran during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic of Iran in service of some foreign power.
In July 2024, she was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial which presented no proof whatsoever that she committed armed rebellion against the state (“Baghi”), nor of supposed membership in opposition parties with an armed wing. Her lawyer, Amir Raesian, pointed out bitingly that her spurious trial convicted her of membership in both the PJAK and Democratic parties, which are in opposition to each other: “How is it possible for her to be a member of both groups at the same time? The question of which rebel group our client was a member of for which the death sentence was issued has not been answered.” In early January 2025, the Iranian Supreme Court denied her appeal, and now has refused a request for retrial based on the blatant and well-documented injustices in the first trial. Mr. Raesian will file for a new trial, but, he said, “there is a risk of the sentence being executed at any moment.”
In her July 2024 letter from Evin Prison, Pakhshan wrote about experiencing oppression all her life, and how that has steeled her, describing herself in the third person.
[The interrogator’s] roar becomes a shout: ‘Why do you conceal the truth?!’
You have concealed the most profound social truth: the essence of womanhood, her identity, her Kurdishness, her life, and her freedom…
The first corpse she saw was Khadija, whose hands were tied and who was burned by her husband and brother. She vowed never to stop defending women’s rights. Thousands of women and children saw men beheaded before their eyes during ISIS attacks, and they were taken captive and raped. The culture of rape inflicted upon women, mothers holding their infants as their milk dried up, and barefoot children, hundreds of whom were laid chest to chest on the rocks of Shengal… Elsewhere, in Kobani and other places, dozens of women and children were burned and torn apart by Turkish airstrikes in Rojava [Kurdish region in Syria], their bodies dismembered by ISIS attacks…
All her activities and efforts have been in the aim of serving and fulfilling her historical duty towards her lived experiences and historical oppressions…
I am her. She is me. I am a mere drop in the ocean. You are the ocean. Our flow is inevitable. We are unconcealed.
Pakhshan Azizi
July 2024, Evin Prison
Don’t let this precious voice be silenced. Don’t allow the mullah regime to use their execution spree to try to cow the tens of thousands of women who threw off their compulsory hijab, and the tens of thousands of men who supported them, taking the streets heroically for five months in the Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising.