The following is an English translation by IEC volunteers of a video shared by BurnTheCage, part of a longer unsubtitled video posted by Akhbar-Rooz on April 4, 2023 (منبع: کانال مدرسه رهایی).
For translation, click "Open Full Page" below.
Sadegh Fouladivanda was a communist activist and worker from the city of Gachsaran.
Born in 1993, he studied mechanical engineering. Sadegh worked for a while as a rug cleaner and for a while he worked in Asaluye Hell1 and finally he repaired shoes in the "Flowers-of-Pain"2.He was a professional boxer. He read a lot, because he understood that to gain knowledge requires study. But he had come to understand that knowledge alone is not enough to make a revolution, and that theory has to be joined with revolutionary practice. He lived his life according to his beliefs.
He had been a street kid from what you might call the lowest depths [of society]. His vision [of hope for humanity] was what was most important to him. He lived anonymously on the margins of society, where he carried out underground political work, because he believed in revolutionary practice and was a professional revolutionary.
He took risks to show that the movement is alive despite all the arrests, the torture, the executions and repression; that the Osyan/Rebellion has no intention of stopping; that it is alive in the hearts of people at the bottom of society, that courage is alive, and a vision of hope for humanity is awake in the burnt-out trenches, standing tall and keeping watch against the enemy.
Sadegh was arrested on February 4, 2023. There was no information about which agency had detained him or where he was being held. During this time, he had no contact with his family. On February 22, after 18 days with absolutely no news, his body was found in the waters of a canal behind a market for street vendors near the center of the city. His hands were still tied and there were rope marks on his neck. His body was so swollen and bruised that his face was unrecognizable, and he had to be identified by his hair, tattoos and his legs (the only part of him that was not bruised). Initially, there were estimates that he had been dead more than 24 hours. But following medical examination, the coroner announced that his time of death had been one to two weeks before the body was found. His family was severely threatened against reporting the matter to the media, and they have remained silent.
The authorities tortured Sadegh, strangled him, and ultimately threw his body in the canal. But by exposing the savagery of this [regime] mob’s senseless actions, we expose their [actual] weakness.
We believe that Sadegh, with courage in his heart and confidence in his eyes stuck to his beliefs until his last breath, and did all he could to humiliate them before his red death. We believe that Sadegh was killed precisely because of his beliefs and ideology -- an ideology that shakes the ruling class to their very core, capitalists and theocratic fundamentalists alike. To their way of thinking, the demands of the class conscious proletariat are truly terrifying, so this cruel system cruelly silenced a righteous voice, imagining that this would keep their tyranny from being uprooted. But can these ideas be shackled or killed?
Sadegh was an activist for, and a voice of, the child laborers of this society, or as he called them, the children of the depths.
Sadegh Fouladivanda was buried on the 24th of February 2023 in Behesht Zahra Gachsaran, Razvan, third plot.
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1 Asaluyeh is a city on the Persian Gulf in Southern Iran where scorching summer heat averages over 99o.
2 A poetic reference to the well-known verse by French poet Charles Baudelaire, from the book Les Fleurs du Mal.
“He whose thoughts, like skylarks,
Toward the morning sky take flight
— Who hovers over life and understands with ease
The language of flowers and silent things!”