حسن زهتاب
مسئول گروه کارروابط بین الملل سازمان فدائیان خلق ایران (اکثریت)
ایران ویوز ( نظری برایران) دربرگیرنده مهمترین مسائل سیاسی- اجتماعی ایران و مواضع سازمان ما است، هر دوماه یکبار انتشارمی یابد تا دراختیار مجامع بین المللی، احزاب وفعالین سیاسی غیرایرانی قرارگیرد . اکنون اولین شماره در اختیار شماست. از دریافت نظرات وپیشنهادهای شما خوشنود خواهیم شد.
۴۰ Years of Struggle for Liberty and Social Justice
The Iranian left celebrates the 40th anniversary of the People’s Fadaian movement. In February 1971, a group of young activists initiated a new era in the history of the Iranian left. They named themselves “Fadaian-e Khalgh” which stands for “The Selfless for the People”. In the sense of “nomen est omen”, the new group engaged in a very unequal struggle against the dictatorship in Iran. More than 250 members of the People’s Fadaian Organisation lost their lives in less than eight years of fighting against the despotic regime of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, the last Iranian monarch. In the eve of the 1979 revolution, Fadaian was a synonym for braveness and honesty in the Iranian political scene. When the Shah was forced to leave the country and his regime imploded, hundreds of thousands of young Iranians joined the ranks of the Fadaian movement which evolved from a small guerrilla group to one of Iran’s largest political organisations. Although the organisation abandoned the guerrilla practice and decided to act as a political party, the new potentates in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini suppressed the Organisation of Fadaian from the beginnings of the Islamic Republic. By 1983, all fractions of the Fedai movement were forced into illegality by the Islamist regime in Iran. Again, hundreds of Fadaian activists were murdered by a brutal and ruthless dictatorship. Since nearly three decades, the People’s Fadaian are fighting against the Islamic republic in Iran. Now the Fadaian are known as a political movement for democracy, secularism and social justice. The organisation’s efforts are focussed on forming the unified party of the Iranian democratic left.
۳۲ Years after the Iranian Revolution
On 11th of Febuary, 1979, the Iranian Army’s General Staff declared neutrality in the tense struggle which was ongoing in the country. On that day, the royal army as the major foothold of the Iranian monarchy ceased to exist after the mass protests against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Iranian monarch, spread also into the ranks of the military. The Shah’s dictatorial regime which was imposed on Iran by a CIA-backed coup in 1953 was overthrown by an uprising of millions in 1978 and early 1979. During the 25 years which followed the 1953 coup, the Iranian regime’s repression machinery, especially the infamous intelligence apparatus known as SAVAK, choked every even moderate effort to organise criticism, with one exception: the Shiite clergy. In a fatal miscalculation, the Shah, who was extremely ruthless against leftists and liberals, underestimated the danger of the political Islam for his reign. Ayatollah Khomeini who emerged as a political figure in the early 1960’s was exiled following his opposition against the Shah’s modernisation agenda, but Khomeini’s supporters and aides were allowed to stay in Iran. Their network of ideological and political infiltration was largely tolerated by SAVAK and the police. It was the time of the cold war, when the West and its allies regarded the political Islam as an effective weapon against communism. In the political vacuum which was the result of Shah’s policy, theocratic forces lead by Ayatollah Khomeini grasped the opportunity emerging with the Iranian regime’s crisis in 1978-79.
As the best-organised political force, the Islamists took over in 1979. The 32 years of Islamist reign in Iran, which have been
three decades of suppression, war, corruption and misgovernment, have shown that for the Muslim countries, the biggest danger is represented by religious fundamentalism. This “Iranian Experience” is now well-known among peoples in the Middle East and North Africa. So it is no surprise when even Islamic parties like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt distance themselves from the “Iranian model” and insist on the non-Islamist character of the new uprising in the Arab countries.
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Solidarity with the Democratic Revolutions in the Arab Countries
Iranians who took part in the “Green Movement” against the Iranian regime in 2009 are closely following the developments in the scenes of the Democratic Revolutions in Arab Countries. In a mixture of happiness and sorrow, Iranians witnessed on their TV screens the success of the uprising against the Tunisian dictator. “Tunes”, the way the name of that North-African country is pronounced in Persian, means also “succeeded” in the dialect of Tehran, the Iranian capital. “Tunes tunes” which can be translated as “Tunisia succeeded” is resounded among Iranians, followed by a doleful “Iran na-tunes”, meaning “Iran failed”, referring to the brutal suppression of the mass protests following the Iranian presidential elections in 2009. But there is no doubt that sympathy for the cause of the democratic revolutions in Arab countries outweighs the Iranian’s grief about the fact that despite all their sacrifice and courage in their 2009 uprising against the Islamist regime in Iran, this regime is still reigning. The images from Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria, Sana’a and other stages of the Arab revolution are so much resembling the scenery of Iran’s “Green Movement” that with every success the peoples in the Arab world eke out, with every retraction of an Arab dictator, the hearts of millions of Iranians beat faster, and hope resumes in their minds that one day they will also experience the smell of fresh air, the taste of freedom, the spirit which is spreading from country to country. The Iranian regime is very much trying to claim an “Islamic” identity for the uprisings in Arab countries, but the rebuff the Egyptian opposition including the Muslim Brotherhood gave to the Iranian rulers encouraged millions of Iranians in their solidarity with the Arab revolution. Now most Iranians following the development believe that the revolutions in Arab countries are not for a fundamentalist agenda but for democracy, social justice and emancipation. These are also ideals the Iranian democratic movement stands for.
To the European institutions
We now ask the European institutions to intervene more actively to pressurise the Iranian government so that it respects human rights in Iran. We call in particular for an urgent and concerted diplomatic initiative aimed at the immediate release of Messrs. Moussavi and Karroubi and their wives and the lifting of contact restrictions imposed on them; aimed also at confirmation that their physical integrity, which seems now seriously threatened, is being safeguarded-
