Recent News from the Global Movement
Raymond Lotta June 20 at Free Toomaj protest at Iranian UN Mission
Below is the text of the talk given by Raymond Lotta, spokesperson for Revolution Books New York City and revcom.us correspondent, at the "Free Toomaj Salehi" protest in front of the Iranian Mission to the UN in NYC. This march and rally was held in conjunction with events called by different groups worldwide on and around June 20, the International Day to Free Political Prisoners in Iran, three of them called by the IEC in the US.
I want to welcome everyone here, and I also want to let everyone who is going to see the documentation of this people all over the world — and the prisoners in Iran who are going to hear about this — to let them know that we are with them!
Why are we here? We are here today because we stand with the rebel artist Toomaj who has risked all for a whole new world. Why are we here today: because we stand with the courageous political prisoners of Iran who are going up against a repressive and draconian regime that rules through world-class torture [and] repression. We stand with these political prisoners of Iran! We are here today because the struggle of Iranian political prisoners is OUR struggle. If you can't stand injustice, if you can't stand suffering perpetrated by the oppressive regimes of this world imperialist system, then you need to stand with Toomaj and the political prisoners of Iran.
Everyone listen it up because I am now issuing a challenge. I am issuing a challenge to the representatives of the IRI. the Islamic Republic of Iran. I am issuing a challenge to them — upstairs in their mission — to come downstairs, to come outside, and to face the women the LGBTQ people that are here, the artists and the activists that are here. Come downstairs and make your case.
Make your case for why you rule through execution, crushing dissent and basic human rights. Make your unmakeable case. [crowd responds: “They can't do it! Come Down! Come Down!”] Come outside, you reprehensible Representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran! Come down make your unmakeable case for why you are crushing dissent and the humanity of all that live in Iran.
I want to make it very clear that, while we oppose this oppressive regime, we stand against any all attempts by us imperialism to attack, to meddle and to strangle the people of Iran through sanctions that have already cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. That's right!
Look, we live in, and we face a world imperialist system, a system of exploitation and oppression. Our choices are not between Western imperialism and its apartheid outpost Israel or dark ages Islamic —or any —fundamentalism. A whole other way, a whole new world is possible through an all the way Revolution. And what we do, how we take up this fight to free the political prisoners in Iran, how energetically we take this up and spread this message — that has everything to do [with] and will contribute powerfully to the cause of emancipating all of humanity.
Free Toomaj Now! Free Toomaj Now! Free all Iran's political prisoners all Iran's political prisoners!
Thank you.
A speech given by Mona Roshan, a revolutionary communist leader, at Revolution Books, NYC
In Support of Political Prisoners in Iran and Condemning the Death Sentence of Toomaj Salehi
The following is the text of a speech by Mona Roshan, a revolutionary communist leader and former political prisoner, at the emergency program on Toomaj at Revolution Books, NYC, on June 9 (see report on event). The speech was given remotely in Farsi and translated into English at the program. The IEC is posting it here because it contributes background and analysis relevant to political prisoners.
My name is Mona Roshan. When I was 20 years old, I was arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran, because of my activities as a revolutionary communist woman. I was imprisoned for three years, giving birth to my first child while I was under torture by the Islamic Republic.
Forty-five years have passed since the rebellion against Khomeini’s compulsory hijab decree. The war on women by the theocratic fascist regime of Iran is still going full force. The 45 years of resistance by women reached its height in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022-2023, but as yet has not been able to go beyond protest and become a revolution to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the repression of the Mahsa/Jina uprising, coinciding with the Netan-Nazi genocide in Gaza, the fascist supreme leader Khamenei felt that he could proceed freely, more than ever before, to carry out even more repression against women, and murder more prisoners.
In the past seven months, the repression against women has intensified and executions have accelerated. Every five hours, a prisoner is executed in Iran. As we speak, political prisoners go on a hunger strike every Tuesday to protest against the executions. Some Kurdish political prisoners who have been imprisoned for more than 10 years have been part of those executed.
Police attacks on women without hijabs in the cities have expanded along with special operations against female students—with the Department of “Security” handing over arrested female students in groups to police forces. The police have made the release of those arrested conditional on virginity and addiction tests (according to the statement released by Social Studies students of the University of Tehran, broadcast on BBC on 6th of June 2024).
The rape of women in prison and detention centers has been documented by Amnesty International.
Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights advocate who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has requested that her upcoming trial be held in public, so she can expose the rape of detained and imprisoned women by the regime’s male authorities.
Iranian women activists are documenting the rape and sexual assault of women prisoners by the authorities. I was one of the victims of sexual harassment by Islamist torturers many years ago. All those who fight against the Islamic Republic are considered “at war with God,” and in this war, any woman who is captured is treated as a slave who can be sexually assaulted according to Islamic laws. Sexual assaults against women have always been a component part of reactionary wars. But in the Islamic Republic, a legal fatwa/decree is issued to “legalize” this rape.
When the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979, Khomeini, then the supreme leader, issued a decree making the Islamic hijab mandatory. As I mentioned earlier, there was a great mass revolt against this which lasted five to six days. In that revolt, the Association of Fighting Women, which was formed by the cadres of the Union of Communists of Iran, now the Communist Party of Iran (MLM), played an important role. Women were the first forces to challenge the Islamic Republic. Many leftists at that time considered the revolt to be insignificant and unnecessary because it was not about the “rights of workers,” despite the fact that reality shows the oppression of women is indeed a sharp fault line and a very explosive contradiction in Iranian society.
With the Islamic Republic in power, traditional forms of the oppression of women were added to more modern forms of oppression, and this social contradiction became even more explosive. The Islamic Republic brought forth a strange combination of Islamic slavery and capitalist-imperialist social relations—and tightened the chains on women.
The case of Iran illustrates the point made by Bob Avakian that wherever religious fundamentalism prevails, extreme patriarchy and aggressive misogyny will prevail.
Let me say some things about imperialism.
The Islamic Republic and Islamic fundamentalists have propagated and promoted a twisted concept of imperialism that not only does not correspond to reality, but is also highly reactionary. In short, it is against any rational thought, culture, and relations that arose after the rise of capitalism and the anti-feudal revolutions in the 18th century, whose progressive aspects were compressed into the “Enlightenment” movement. One of the Enlightenment’s important achievements was critical thinking, scientific and rational thought in opposition to idealistic and superstitious religious views that reinforce the system of serfdom and servitude.
Today all of those outmoded views have been integrated into traditional patriarchal relations.
But it is important to note that the Islamic fundamentalists present their reactionary views as “Anti-Imperialist struggle” or “Liberation from Imperialism”—using the fact that the “West,” which was the cradle of these anti-feudal developments, became a destructive, plundering, and colonialist vampire. Yes, these fundamentalist forces use the fact of what imperialism is to portray their reactionary return to traditional views and oppressive theocratic social relations as “emancipatory.”
While integrating themselves within the framework of dependence on the global imperialist capitalist system, they revived and promoted traditional, oppressive social relations—especially the traditional relations related to the oppression of women. Therefore, in Iran, the imprisonment of women in loose clothes and hijab, and honor killings, have been legalized.
Unfortunately, many intellectuals dissatisfied with imperialist oppression helped formulate this reactionary worldview and social program. Take, for example, Ali Shariati in Iran, who was inspired by the likes of Frantz Fanon in Algeria, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Léopold Senghor in Senegal...
He advocated “returning to self,” returning to Shiite Islam, as the way to liberation. In this way, he prepared the theoretical basis for the Ayatollah’s regime to rise to power in Iran. One of his students is Zahra Rahnavard, wife of Mir Hossain Mossavie, who integrated the hijab into an anti-colonial discourse and tool for the Ayatollah’s regime to use.
In the view of these theorists, the unveiling of women was collective aggression of the imperialist West against the Iranian people. This theory [of unveiling as a Western creation] did a great service in diverting attention away from the fact that in the age of capitalist imperialism all countries, regardless of what version of government they have, are integrated into this world system and operate and function largely according to the laws of world capital. And the capitalist exploiting classes, regardless of their particular ideology, act in accordance with the laws of capitalism and in the service of the requirements of exploitation and super-exploitation for profit.
In Iran, capitalist laws drag women into the abyss of capitalist exploitation. The Islamic Sharia superstructure tries to keep them in the chains of religious bondage. It is interesting that Rahnavard’s criterion for the “perfect woman” includes both of these. She says that a “perfect woman” is one who is both active in society and has “originality.” By being “active” she means becoming a capitalist employee under the dynamics of capitalism. And by “authenticity,” she means to submit to the bondage of the traditional/religious patriarchy. And the observance of the Islamic hijab by women is a signal to the religious capitalist system that acquiesces to both capitalist exploitation and traditional religious oppression.
I am giving this background because many intellectuals who want to join the struggle against imperialism resort to outmoded theories instead of a scientific approach: the new communism. You most likely have encountered these kinds of views in the college encampments that have been set up in many universities to defend the Palestinian people. They mainly look at the problem as colonialism rather than the whole capitalist-imperialist system itself. Even though they call their movement “The movement of liberation from Imperialism” or “Anti-Colonialism”—nevertheless, their understanding is not to end all outmoded systems of oppression and exploitation.
There are many contradictions in the world and there are certain particularities to these contradictions, including the oppression of women and patriarchal relations in the world. These contradictions are intensifying with increasing ferocity. The fight between the fascist Republicans and genocidal Democrats in America is intensifying as well.
These two outmodeds are not choices for humanity, with their oppression of women, imperialist wars, destruction of the environment, and the genocide in Gaza… these are all part of the basic functioning of this system.
But what should we do? Or, what is to be done?
While we are engaging in many different battles against all of these crimes against humanity, we revolutionaries are waging these battles with the aim and goal of a real revolution.
The revolution we need requires revolutionary theory, which has been further developed by Bob Avakian. This is the new communism. “It is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed.”
Just as the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, first in the Soviet Union and then in China, would not have been possible without Marxism, which was founded and developed by Marx, and further developed by Lenin and Mao, socialist revolutions in our time are not possible without the new communism developed by Bob Avakian.
Free Toomaj flyer published in France
Download Free Toomaj Flyer in French
10 Groups Together: March 8 We Raise Our Voices Around the World!
This English translation of a Farsi statement by 10 organizations was posted to Instagram on March 10, 2024 by @maosyangarim and @Nev.Suomi. Additions in brackets by IEC volunteers.
We are the successors of those millions of women who, since March 1911, have taken to the streets all over the world for the right to vote and in solidarity with those women workers from the sweatshops of Lawrence who demanded “bread and roses” for all. We have lived under patriarchy for thousands of years while this oppressive relationship was justified as “natural” by religion and pseudo-science.
This March 8, 103 years have passed since this was designated as International Women’s Day at the 2nd International Communist Women’s Meeting in Moscow, and 45 years since the women’s uprising against Khomeini’s mandatory hijab decree in Iran. We are the successors of the rebellious women who made our commitment quite clear to the Islamic Republic during the Jina uprising, shouting “You have made the compulsory hijab a symbol of our subjugation, we will burn your symbols and end patriarchy!”
The patriarchy that in Iran takes the form of mandatory hijab, in Afghanistan takes the form of keeping women at home and barring them from getting an education; in Turkey, it takes the form of femicide and violence against women; in Palestine, it takes the form of war, humiliation and the rape of women; in Mexico, the form of the disappearances of women; in Argentina, when Miley came to power, it took the form of an attack against women’s abortion rights; in the US it takes the form of abolishing the right to abortion. Europe (Italy, the Netherlands, France) and China are making return to the traditional role of women in the family and family values headline political debates. All over the world, millions of women and LGBTQ+ are oppressed.
The international labor market has become “feminized” and poverty has become “feminized.” Women make up an increasing share of not just low-wage service jobs, but of temporary jobs, work in the informal sector, and in the slavery of prostitution in trafficking networks.
Patriarchy is global and so is women’s struggle against the global capitalist system!
The whole framework of the globalist capitalist system is intertwined with male-supremacist/patriarchal relations, and cannot survive without them. It has viciously attacked even the slightest changes in the in the status of women that have been achieved in recent decades, and promotes a culture of hatred and subjugation of women. Especially in this time, capitalist crises and imperialist contention demand a new order [in the world]. In the response to the problems constantly generated by the functioning of the imperialist capitalist system, it has produced reactionary alternatives [ranging] from fundamentalism to fascism, alternatives that threaten not only women’s lives, but all of humanity.
Today, Palestine is one of the bloodiest expressions of this contention between reactionary alternatives. It is our blood that is shed in Palestine while people wait in line for "humanitarian aid," yet there is no waiting line for the bombs that fall on our heads.
There is no solution to this situation created by the imperialist countries of the global north and their dependent capitalist countries (of either variety, oppressive Islamic, or "secular and democratic" ), other than internationalist struggle and solidarity.
The women of the world are a single body that, in order to free themselves from the chains of male supremacy/patriarchy, must liberate all humanity from the chains of oppressive and exploitative relations, from traditional property relations and from the outdated ideas and values [they give rise to].
Let's join together and raise awareness of the problem that confronts us and its solution. Without waging this conscious struggle, the potential of women will be diverted and and squandered by various strata and [kept within the bounds] of the ruling classes. We have been fighting and winning some battles for over a hundred years, but our great victory will be to overthrow the ruling class.
This March 8th, let’s take to the streets in our common struggle against capitalism and the patriarchy intertwined with it, and shout out our common pain and fury!
Baloch Women'sMovement @balochwomenmovementt,
Bread and Roses (Turkey) @ekmekvegul,
Burn The Cage @burnthecage,
Free Nahid @free.nahid,
Institute for Women's Social Equality in Afghanistan,
je.cocreation @je.cocreation,
Osyan @maosyangarim,
Uxan Global Media @uxanmedia,
Woman Life Freedom Finland @nev.suomi,
Youth in Exile @bahamad_fa/@bahamad_en
International Poetry Festival in Colombia, July 2022
Informe en EspañolReport in English
فارسی
Carta a los compañeros y compañeras en Colombia
Letter from Burn the Cage to Compañeros y Compañeras in Colombia
Internationalist March in Colombia January 2022
The letter from Colombia received by IEC in Spanish has been published in several languages and countries.