We’ll hit the Streets to Fight Executions, Suppression, and the Shameless Sentences Against Student Activists and the Workers’ Movement

Lead Article:

The political situation in Iran today is such that a more advanced and more radical people than the intellectuals and political powers have entered the arena and are expressing their issues and desires in various statements. In this edition I’d like to assign the Editor’s note to a statement published by a group of Iran’s students, who in recent years have represented one of Iran’s political groups. Leftist and socialist students who have called people to the streets to protest against the status quo. These students who time and again have in their protests and activities announced that they stand in solidarity with the workers’ and women’s movements and plan to build strong ties between the classes and various movements.

Sincerely,
Saeed valadbaygi

Statement from the Socialist students of the universities of Iran Against execution, suppression and the shameless sentences against student activists and the workers’ movement

The people’s protest movement against dictatorship and the corruption of Islamic socio-political capitalism continues and in various new forms, moment by moment confusing the dictatorship further. At a time when street campaigns are taking place at long intervals, the student movement has entered the battlefield with the start of the new academic year and every day we witness the successive protests and campaigns that from university to university, in the spirit of solidarity with one another and the movement, has gained momentum and mass appeal.
Students have rightly realized that they must adopt the people’s street slogans in universities and in the process pursue the issues and desires of the workers, women, teachers and all sections of society for equality and freedom.
The workers’ movement in the past few months following the electoral coup d’etat, has become one of the most critical and most sensitive issues in the social and political arena. On the one hand the economic and living conditions of the workers has made them resort to successive strikes in factories and industrial centres large and small. And on the other the presence of workers in recent protests, though not organized, their public campaign against the dictatorship is linked and a new horizon is open to them. Therefore the workers’ protest and struggle has entered a new phase, towards progress and achievement.
The coup d’etat government, from the moment of the people’s eruption, has constantly strived to employ its institutional suppressors to stop this surge. Now that the coup d’etat government is at the peak of confusion and international, regional and domestic disturbance, after it riddled large numbers of freedom seeking people with its bullets, after the killing, the imprisoning, the torture and disappearance of large numbers of women and men who were only seeking equality and freedom, it’s now the turn of the social movements, especially the activists and leaders of the worker’s movement and student’s movement who have been subjected to heavy and shameless prison sentences. Heavy sentences of two to five years that have been issued in the last month. Disciplinary sentences that deprive students from study, alongside enforcing an atmosphere of high security in universities, are the coup d’etat government’s measures against the new conitunuous campaigns and protests of the university students throughout the country that has brought it to its knees.
Likewise the arrests of labour activists, suppression of strikes and issue of shameless prison sentences at the hands of the Islamic dictatorship in the pursuit of its project to crush the movement, achieves nothing but an end to protest, the right of the people. The sum of these suppressions, of the coup d’etat government’s efforts, that include political suppression and the suppression of social movements and confrontational initiatives and the removal of social institutions such as NGOs - especially those active in the field of children’s rights and the struggle against the exploitation and shameless abuse of children - create an atmosphere of public intimidation where capital punishment and particularly that of children and young people applies.
The death penalty, the hideous tool of organized murder at the hands of dictatorship governments, advances with rash process, the most disastrous form of which is the execution of young people and Iran, in helping the oppressive capitalist Islamic government, was the pioneer of this and has the highest per capita rating. And we have seen how inefficient pressure and formal recommendations from international institutions has been in putting a stop to it.
All these desperate efforts on the part of the coup d’etat government demonstrate its troubled state. And neither a return to pre electoral coup d’etat times is possible nor advancement and putting a stop to the people’s protest.that is becoming more radical, by the desperate Islamic capitalist creation of an atmosphere of oppression and intimidation. It cannot build a dam against this movement. Social movements, particularly the worker’s movement will gain strength as they take greater shape and unite with other campaigns and will guarantee their power in the struggle. In the same way the worker’s movement, as with the expectations of the masses in the people’s movement, will be the pioneers of this struggle and take a huge step towards the horizon for the struggle of the past 30 years.
The socialist students of Iran’s universities in condemning repression and the shameless sentencing against labour activists and student activists, and the rash and abhorrent executions of the coup d’etat government, defend the people’s anti-dictatorship struggle for freedom and equality and democratic rights. We pronounce our solidarity with the struggle and resistance against dictatorship and all our efforts are for the advancement of the public demands of social, freedom seeking movements. And we will engage fully with all actions that look towards this horizon.

Long live the mass campaign against dictatorship!
Long live freedom and equality!
Long live socialism!

Socialist Students of Iran