The Iranian Regime has always harshly put down all demonstrations. The repression and systematic violations of human rights have been the Islamic Republic’s main response to the political, social and economic demands of the population.
On Mar.7, 2019, Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran’s religious dictatorship, appointed Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the Death Committee in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, and a devoted supporter of the supreme leader, as head of Iran’s judiciary.
Raisi should be subject to international prosecution for committing crimes against humanity in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988 and tried for the genocide of People’s Mujahadeen Of Iran (PMOI) members. His appointment as the highest judicial authority of the clerical regime signals a hard turn to even more repression by the clerical regime against the Iranian people and resistance. Khamenei described his appointment as a “new era” and the “second stage” of the regime’s so-called revolution, and ordered Raisi not “to pay heed to outsiders when dealing with judicial matters.”
In 1988, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s successor at the time, and a higher-ranking cleric than Khamenei and his minions, summoned members of the Death Committee including Raisi. Montazeri and addressed them in a meeting that was recorded and later published, stating, “The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us, has been committed by you. Your (names) will in the future be etched in the annals of history as criminals.”
Raisi’s appointment by Khamenei proves once again that as the head of the crisis-stricken theocratic regime, he finds no other solution than a hard turn towards further repression in order to contain the crisis of the coming new Iranian year (starting March 21, 2019). Khamenei thus wants to barricade his clerical regime against the uprising of the Iranian people and their organized resistance for justice and freedom in Iran.
In more than a century, Iranians have experienced four major movements in search of democracy: the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Mohammad Mossadegh’s nationalist movement in the early 1950s, the Antimonarchist Revolution of 1979 and resistance against the Islamic Republic from the 1980s to the present. Because of an ideology that emerged from the depths of the Middle Ages, the clergy regime has nothing in common with this progressive orientation. This regime represents the aspirations that belong to the pre-capitalist period, which makes it incapable of solving the social, economic and political problems of Iranian society. This distinguishes the Islamic Republic from any other classical dictatorship that the contemporary world has known or is experiencing. This explains why the repression in Iran is taking on a completely different dimension than anywhere else in the world.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Bassij militia which deals with urban repression in all areas of society’s activity, justice in the hands of religious who do not comply with any of the rules of law, a prison system that applies torture and killings beyond the imagination, secret services that have become a killing machine, and a multitude of vice patrols, in addition to the police, are responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of this repression which is the only reason for maintaining power in place.
Abuse of religion: a complement to repression
The regime of the Supreme Leader has used religion as a justification for repression. A disfiguration of Islam’s precepts served this alibi to justify all the horrors. Thus it gives the name “rehabilitation” to torture, “call for modesty” to merciless repression of women in all their social behavior. In its war against Iraq in the 1980s, this regime offered keys to paradise to schoolchildren and high school students whom it recruited to wipe minefields in order to facilitate the passage of its troops. The Constitution openly denies national sovereignty and gives absolute powers to the Supreme Leader. These are the features of a regime that is not a republic and has nothing to do with Islam but calls itself the Islamic Republic.
An increase in resistance among the population
The Fars news agency, known to be affiliated directly to the notorious Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), published an article Wednesday morning reflecting the mullahs’ growing concerns about the country’s young generation leaning more and more towards the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The piece literally warns that people should not be deceived by “the PMOI/MEK’s mediums on the internet!”
“The measures carried out by the PMOI/MEK’s mediums on social media indicates that most of their criteria and the provocative methods are designed to influence the younger generation… Usually the youth under the age of 20, due to their inexperience, are easily influenced and begin undergoing training by the enemy’s elements…,” the piece reads in part.
“In the past, the enemy was forced to come inside the country to establish contact… Today, however, the internet and social media are allowing the enemy to establish contact with social media users on their mobile phones and personal computers. As a result, the enemy’s mediums can easily use deceitful methods to establish direct contact with mainly the younger and lesser informed users,” the Fars piece continues.
