Picture taken by Taymaz Valley. The license can be found here.
Joint statement of communist parties
We, the undersigned communist and workers’ parties, express our full and active solidarity with the Tudeh Party of Iran (TPI) as it marks the 40th anniversary of the second wave of the attack by the theocratic regime that rounded up 10,000 of its members, including key cadres, on 27 April 1983. 100s of those arrested were killed under torture or subsequently executed.
In the 5th article of the Action Plan of the 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Havana, Cuba in October 2022, that was unanimously approved, we all committed to express solidarity with the communists who face persecution and prohibitions on the free exercise of their political rights; to stand against dictatorial regimes, repression, and discrimination in terms of democratic rights and freedoms.
The theocratic regime in Iran arrested the General Secretary and all key leaders and some cadres of the TPI on 6th February 1983 in the first onslaught, subjected them to months of inhumane torture, killing and maiming them in the process, and declared the Party illegal.
The attack on the TPI was undertaken in coordination and cooperation with the security agencies of the imperialist countries – especially the CIA, MI6 of Britain and Mossad of Israel, as well as the security forces of Pakistan and Turkey.
The regime’s real reason for its all-out attack on the TPI was because the Party had opposed the Islamists’ attempt to divert the direction and reverse the course of the 1979 national democratic revolution and abandon its social, economic, and political ideals. The TPI had become a mass party of the working class and was hugely popular and effective in mobilising public opinion. The regime feared the TPI influence, especially amongst the working class, which could become a truly popular alternative, advocating peace and progress.
The TPI was also opposed to the Islamic regime’s policy of continuing the fratricidal Iran- Iraq war after the Iraqi forces were defeated and forced out of Iran’s borders in summer 1982. The TPI believed that the continuation of the war would weaken the two important Middle Eastern nations, and this would only benefit the imperialist countries.
In effect, the TPI was subjected to the most barbaric onslaught only because it supported the key slogans of the 1979 revolution, was against war, and supported peace and socialism.
Today Iran is ruled by a discredited theocratic dictatorship, the country’s economy is ruined, and none of the achievements of the 1979 revolution have survived. The country is engulfed in a multi-dimensional economic, social, and cultural crisis. The ruling dictatorship, representing the big mercantile and bureaucratic bourgeois classes, blocks development of any genuine progressive alternative through brute force and repression.
We support the legitimate struggle of the Iranian people for peace, human and democratic rights, sovereignty, and social justice. We also strongly reject any interference by imperialism and reactionary regimes in the Middle East in Iran’s internal affairs. The future direction of political developments in Iran is a decision solely for the people of Iran themselves.
A complete list of all the signing communist and workers’ parties will follow later