From the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
“We are thirsty for water and they are thirsty for our blood”
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Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) website - Farsi
Strong winds have blown another popular intifada on to the hot nights of Khuzestan: from Ahvaz to Hamidiyeh and Mahshahr, from Susangerd to Shadegan and Shush Daniel.1 The Islamic Republic is knocking on each and every door hopelessly trying to prevent the people's protests and uprisings. But this is just the beginning of the revolt of the hungry, thirsty, workers and toilers that is emerging from every openings, cracks and opportunities.
People on the shores of the rivers Karun, Karkheh and Jarahi2 have been forced to endure hours of thirst and dehydration – with feverish bodies from the heat of fifty degrees Celsius (or 122 degrees Fahrenheit), with dark eyes from darkness because of the lack of electricity, with thirsty lips from waterless hours, and with lungs longing for air that is without dust and without repression. The blue air of freedom! The people said: "Al-Ruh, Baldam, Nafdik o Karun" (“with soul and blood, we will be redeemed; we sacrifice ourselves for you O Karun”). But the response of the butchers of the Islamic Repressive of Iran, like always, has been to attack people with live bullets that pierce through young bodies such as the three young Arabs Mustafa Naeemavi, Qasem Khediri and Ali Mazraeh! And again the people shouted even louder, "Nahan Atashanin lelma va hum leldamena” ("we are thirsty for water and they are thirsty for our blood").
People have been condemned to endure poverty, hunger and unemployment in the neighborhoods of the (wealthy) ports, the oil wells, the gas and petrochemical complexes. If the people are bothered by the high cost of gasoline, bread and cost of living; if they are bothered by the dry groves, the dried-up ponds and forced to emigrate and have said so, they are responded to with machine gun fire among the reeds and in the blind alleys. Dozens of people bled to death in January 2017 and November 2019. People have shouted out "no to expulsion or forced migration" because one of the weapons of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to drive the native peoples out of Southern Iran.
Arabs like many other oppressed nationalities in Iran, have been forced to study in another/imposed language and culture in their homeland. If they criticize oppression and discrimination, they will face torture chambers and ropes and assassination units inside and outside Iran.
What have these people seen in the last forty years other than destruction, war and exile, unemployment and poverty and discrimination, execution and torture and repression by the Islamic Republic of Executioners? What should they be happy about? About the Karun and other rivers that have dried up? About the empty food tables and distressed faces of despair? About the endless lines of immigrants and exiles who are longing for bread, for work and for freedom? About the corpses and names of poets, of their teachers and of youth who are laying in anonymous graves and dungeons? All of these people have the right and should shout: "The people want to overthrow the system" (“Al Shaab Yurid Esghat Sl Nizam”). This system is worth nothing. It is only worthy of being overthrown and of falling.
The revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic is an urgent and vital necessity and is the first necessary step in getting rid of this full-blown and intensifying suffocation that has gripped the people of Khuzestan, Kurdistan, Baluchistan and all of Iran. Only on the buried body of the fascist Islamic Republic can we speak of the construction of a society in which there is no more signs of discrimination and oppression of the people; no more poverty and unemployment and displacement, no more national oppression and oppression of women; no more destruction of the environment; no more a plague of Islamism and belligerence (i.e. regional wars) in the region; and no more suffocation, massacres and genocide.
We, the revolutionary communists, have proposed the vision and the basic lines of such a society in the document of the "Constitution of the New Socialist Republic of Iran" to all those who are tired of living in the current hell and really hope for a fundamentally different life and society. The strategy and means of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the content and necessities of the revolution to break the murderous machine of the Islamist capitalist government in Iran, to unite and organize the people on a new path, are also found in other basic documents of our Party.
The Khuzestan Intifada on the nights of July is the continuation of a new chapter of the struggle against the Islamic Republic, which began in January 2017 and November 2019. It has a history of forty years of struggle and revolt of the people against the Islamic Republic. Long live the revolt and revolution. "Thura Thura hatta Al-Nasr": “Revolution Revolution until victory.”
Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
July 17, 2021
1. These are cities in the province of Khuzestan in Iran. [back]
2. Names of legendary rivers that people in Iran used to sing in love songs with the names of these rivers in them. [back]
Go to International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners (IEC) for news of the struggle of Iranian political prisoners, including the publication of the IEC’s Emergency Appeal as the back cover of the August issue of the New York Review of Books, and how you can be part of fighting for their freedom. One key way: donate toward the $2,000 needed to cover the remaining costs of publication.
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