Since September 22, 2022, more than 30 children¹—school-age children and child laborers—have been murdered by the Islamic Republic's military, Basij [plainclothes militia], and security forces: in the streets, in temporary detention centers and in prisons, with pellet bullets, warfare bullets [high-velocity steel bullets], baton blows, as a result of torture and rape. The statistics for these horrifying murders and bloodshed will increase, given the [young] age of those participating in the current uprising.

This is not the first time the Islamic Republic has killed children protesting its policies, its ideology, and its government. At least 18 children were killed in the November, 2019 uprising, and at least 4 children were killed in January, 2018. But these figures and numbers are just a very small part of more than 40 years of child-killing in the Islamic Republic.

Worldwide, there is ongoing debate and disagreement about the biological and social definition of a child and about children’s rights, but according to the [United Nations] Declaration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child is any person under the age of 18, and has basic rights. The Government of the Islamic Republic accepted this treaty in March, 1994, with the proviso that it accepted [only those] articles not inconsistent with Iran's domestic laws, Shi'ite Islamic and Sharia standards—an exclusion that eviscerates the purpose of the document.

According to Islamic jurisprudence, a boy under the age of 15, or girl under the age of 9, is a child (not under the age of 18). Also, according to Islamic Sharia ethics, a child has no rights other than those granted by a guardian (father). In essence, a child is owned and controlled by the father or other male relatives (such as grandfather, uncle, older brother, etc.). Under Iranian law and its judicial system, a father is granted full and absolute guardianship over his child, and for this reason, child-killing by the father or male guardian is not a criminal offense. There are countless instances in which the Iranian government has violated the fundamental rights of children, such as child-marriage, which is practically a license to rape any girl above the age of 9, to execute children under the age of 18, and to allow the full force of criminal law to be used against children every day and every hour.

Elimination of childhood is built into the functioning of the capitalist system all over the world. Capitalism cannot wait for children to grow up to enter its labor force. Without the labor of 5-year-olds in the Congo's cobalt mines, the smartphones and tablets which keep people constantly connected cannot get manufactured. By harnessing Sharia law to the operation of global capitalism, the Islamic Republic and has created [even] more horrifying conditions for children.

Child-killing, child-abuse, and child-sexual abuse (of girls) are part of the everyday functioning of the theocratic government in Iran. For example, child sexual abuse is not against the moral values or religious commandments of Islam. Marriage with a young girl is not only permitted, it is "halal," [in accord with] the laws of Islamic jurisprudence, and [upheld by all principal sects of Islam] (such as Shia and Sunni), and was also practiced by the prophet Mohammad. At the age of 54, he married Aisha, who was 6 or 9 years old. At the age of 10, Mohammad's daughter Fatima was married to Ali, a 25-year-old man, and before that, other old sheikhs (mullahs) such as Omar and Abu Bakr were her suitors.²

In Shi’ite jurisprudence, the touching of an infant girl by an adult man for sexual gratification is permitted and justifiable. [Ayatollah] Ruhollah Khomeini, in response to one of the religious questions (estefta'at) about having sex with a girl who is still a child, said: "Having sex with a female spouse who is less than 9 years old is not permissible, no matter whether the marriage is permanent or temporary. But other types of pleasure such as touching for sexual gratification, embracing and thigh sex (male lust using the area of woman's two thighs) are okay, even though she is still breast nursing." (Tahrir al-Wasila, Vol. 4, Problem 12)

In some prisons during the 1980s, the rape of women political prisoners who were "virgins,” including girls under the age of 18, was permitted in accordance with these principles and Sharia legal rulings.³ Furthermore, the arrest, torture, and execution of children under the age of 18 on charges of working against the Islamic Republic were common and widely used in Iranian prisons between 1981 and 1988. The full extent of these child killings is not yet known. For example, the "Iran Tribunal"⁴ listed the names of 126 children under the age of 18 who were put to death by firing squad, but France-Soir newspaper in their report on October 18, 1981, reported that at least 200 children had been killed by the Islamic Republic, and some were as young as 13 or 14 when executed. Two sisters, Fatima and Ezzat Mesbah, were executed by firing squad in 1981 at the ages of 13 and 15. In another case, according to the Mahabad governor's communiqué of June 12, 1983, 59 youths and teenagers were sent to the death squad, and most were school children under the age of 18.⁵ In the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988, a significant portion of the at least 4,000 people who were hanged⁶ were under the age of 25. In other words, they were arrested and tortured when they were under the age of 18 and reached adulthood in prison.

Another example of the Islamic Republic's child-killings is their use of children on the frontlines of its reactionary war with Iraq. During the eight years of war [1980-1988], tens of thousands of children under the age of 18 were mobilized in the Basij forces and became cannon fodder on the front lines. They became targets of the Iraqi professional army’s gunfire and minefields, in the [IRI] strategy called the “human wave.”⁷ [Ayatollah] Khomeini, the Ministry of Education, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Basij played key roles in this crime against children.

The Minister of Education [at the time] noted with pride his success in sending a million children to the frontlines. The physical education teachers who were in charge of propaganda and promotion of religious superstitions, ideology and ethics of the Islamic Republic in schools, played an important role in brainwashing students and in encouraging them to go to war.

Iran's newspapers at the time were full of news reports about school children [grades 1 to 12] being sent from behind school desks to the slaughterhouse of Khomeini’s and Saddam Hussein's reactionary war. In a fatwa published in the Islamic Republic’s newspaper on October 31, 1982, in response to a question about whether parent’s permission is required for children to be sent to the front, Khomeini said, "As long as the front needs man power, going to the front is essential and parental permission is not a requirement." According to Gholamreza Soleimani, a commander in the Revolutionary Guard [IRGC, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], 36,000 school children (child soldiers) were killed in the Iran-Iraq war.⁸

The draft Constitution of the New Socialist Republic of Iran [in Farsi] succinctly explains the situation of systemic child abuse [in Iran]: "The government of the Islamic Republic gave legal status to Sharia [law] which restored and strengthened many of the oppressive social relationships from the era of slavery, including in relationship to children." (As long as the daughters are not married, they're considered the property of their fathers. The father has the right to exploit his children, can arrange the marriage of a baby daughter, and can even kill his daughters in the name of "defending honor." These are all part of the social relationships of the slavery era.)

A very important aspect of confronting the anti-human character of the Islamic Republic is the struggle against its systematic child abuse. In today’s struggles, paragraph 4 of the Three Decrees of the "Interim Government Council" [of the CPI-MLM] should be our guide. Among the most urgent measures taken on the day after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic will be: "Outlawing child labor and urgently providing for the rights of all children, from [the right to] livelihood and shelter, to education and recreation for [former] child laborers, to issuing birth certificates/identity cards for all children, so that no child can be considered 'illegitimate.' Protective associations that have defended child laborers and street children, and were repressed by the Islamic Republic regime, will be given formal status. [These associations’] efforts to stop child labor, and to provide child welfare and education throughout the country, will be supported"

Section 6 of article 4 of the Draft Constitution of the New Socialist Republic of Iran on children's rights declares that in the New Socialist Republic:

All children living in Iran, whether citizens or immigrants, [and] regardless of their gender, nationality, or class origin in the previous society, are entitled to equal rights. Every citizen or immigrant under the age of 18 is entitled to [protection under] the children's rights laws, and after the age of 18 is entitled to all adult rights and responsibilities.

Primary and secondary education is compulsory until the age of 18. [It is] the right and the principal responsibility of children and youth up to age 18—whether citizen or immigrant—is to get educated. Children across the country will enjoy the same standards of education: equal standards in infrastructure and apparatus; buildings, heating, laboratories, computers and quality of teaching staff.

In all matters relating to children, they themselves must be consulted. In all administrative and judicial processes, where children are involved and are at ages where they can express their own minds, their opinions should be taken into account.

Before the age of 18, elementary school students [grades 1 to 12] can participate, vote and be candidates in elections for leadership of educational, athletic and artistic institutions, child-enrichment centers, neighborhood associations, and in any gatherings where children and youth are part of the crowd. In the New Socialist Republic, rape and sexual abuse of children, including by family members, is a crime that will face severe punishment.

All students will receive a medical examination once every three months, along with essential vaccinations. It will be the duty of [child welfare] institutions to sponsor artistic, recreational and group trips. In this way, various aspects of duties that have been the sole responsibility of families will gradually become socialized, and using the framework of various state and civil institutions, society will take responsibility. Educational institutions, in addition to carrying out various educational activities, must also form leadership bodies to carry out these tasks jointly, which will consist of educational cadre and parents of children (or those who are guardians of children).

In the new Socialist Republic of Iran, sex education begins in elementary school. This training includes knowing your body and its hormonal interactions in girls and boys at different ages, protecting the body’s health, sexual relationships and sexual intercourse, safe sex, mutual respect among those who engage in sexual activity. One of the objectives of this education is to inform children about the necessity of resisting sexual assault. The main goal is for children to scientifically understand their body's interactions and to understand why, during a period of their development, humans are inclined toward having sex and about its physical and social dimensions.

Darwin's theory of evolution forms the basis for this education, so that children can learn that sexual relationships are natural among all kinds of species. But at the same time it will be taught that since human beings are the only creatures in nature capable of self-awareness, they have transformed sexual relationships and any other natural relationship into a social relationship. Within this framework, the social development of sexual relationships and the distinction between sexual relationship and culture will be taught, by comparing [relationships] in socialist society to those of previous societies:  the tragic consequences of the Islamic Republic’s restoration of relationships and culture from 1,400 years ago; the fact that in capitalist society, with its commodification of labor, everything became a commodity, including love; how women have been oppressed within sexual relationships between men and women; the fact that children are also sexually abused as a result of the commodification of sex; that the age of enjoying sex is when a person grows out of a physical childhood and at the same time is intellectually able to establish meaningful relationships; how, in old religions and societies, sexual behavior was limited to sexual intercourse with [members of] the opposite sex, and non-conventional sexuality or any sexual and emotional behavior related to LGBTQs were suppressed, and why this restriction is not continued under socialism.

With the establishment of the New Socialist Republic, a special institution composed of child labor protection centers will be formed, and a campaign will be launched to eradicate the phenomenon of child labor. Educational institutions in all parts of the country will be required to prioritize bringing child-laborers into schools and into the educational system. This will be part of the socialist republic's fundamental orientation for economic, political and cultural development.⁹