Any one still investing any hope in this already fully bankrupt and infested system, or anyone still toying with the daydream of its future betterment is simply not one of us; The Islamic Republic operates like a broken record repeating the same note for nearly half a century: suppression, censorship, and massacre; hours before the composition of this note, Iranians from various cities shouted through their windows with the up-to-the-point telling slogan: “down with Khamanei (the current leader), condemned be Khomeini (the founder of the regime)” which would frame the very core of the story and destiny of the regime; having long planned to raise his heavily dystopic neo-Shiite caliphate, and just before waltzing back to Iran, and from his mildly weathered exile location in Neauphle-le-Château, France, where he was enjoying the full hospitality of the forefathers of the old colonialist powers who cared for nothing but to guarantee their future interests in the outcome of Iran’s 1979 Revolution, the “late” Islamic antichrist, Khomeini, the tragic embodiment of what now has comically become of his successor, famously promised on record a free pass for all political activities of his dissidents, including all Marxists (who later had to suffer mass executions in thousands and overnight in the first decade of the foundation of the regime), yet upon his arrival on the pathways of Tehran, the capital, paved and marked by the bloodshed of protestors’ of that revolution, had to learn in the hard way that the political atmosphere was unfavorable and diverging voices echoed from corner to corner of the country; he was free from any hesitation in raising gallows and scaffolds so much so that many a container had to carry the dead bodies of the dearest juveniles and adolescents of the opposition to the limitless cemeteries, which were predetermined to be cemented over and denied access even after forty years, scattering the mourning and justice-seeking survivors from around them by sheer brutal force even to this date; it was like this that, with a simple swing of his old and frail but pogrom-fashioned and butchery-seeking hand, or, as some have claimed, that of his foregoing son, Ahmad Khomeini, who wanted to follow the steps of his father, and forge his signature to execute that mass execution order to secure their reign, and so it was then through torturous a transition from the callous rule of Khomeini to the sanguinary reign of Khamenei, that such a complex system of suppression and murder was established that the systemic massacres and bloodsheds it had launched against the Green Movement in 2009, economy-driven mass protests of Nov. 2019, and finally the latest case of “Life, Woman, Freedom” Movement would only represent the tip of the iceberg in its murderous profile; this is because the misery-producing machine would come to no rest whether rain or shine and the cracking sound of the bones of the people of this country could be heard from the depths of its rotating gearwheels, whether it be Turk, Arab, Kurd, or Baluch, whether leftist and nationalist-religious to secessionist, whether radical, moderate, or conservative, whether religious minorities such as Baha’i, Sunni, Jewish, Zarathustra, atheist, or Darvish, and whether gender minorities; let’s take it at surface value for a moment that by the twist of the twisted fingers of evil, triggered by its own frustration and impotence, a public pardon is executed and, inadvertently, some public good is occasioned (and we, who would not tolerate our dearests being enchained even a millisecond more, would – and indeed do – cry out of joy), yet we would still be fully aware that the hands autographing today the verdict of the release of hundreds of detainees, conditioned to their admission of penance, of course, is the vert same the time-dishonored visage of the antichrist ruler, who had formerly put his signature on the mass lynching warrant of political prisoners, conditioned similarly; this is the same “we” who find it difficult to fail in catching sight of the long-standing hands-on experience of bloodshed and torture; the same “we” would wish that “his highness’,” the supreme leader, majestic autograph, which to quote late Yadollah Royayi, Iranian modernist poet, curiously resembles the signature marks of the Law Lord on a convict’s flagellated back, could bring back to life the entirely obliterated families such as that of Khodanoor Lojjeyi’s, a Baluchi protestor killed in Zahedan protests recently, along with over 500, mostly young protestors killed in the streets or prison cells by his mercenaries; but this comes about not and will not come about since his highness’ majestic autograph knows no way other than death and misery just as a car run by petrol that would inescapably discharge carbonic gas; and it is for this very reason that those informed, after a lifetime, neither should nor will be distracted by such shiny objects as a pretentious public pardon of the political prisoners; nevertheless, to end this note, what better way than fully quoting the enlightening response of a recently released but formerly and frequently imprisoned and tortured political activist and writer, Leila Husseinzadeh, to the charade of public pardon, who indeed have demonstrated a very sharp understanding of our struggle for justice and freedom in Iran, by reminding us that “the destination is the way itself”:
Signature: Anonymous
2/11/2023
The Majestic Pardon or the Frustration of the Judicial System?
On the very start of this discussion, giving a few examples from my fist-hand experience of the conditions of the Islamic Republic prisons after the recent uprisings would be enlightening:
In the women ward od Adel’abad Prison there was no room left for bringing the arrested protestors in; thus they allocated two quarantine rooms to them, in a room with that capacity to host 33 individuals (with three-storied adjacent beds) for a certain period, they imprisoned over 60 protestors, then they were faced with air condition issues, and had to install telephone cabins, and were encountered with airing issues. They started constructing a new room, and were planning to evacuate the ward known as men’s Quran ward, so they brought the equipment and started bringing down the wall separating women’s ward and the latter in order to add up its space to be able to concentrate protestors in there; yet the strength of the wall (!) caused the destruction process to be more time-consuming and technically they got lucky that at least for some time the protests came to a halt; they immediately started the collective administration of the arrestees, with haphazard sentences, such as five years of imprisonment for offering a flower to the martial agents, or for having posted a story on Instagram; then by maintaining a pardoning gesture, they would distribute fetters and even request money for fetters lest the looting would be stopped! They even lacked fetters which were not available for some time! They also released the ordinary prisoners with some more laxity. This is even the conditions of a city which (compared with other cities) did not have intense and continuous protest conflicts in Zhina (Mahsa Amini) Movement.
A family member of one of the ordinary prisoners, arrested in Dehdasht, had asked his father to bring in food for him, since they even could not manage feeding the prisoners!
On those very same days, some of the individual’s sharing the same charges with my cellmates in Darab Prison (in Fars Province) had informed them that a section of this prison was set on fire, an incident that, according to my investigations back then, was not even echoed in the news.
You need to add to these examples, the very high number of children and adolescents whom the state has sent to prison in the course of these uprisings or fabricated case against, the question of “humaneness” is off the table for them, criminalizing the life these many children and adolescents, can cause massive administrative crisis. A 16 year old girl was charged with eight accusatory titles including belligerence (waging-war) and corruption on earth. Many of these girls were under 18, kept in detention in Adel’Abad Prison, and the judicial and persecutory procedure they had to go through, the damage they had to take, the reaction they had to show, if would amount to a total human catastrophe in our eye, would also be nothing short of something absolutely surreal in the eye of the judicial agents. They said that persecutor had been shouting out loud at the house of detention, saying “it is a kindergarten here.” With all the costs that the state has undergone for crackdown, it lacks the necessary infrastructures for the successful administration the detainees of the mass protests at such a high level. In presence of a massive population of detainees put next to one another, with the perliminary previous demands in prison having piled up, can in long-run carry a serious security threat both within and without prisons!
In addition, since Apr. 2022, the state has been struggling to control the situation of its action for arrest, sentence enforcement, and the massive imprisonment of the political prisoners, on one side of this story, it has been imposing silence on the extra-prison atmosphere, yet, the state is well aware that there is another side to this story as well, that is the further politicization and activation of the prison environment in a collective way, and even if such a potential gradually moves to actualization, this very potentiality would make the lines separating prisons from their outside thinner, as even presently observable in form of collective messages, political actions, and solidarity among various prisons.
Acting upon such a public pardon, via such an explicit circular letter, more than anything else is the sign of a struggle for economic-political administration of a judicial system that cannot deny its crisis in maximal suppression, especially with circumstances in which capacity and integrity for elimination and murdering is logically expected to wear off out by the passage of time.
At a time when even the sheer release of news of an execution can increase society’s rage to an unprecedented level (such as demonstrations in the streets and by prisons), rather than making political suffocation more comprehensive, it amounts to the mechanisms of mass and direct suppression being met with crises increased day after day. If possible, maintaining collective solidarity and further transgressions would intensify such crises even further.
If the state does not defy its own circular letter concerning the public pardon, and prevent the release of some political prisoners, based on the same letter, in addition to the release of a certain part of the protestors of Zhina (Mahsa Amini) uprising, followed by the mandatory expression of commitment and penance and such idiotic demands, a number of the political prisoners imprisoned prior to the current uprising too, must be released immediately and unconditionally.
We expect the release of our comrades restlessly and cherish the reverence of freedom.
Hail to every single one of the partisans of “Woman, Life, Freedom” and with the hope of the revolutionary day-by-day progress of the oppressed, united.
Leila Husseinzadeh
Jan. 29, 2023
Originally published on:
https://www.jahantelegraf.com/1401/11/19/royal-pardon-or-desperation-of-the-judicial-system/