In Iran, poeticide had always been the ultimate and absolute embodiment of the struggle between freedom of expression and despotism since even before the dawn of the Constitutional Movement (1905-1911) and the execution through strangling of Tahira Qurrat’al Eyn, one of the founding disciples of Babi Religion, woman right activist and poet (in 1851) and under the reign of the Qajarid king, Nassir al din Shah; from Mirzadeh Eshghi and Farrokhi Yazdi, the former assassinated and the latter killed in prison in the reign of first Pahlavid king, to Said Soltanpour and Khosrow Golsorkhi, two socialist poets executed before and after the 1979 Revolution, well to Mohammad Mokhtari and Hamid Hajizadeh, two of the poets and writers state-murdered in what became known as state-driven serial killings in the 90’s, to our own time, Babk Abazari, a poet and publisher who left home in Tehran for work one day in 2015 and was found dead, washed off to the shores of Caspian Sea days after, and then later Baktash Abtin, to whom this memorial is dedicated, and later the case of Mohammad Shabani, a poet and unsheltered refugee, assassinated by the mercenaries’ of the regime in Turkey early in the course of Jina Movement in Iran, to these very latest weeks and months, infested with suppression and full of brutal silencing, through which poets have lived under the shadow of constant suppression; just to give a few examples, Ali Jahaniyan, a poet and political activist from Nahavand, was reported poisoned after having been abducted by the IRGC’s intelligence division; having been abducted by the security agents of this organization on Apr. 27, 2023, was taken to an unknown location and got transferred to Ayatollah Boroujerdi Hospital, in Boroujerd, two days after that due to severe poisoning. Media then reported his condition critical, and even though there has not been any follow-up news on his conditions, it certainly has not been a singled out case of state poisoning assassination in Iran since the outbreak of Jina Movement nevertheless. In the same month, in Bandarabbass, Nafiseh Zamanzadeh, a young poet pen-named as “Aram,” lost her life on Apr. 23, 2023, in an arson incident to her own house in the same city, which was deemed suspicious and staged by her friends and media. She had written and published poems in solidarity with Woman, Life, Freedom (Jina) Movement, and was said to be a participant in protests. In addition, last year, she was abducted and tortured by the security forces and got released after some time with her mobile phone never returned to her. It is worth mentioning that she was a leftist poet living alone and thus most probably contributed further to her staged assassination through a security-backed incarnation plot. In addition to these two cases, in the apex of Jina Movement, Mohammad Shabani, too, was found fallen from the fourth floor of an apartment in his residential area in a city in Turkey, wrapped in a blanket, soaking in blood, and with his both wrists cut open, he is then pronounced dead after being hospitalized in Turkey’s industrial city, Manisa, after some days of being in coma, on Oct. 23, 2022; even though, in this case, too, a staged suicide and security pressures on his surviving family members, not to mention the persistent compromising collaboration and cover-ups of the Turkish government with the Iranian state’s mercenaries resulted in the death of this refugee-seeking poet being identified as a case of suicide by the media and individuals affiliated with him, the evidence gathered since then leaves no room for any doubt that he, too, has been assassination by the state; next to such staged suicides, and deliberate poisonings, there is the phenomenon of prison democides whose murderous record dates back to a time earlier than the outbreak of Jina Movement; for instance, there has been the tragic case of Behnam Mahjoubi, one of the imprisoned dervishes and political prisoner kept in detention at Evin Prison who was also a democide victim of medical poisoning through the forced injection of chemical medications in prison who lost his life in Feb. 2021. Yet, his unforgettable statement released in the course of these repetitive and physically perishing conditions, when he was hospitalized at Amin’Abad (Razi) Mental Hospital, and where he said “here, I witnessed the fall of humanity,” has indeed taken a far more sinister ring to itself today and in face of the tragic death of each and every victim of this system who gets murdered in its prisons either by forced chemical medications, or poisoning, or under torture, or by intentional refusal of emergency treatment; “the fall of humanity” in all these cases appears as a blood-dripping epitaph, looming above these wronged gravestones. Yet again, this method, especially after Jina Movement and its bloody crackdown, has marked an unprecedented rise and a number of the arrested protestors of this movement have lost their lives after arrest and interrogation. In a more recent example, Arash Forouzandeh, one of the protestors active in Jina Movement, lost his life after being forced to drink water given to him by those security agents who had taken him under temporary and illegal arrest by the on Mar. 19, 2023.
Indeed, the regime’s list of poeticide is strikingly creative and diverse; by the same token, there is the case of Baktash Abtin, not forgotten by the public opinion as if an open wound; a poet and documentary filmmaker, brave and effective member of the Iranian Writers Association, who wrote and published poetry for many years and, in addition, had highlights in his career as a documentary filmmaker; he made 19 documentaries among which, some of the most famous ones are Park Mark and Mori Needs a Wife. Also, his documentary called Oct. 12, 1937, which portrays the life of the prominent Armenian-Iranian composer, Loris Tjeknavorian, received the prize of the best Long Portrait Film from the sixth Verity Cinema Festival. His last autographical documentary, A Termite with Baby Teeth, too, received an honorary diploma in the 12th independent festival of documentary cinema. His political profile opened by the severe injuries he received in the bloody crackdown of the Green Movement in 2009. A year after that, he becomes a member of the Iranian Writers Association and held key positions in this organization including its secretary, inspector, and a member of the board of directors. The biggest share of his presence and participation in that organization is spent under the constant shadow of summons, interrogation, house search and arrests; just to give an instance, back in 2015, the Iranian Writers Association, publishes the following announcement: “The Interrogation of a Member of the Iranian Writers Association: This morning, Apr. 16, 2015, Baktash Abtin, poet, filmmaker, and member of the board of directors in the Iranian Writers Association, and following the prior subpoena by the security agents, referred to the Central Compound of the Ministry of Intelligence, where he was persecuted around his activities in the Iranian Writers Association and also literary and cinematic topics. Prior to that, on Tuesday, Apr. 21, five agents of the Ministry of Intelligence, holding a warrant issued by the 12th division of the Interrogation department of Culture and Media Persecution Office, raiding Baktash Abtin’s house and conducted a house search through which they confiscated over a thousand film materials, family photos, mobile, laptop, and documents related to the Iranian Writers Association and announced to him that he had to make presence in the Ministry of Intelligence for further persecutions on Apr. 26. According to their announcement, his interrogations will be extended for the next two days.” Eventually, however, after multiple arrests and subpoenas, by the excuse of having published and distributed a volume of historical documents pertinent to this literary organization, was arrested along with some other members of the same organization in 2019 and charged with “propaganda against the regime,” “collusion and conspiracy against national security” and “encouraging women of the country to corruption and obscenity” for which he was put to trial at the 18th division of the Revolutionary Court and sentenced to six years of discretionary custodial imprisonment. Having been imprisoned since Sept. 2020, had to suffer from various illnesses and frequently commuted between hospitals and prison without being given any opportunity for proper treatment. Especially, a photo published by the dissident filmmaker, Mohammad Resoolof, himself a former political prisoner, portraying Baktash Abtin, in prison clothing, chained to his hospital bed. He also wrote: “they have chained the poet to a hospital bed by such thick shackles;” a photo that left a profound wound on the mass psyche of the cultural and literary communities, and publicly revealed the bottomless depths of the regime’s enmity with freedom of speech and authorship’s authority; and, alas, that despite the frequently rising tide of protests made by the public opinion and cultural communities, and despite the theatricals of the judicial authorities over correcting such measures and holding its perpetrators liable, they chained him to his hospital bed upon his second reference to a hospital from prison all the same. While serving his sentence in prison, Baktash Abtin contracted coronavirus twice; the first time, HRA, the Iranian human rights news agency, announced on Apr. 4, 2021, confirmed this news and stated that there had been no preventive means and measures in hand and all airing halls of Evin Prison, Ward 8, are joint. Nevertheless, at the end, instead of addressing the most basic rights of a prisoner, including emergency prison leave for hospitalization, they returned him to his ward before the fulfillment of his treatment process, and due to the unhealthy and destructive conditions of the notorious prisons of Iran, in Dec. 2021, he contracted coronavirus for the second time; yet, not only the prisoner authorities refrained from sending him to hospital, but also in face of the documented respiratory problems he had from before prison and him being in critical conditions caused by subsequent days went without any given treatment since the contraction, as attested to by his ward-mates, in prison’s infirmary, too, they took no step to save his life, who was burning in fever, other than prescribing some “acetaminophen and codeine” and took no action until they were, as some affiliated sources have confirmed, confronted by Baktash Abtin’s ward-mates and his own threat to self-immolate right in the middle of that infirmary. At the end, after his conditions rose above all alerts, they transferred him to hospital and there, while at the peak of his critical condition, struggling between life and death, as said earlier, chained him to his deathbed once more. Eventually, Baktash Abtin went to comma on Jan. 1st and passed away a week after on Jan. 8, 2022. After his prisoner-murder, Mohammad Rassolof made a documentary film called “Pre-Meditated Homicide” on the basis of the accounts given by witnesses and people close to Baktash Abtin, in the course of his terminal days which was released posthumously; this film is one of the most important documents of the Justice-Seeking Movement in Iran [pursuing justice for the victims of the regime], and it manages to meet up to its carefully chosen title with clear facts and details. Nevertheless, within the context of a profound public rage and in face of the most draconian security measures taken by the state, along with its military expedition, was buried and his burial site at Imam Zadeh Abdollah, in Shahreh Rey, turned into one of the focal struggle zones between the literary community and security forces, from his very funeral day to his 40th day of death anniversary, then to his first yearly anniversary, marked by waves of arrest and threat, on the one side, and shouting slogans against the regime and reciting poetry on weekends in his commemoration and at his burial site, on the other; a site, at which his Siyavoushesque fate [an ancient Iranian mythical symbol of martyrdom and blood spilled innocently, in addition to a historically perpetuated sense of justice-seeking] as if an open book of some horrific murder and historical oppression, growing upturned tulips; however, the memorial getting republished here was formerly published on some relevant literary websites and telegram channels. As trstified through the dates of the content gathered in it, the memorial had been compiled in the immediate months coming after Baktash Abtin’s state-murder, yet, due to the reign of a hyper-security-minded ambiance over the literary community in Iran, its creators, mostly residing in the country, only managed to publish it months later and, expectedly, anonymously. Here, we merely republish on IWAC, this memorial dedicated to this martyr of freedom of speech, who foretold his fate, in a poem written at Evin Prison in Jan. 2022, which goes: “…he had been tortured / yet, in solitary confinement / he was whispering an epic lyrics / he, soon, / was to be executed at daybreak / and, once again, / on the hanging rope’s shoulders / the empty space of a human being / enforced its weight,” given its historical value as resistance documented against that historical amnesia which is favored most by the poeticide.
