Translation of the lead article from Khiaban #44. (You can see pdf uploads of Khiaban newspaper in Farsi here.)
The article, among other insights, shows the deep contradiction in the Iranian regime's rhetoric; namely, the rhetoric regarding the existence of 'legal means' to pursue any problems existing in the country, including the total lack of ANY rights by any citizens!! More importantly, the article points to the inability of the reformist path in bringing about the real changes that are desperately needed by a great majority of Iranians.
The coup regime is now busy closing down the offices of the legal opposition. And when this coup regime, as would befit its nature, closes off all the legal means for addressing social problems, what choice is left to the people?
Long live the revolution!
Khiaban # 44 / Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The officials of Tehran's prosecutor's office have sealed Mehdi Karroubi's office as well as the office of the National Trust party and have arrested the editor of the party's website. Likewise, Morteza Alviri, an aide to Mehdi Karroubi and his representative in the committee looking into the cases of those violently attacked in the recent events, was arrested at his home.
Other reports indicate that the offices of the Association for the Defense of Prisoners were also sealed at the order of Tehran's new prosecutor.
Hours after that, news came of the arrest of Ali-Reza Beheshti, an aide to Moussavi and his representative on the committee investigating detainee abuses. The day before, the offices of the committee looking into detainee abuses had also been sealed, and all documents and available evidence in the office confiscated and taken by the security forces. This recent wave of arrests comes a short time after Moussavi's latest statement regarding the need for the continuation of the activities by reformists in the mould of an organization called the Green Path of Hope. It is possible that in the coming days Karroubi and Moussavi too will be arrested.
Along these lines, we hear murmurs of transferring the leadership of the reformist tendencies to their activists residing outside Iran.
It seems that the country's political scene is experiencing a new development. In the days after the electoral fraud, a temporary situation was created in which, in order to lower the cost of the political struggle, the people needed the reformists and the reformists, in order to prevent their own complete elimination at the hands of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad gang, needed the people.
The reformists' fear of street politics, their inclination toward keeping the existing political structures, their invested hopes in haggling up above, and the lack of strategy and appropriate organization in order to confront fascism have all caused the reformists to abandon the people on the streets, and to engage in media-based projects. With the violent crackdown on ordinary people in the streets, and in the absence of the reformist leaders among the people's street protests, the streets fell under the military occupation of fascism.
With the consolidation of the military regime, the turn has come now for the complete elimination of the reformists. Fascism is a murderous machine, whose internal dynamism tends toward eradication. After eradicating the dissident youth in the streets, it eradicates journalists and weblog writers. Then, the legal political forces. It will then go after the university students and professors. Then, they will go after the lawyers and the intellectuals. Then, there will be the mass killing of workers and women. And the order for butchering the sciences has already been issued by Khamenei. University campuses will soon be handed over to the paid goons of the regime. In Ms. Dast-jerdi's [health ministry] bureaucracy, doctors will soon be punished for treating naa-mahram [a person of opposite sex not related to the doctor by blood or marriage; in orthodox Islam, people of opposite sex not related to each other shall not see each other's body _ trans. note]. This is the killing machine of the Islamic Republic. Here, there cannot exist any spontaneous transition toward freedom.
People's power -- a solidarity crystallized in the slogan, "Do not fear, do not fear; we are all together here!" -- is the sole and only force capable of putting an end to the Islamic Republic and its machinery of death. But, organizing and activating this power needs a new strategy.
The coup regime thinks that by eliminating the reformists, people's resistance against the regime will end too. But, people have learned that in order to achieve freedom and collective social wellbeing, they need each other. A confederation of people's resistance committees and organizations fighting for the liberation of the society, and whose connections to each other is formed and strengthened in the course of their struggle, will be a massive people's front confronting the religious dictatorship.
Now that the reformists are no longer left alone in the margins of safety, people's relationship with the reformists will resemble their relationship with any other trend or party. Political programs/platforms and practical strategies for action will become the determining factors. Reformism has shown its impracticality. Newer offices will be have to be opened.
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