In response to the continuing escalation of repression in the
Kurdish areas of Iran a general commercial shutdown involving a wide
range of shops and businesses was organised on Sunday 7 August. The
shutdown follows protests by Kurds and the dictatorship's brutal and
punitive retaliation against them over the past month in much of
Iranian Kurdistan and other Kurdish towns (that are officially outside
Kurdistan province).
Protests began after the state murder of Shwaneh Ghaderi, a
politically active 30-year-old, on Saturday 9 July in Mahabad. His
death was the direct result of the Iranian regime's security forces
firing live rounds at a number of Kurdish youth. Not satisfied with the
killing of Ghaderi and injuring two other youths, they tied the body of
Shwaneh to the back of a Toyota jeep and dragged it through Mahabad
before turning it over to his family.
Since then big protests have engulfed many towns in the Kurdish areas.
Starting with Mahabad they have spread to Sardasht, Baneh, Piranshahr,
Sanandaj, and Saghez. In each town the regime's response has been yet
more repression. According to Kurdish groups the death toll across the
region has reached 20 with a further 300 wounded. On Wednesday 3 August
the security forces are reported to have killed at least 12
demonstrators and injured more than 70 people in a clash in the city of
Saghez.
The full repressive apparatus of the state has been deployed against
the Kurdish people: 100,000 soldiers and other security forces,
including 6,000 special forces, as well as helicopter gunships and so
on.
The anger of the Kurdish masses, however, has reached boiling point.
Despite all the forces that the Islamic-military dictatorship has
deployed the protesters in Saghez still managed to attack a
paramilitary outpost with sticks and stones. Government buildings,
including the governor's office, were also attacked and some were
ransacked. The protesters then gathered in the main square, chanting
"Down with Khameneii", the supreme leader.
At no time has the regime attempted to address the events that led to
the state killing of Ghaderi - there have not even been any token words
about bringing the perpetrators to justice. Yet in each town the Kurds
have posed their just demands: identifying the people responsible for
Ghaderi's death and bringing them to justice.
The root cause
The root cause of the Kurds' grievances, the partition and
subjugation of the Kurdish people by the borders imposed by imperialism
and its regional lackeys, is not merely a historic fact. The daily
humiliation and deprivation that the Kurds suffer within these
artificial states affects all aspect of their lives. Domination by the
Persians, the Arabs and the Turks means the ongoing denial of their
national and other rights. That is why the Kurdish question has the
potential to upset the whole structure of the region.
In the absence of any large scale solidarity from Kurds in other
countries and Iranian workers outside Kurdistan, and given the
shortcomings of the current Kurdish leadership, the general commercial
shutdown was all that the masses could achieve at this point. Shops and
businesses in Mahabad, Oshnooyeh, Piranshahr, Sardasht, Sanandaj,
Divandareh, Kamyaran and Saghez were shut down.
A lasting victory, however, cannot be achieved by the Iranian Kurds
alone. The Iranian workers must intervene to protect their Kurdish
brothers and sisters against their vicious and barbaric enemy. This is
their common enemy - the bourgeois state. The workers in other parts of
Iran should bear in mind that the methods of repression being unleashed
on the Kurds today are the methods that will be used in Tehran, Tabriz,
Esfahan, Ahvaz and other cities in the near future. This is the lesson
that history teaches us from many struggles throughout the world (e.g.,
the methods used by the British state in the north of Ireland were
eventually used against British workers on the mainland).
It is time for workers outside the Kurdish areas to go on strike to
change the balance of forces against the bourgeois state across the
whole of Iran in favour of all workers and exploited and oppressed
masses. It is also time for workers and socialists throughout the world
to take a clear stand in solidarity with the Kurdish people in their
struggle against this blood-soaked regime.
8 August 2005
