The
Regime's Cultural Revolution:
April 21st marks the
anniversary of the ruling regime's Cultural Revolution. During the dark decade
of the 1980s, the regime aggressively pursued the members and supporters of all
dissident political groups, expelling or incarcerating and viciously torturing
many. The universities were closed for two years and many distinguished
professors were expelled as a result of political purges. In the cultural arena,
the ruling regime began a widespread offensive against authentic Iranian
culture, against the history of ancient Iranian civilization, and against Iran's
national heroes.
The history of Iran was altered, great
Iranian writers and poets were slandered, and many Iranian historical artifacts
were either destroyed or sold to strangers. The press was intimated and censored
and all manifestations of culture, civil society, civilization, science and
learning, and progress and flourishing were adamantly opposed.
The
ruling regime upheld theoreticians of violence such as Motaherri and Beheshti
and presented these obdurate proponents of tyranny as philosophers and scholars
while Iran's intellectuals and freedom seekers were sent to the gallows.
The
regime's founders, worshipping the culture of torture, took up executions
without due process, violence, flogging, stoning, and the slashing of women's
faces with razors and broken glass and turned the land of Iran into a
suffocating and despotic hell. The regime's antagonism towards the culture and
college students of Iran reached its culmination in the July 9,1999 attacks
against Tehran University where the regime's agents, in breaking the bones of
students and throwing them off of roofs, revealed their true aim of destroying
the people's culture and maintaining a despotic regime.
Currently,
the dictatorship of Iran cannot tolerate the freedom of press and responds to
the objections of Iran's teachers and supporters of culture with batons and
swords. Students are still incarcerated as a result of the 1999 attacks against
the university. The scars they bear from the torture and pressures they have
endured are evidence of the ruling regime's cruelty and oppression.
Compatriots-
The ruling regime has recently begun a new wave of repression. With the arrest
of two student activists, Koorosh Sahti and Amir Abbas Fakhravar (Siavash), it
continues its offensive against the people of Iran and the Third Current. The
Third Current seeks the freedom of all dissident political parties, the
separation of religion from the state, the release of all political prisoners,
the establishment of human rights, the equality of men and women, the
institution of a real democracy within a secular framework, and the overthrow of
the apparatus of the ruling regime.
As
such, this year's July 9th demonstrations will be directed against the regime
and will ask for a referendum to determine the country's future government.
During this year's July 9th demonstrations, we will proceed on a grand scale
with the slogan of referendum and we will show the world our aversion towards
the ruling regime.
Great
people of Iran- Participating in the July 9, 2003 demonstrations will bring
about freedom from the regime of the guardianship of the jurist-theologian.
Currently, the regime is much weaker than it pretends. With the downfall of
Sadam's dictatorship, the leaders of the Iranian regime such as Rafsanjani have
been profoundly bewildered and frightened.
Now,
it is our national duty to announce our aversions and repulsion with the current
regime with cries for a referendum to determine a new government. If other
Middle Easter nations who are in the grips of dictatorial regimes are being
freed one by one, the Iranian nation also deserves to gain its freedom and
declares with all of its might:
"We
don't want an Islamic Republic, We want a democracy!"
The
National Union of Iranian Students and
Graduates
Alliance of Iranian Students