Sermons from the Priests of Transitional Justice
by Somayeh Kargar
October 2, 2023
Editors’ note: We are reprinting a recent talk by Somayeh Kargar on a Zoom discussion themed “Seeking Justice: Quality, Strategy, and Goal” organized by the Committee for the Remembrance of the 1988 Political Prisoners Massacre. Somayeh, a former political prisoner in Iran, was arrested in October 2020 (just before the first anniversary of the November 2019 uprising). She was charged with establishing and running the Osyan Women’s Collective۱ and acting for the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM). Her co-defendants had included Nahid Taghavi and Mehran Raouf, both dual-nationality citizens still unjustly held in Evin prison. Somayeh was held in solitary confinement in Evin for many months but her lawyers’ vigorous defense, and proof that she could not physically tolerate imprisonment due to acute illness, led to her release and her case being closed. Below is her speech translated and edited for publication by revcom.us volunteers. The speech is in its original Farsi at cpimlm.org of the Communist Party of Iran (MLM).
The link between the massacre of a generation of 1980s activists and the Justice Seeking Movement that emerged from the Woman-Life-Freedom Uprising is the issue of how to seize political power. And the question to be resolved is which path to take: the path of reform or the path of revolution?
This is why different socio-political forces have stepped into this landscape and are trying to promote the path that will facilitate the seizure of power by whichever class they prefer [or represent]. Based on serving one of these two paths, various formations have come on scene and are trying to shape the [political] landscape, going so far as to redefine and re-interpret a past event like the 1988 massacre.۲
They use terms such as transitional justice, human rights and narrative to put their own twist on the [popular] demand for revolution that surfaced in the Jina uprising and in order to divert it into the channel of the “regime change.” And here, I’m not just talking about right-wing forces. Even a section of those who consider themselves part of the Left are moving in that direction. This is a serious problem that must be spoken to by political forces, at least by those who claim to be for revolution.
The massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s, especially the 1988 massacre, is a crime that flowed from and was essential to the functioning of ruling system in Iran. The judicial crimes of the regime stem from its character as a capitalist theocratic-fascist regime (of the sort that is dependent on capitalism-imperialism). Evidence of this can be found in 45 years worth of testimonials and government documents, in the social theories of the leaders and heads of the Islamic Republic, in the country’s security doctrines, its constitution, in the Islamic penal code and its laws of retribution—which enforce an inferior status on women by imposing mandatory hijab—and in the transcripts of its “revolutionary” courts, with their repression, imprisonment, torture and systematic executions during the uprisings of 2018, 2019, and the Jina uprising.
The massacres of the 1980s are not some narrative. They are a reality, and a consequence of how the ruling system functions. Turning this into a “narrative” with “sub-narratives”—the so-called “narrative-truth” of the Islamic Republic, the “narrative-truth” of the martyrs, the “narrative-truth” of the families—alters the nature of the event and leaves room for the justification and the continuation of such horrors. It creates an atmosphere of doubting and denying the event, or attributes it to the actions and moods of this or that individual. In such an environment, the Islamic Republic dares to say there was no such massacre, or that they did the right thing!
Some intellectuals, influenced by the postmodernist doctrine of narrative, say we should take into account the viewpoints of all who were involved: the Islamic Republic, the families, ourselves, the dead! Let’s hear all of the narratives so we can “recognize our own internal demons, and critique them.”۳
“Taking point of view into account” means that everyone is to blame for that crime. It obscures or at minimum diminishes the culpability of the state, trivializing the repressive actions taken by the state in order to maintain its grip on political power. This will, in fact, lead to questioning why the dead dared to demand revolution! The narrative-driven arguments over the Jina uprising will be reduced to questioning whether Jina even had the “right” to dress [as she was]. Why didn’t she follow the rules on compulsory hijab? Why did people protest, causing more people to be killed? In a word, it “normalizes evil” [by the regime].
During their period of influence and power, the reformist forces in the Islamic Republic and their “women’s movement” injected this type of thinking into people’s minds (e.g., with the “One Million Signatures Campaign”), and its effects are still influential.
This is the problem with “narrative” versus truth. The fact of the matter is that state power exists. The reality is there, whether you see it or not. “Narrative” does not “see” and does not allow others to see the workings of the system that leads it to kill, oppress, imprison and execute.
At some point, a few government reformers, under pressure from exposures of the 1980s massacres, said. “We made a mistake!” They made public a recording of [then-Ayatollah] Montazeri saying that this massacre was a crime that will go down in history. But that’s not enough! What is it about this government, and this political power that requires repression?
Any explanation that discloses only part of the truth distorts it. The narrative that portrays the 1980s martyrs as victims is incomplete, and therefore at odds with reality. The 1980s martyrs had ideals and gave their lives for those ideals. The 1988 massacre, while important, is only a portion of the Islamic Republic’s crimes and repression. The regime’s goal was, by use of dagger and branding iron, to turn a revolutionary generation into a horror-mirror as a warning to future generations.
Transitional Justice
Using concepts like transitional justice, instead of “the overthrow of the Islamic Republic by waging revolution,” creates an ideology of “peaceful coexistence” with this regime that makes these criminals into partners of “peaceful transition.”
The state’s ruling class and their capitalist system need to produce and reproduce oppression and exploitation using various methods, while at the same time preventing rebellion and resistance against these conditions, or by diverting rebellion and resistance into channels that cannot reach the level of a revolutionary overthrow of the status quo.
Transitional justice is a solution created by the institutions and think tanks of the imperialist world system, who aim for “regime change” in Iran while preventing the collapse of the structures of law and order (security and military forces), as happened when the Shah’s regime was replaced by the Islamic Republic. One of the requirements to achieve this solution is to rely on the ruling forces, or a major portion of them. The strategy or the roadmap of transitional justice is based on the belief that the principle structures of political power (such as the IRGC [Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps] and security repression apparatus) remain intact, and a regime is formed with the participation of the same people and a section of the “opposition.”
Basically, transitional justice expresses the ideas of the worldwide capitalist-imperialist system’s engineers and managers on how to “manage” the crises that inevitably arise as a result of the operation of systems of brutal oppression and exploitation in different parts of the world. No freedom-seeking or justice-seeking movement can or should prevent us from seeing that the roots of these crimes against humanity lie within the system of imperialist exploitation and oppression.
Transitional justice has two key concepts: first, it believes that in order to build a “post-Islamic Republic” society, it is necessary to carry out exercises in trust-building. Recognition of some of the crimes of the former regime and punishing its worst offenders is one example of that sort of trust-building measure. This process is supposed to help “console” victims and “tranquilize” them to ready them for the second key concept.
The second key concept of transitional justice is to call on [all] parties (victims and criminals) to make deep concessions to each other. A concentrated expression of this is the saying “we don’t forget, but we forgive.” Those who defend this view believe that a lack of reconciliation among the parties will fuel violence that would be detrimental to “national reconstruction,” and that “national reconstruction” is made possible through “national reconciliation.” In the meantime, to justify a compromise with the [regime’s] criminals, they popularize the phrase “we don’t want revenge.” This is a deliberate distortion because what we need to decide is what to do about the regime, its institutions and practices, not taking revenge against individuals. But from the perspective of transitional justice, both sides must tell their story, and in the end, the criminals [in the regime] should apologize as individuals, either be punished or not, in order to create national reconciliation, and the criminal and the victim can live together happily ever after, in joy and glee till the end of their lives! Like a Disney cartoon! The doctrine of transitional justice is a priestly preaching for the oppressed to surrender to the oppressors’ rule.
What makes the path of transitional justice so extremely reactionary is the advantage it gives the ruling system including the guarantee of its survival. Regardless of our own wishes and feelings, or the wishes and feelings of its defenders, the objective nature of this view is reactionary and obsolete and it must be explicitly exposed and rejected as such. Complicit silence about it or a pragmatic cooperation with this kind of thinking means turning our backs on the people and on the revolution that our society so urgently needs, the first step of which is to overthrow the Islamic Republic in its entirety.
Lenin says: “All oppressive classes need two social functions to maintain their rule: that of hangman and priest. The hangman is needed to put down the protests and the anger of the oppressed, and the priest is needed to console the oppressed and give them hope that their suffering and hardship can be alleviated by reconciling with, and remaining within the framework of class rule.”
We should not underestimate the role that this concept plays. And, there should be no ambiguity as to which class it serves.
The doctrine of “moderation” and “non-violence” has come to be a barrier against the necessity of revolutionary change that burst forth from every crack in [Iranian] society. In fact, transitional justice condemns the people’s attempts to make a revolution but leaves the door wide open for continued state violence and repression.
As the priests of transitional justice explain, their aim is to “console and calm” the “victim.” Our justice-seeking movement cannot and must not proceed within the framework of transitional justice, which is the line of compromise and concession to the Islamic Republic and adherence to the international judicial system. Rather, it must move outside the framework of this system and the way of thinking that it fosters.
Transitional justice is a “change from above” to solve the crisis of the regime’s legitimacy, of a system of horrendous oppression and exploitation. The names and faces may change, but only within the same frameworks and foundations. Systematic crimes of the political system and its state get reduced to the decisions and decrees of groups of individuals, and ultimately to just individuals. The [role of] the system gets hidden by the focus on these behaviors and the institutions and the laws that support them.
A variety of [political] currents and ideological trends advocate transitional justice, but their point of unity about the future of our society is this: to reconcile the two sides of the bloody 45-year-old battle. A concentrated expression of this is the 1988 massacre. The intellectuals and lawyers who sincerely support the solution of transitional justice must know that it is impossible to balance the two sides of this huge social divide that is ultimately between victim and executioner. Trying to strike such a balance will end up favoring the continuation of the status quo in a new form.
Transitional justice calls on victims to see the situation within a United Nations/human rights [framework] and try to “solve” the problem this way. It is an important fact that all the human rights activities were not able to prevent or stop the Islamic Republic suppression of the Jina uprising. Just look at the recent years, in 2017, in 2019, in 2021 and the suppression of people’s protests last year [2022].
My intention is not to say that human rights activities should not be done. Never! But if it becomes the principle and the framing of justice seeking, it will actually put an end to justice seeking. The justice seeking of 1988 massacre by the survivors and the supporters of the families, and the historian researchers in this field, was able to remain ongoing, because it did not proceed in this framework. What’s the big deal about the United Nations? It is a gathering place for governments under whose rule [Iran’s] 1988 massacres were committed, and other crimes all around the world were committed and will be committed. The UN Human Rights Charter holds sacred the principle of private property. All the suppressions and the murders and the necessity for the existence of repressive governments are ultimately due to preserving this principle.
If people in the justice seeking movement (and other movements) want to open the way for real change, they must operate outside the framework of the world’s governing system and its institutions (where governments, including the Islamic Republic, have a seat on their governing bodies), and outside of the ideology and strategies produced by this system. Mobilizing within it, willingly or unwillingly, co-opts the movement into collaboration with the system. It might be an unhappy collaboration, but a collaborator nonetheless!
Governments have their own interests. As we saw in the women’s uprising, for life, freedom and beyond. While our people were being killed, arrested and executed, the world powers who had supposedly expressed solidarity with the Iranian people were secretly negotiating, having give-and-take with the Islamic Republic to decide the future of Iran, as they wished. Governments have their own interests and we the people of the world have our own interests. We are the oppressed and exploited of the world. Our common interest is to eradicate these conditions, and we must support one another and represent internationalism. [A different] concept of human rights must be brought to the people everywhere in the world, and the oppressors must be pushed back by relying on the people of the world. This form of human rights activism creates a new meaning of freedom: the freedom of all the people of the world to eradicate oppression and exploitation.
When exposing the truth about the 1980s massacres, first of all, it must not be framed in instrumentalist ways that serve reactionary and reformist solutions. Secondly, stating or fully acknowledging the truth about these killings is still only half the work. Only the eradication of the political, ideological and socio-economic system from which this crime and other crimes of the Islamic Republic arose can bring about justice. Therefore, we “neither forgive nor forget,” because we want to make revolution. We want to create a political, economic and social system that does not need to oppress the people. This aim can only be realized through a communist revolution, whose goal and roadmap is concentrated in the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) and the Constitution of the New Socialist Republic of Iran.
See also:
Revolution, Nothing Less for Iran and Everywhere
Statement by the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) – Cpimlm.org
A Revolution Is Impossible Without a Revolutionary War to Overthrow the Ruling Government
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FOOTNOTES:
۱. Osyan means Rebellion in the Farsi language. It is a group of Iranian and Afghan women who are the voice of women’s rebellion to express the determination, and to serve the struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Taliban. [back]
۲. The IRI secretly killed over 5,000 political prisoners in a series of mass executions during the summer and fall of 1988. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a secret fatwa (theocratic ruling), that established an execution tribunal to purge opposition to the regime. Tens of thousands of men and women political prisoners, were brought before this tribunal. Thousands were condemned to death, sent immediately to the gallows, and buried in unmarked mass graves. This all remained a closely guarded state secret for decades. See “Nasser Mohajer Speaks at Revolution Books in Berkeley” on the program with the author of Voices of a Massacre. It is the only book on this Great Massacre published in English. In it, Naser Mohajer documents the unfolding of this massacre, the courage of the prisoners, as well as the ongoing and necessary struggle to demand justice. [back]
۳. Part of Faraj Sarkohi’s talk entitled “The Contemporary Meaning of the Massacre of Summer 1988.” September 3, 2023 at the Mainz Cultural Center. [back]