Statement of Secretariat of the Central Committee of Tudeh Party of Iran on the prosecution, arrest and assault on militant and courageous activists campaigning for women rights in Iran

Dear compatriots!

On the eve of the International Women's Day, a group of courageous and militant Iranian women gathered peacefully in front of the “Revolutionary Courts” to express their solidarity with the imprisoned women's rights activists, and to protest against the anti-human measures of the Regime's injustice courts and the trial of five of the female activists who had participated in the peaceful demonstrations of June 2006. The peaceful protest of the militant and conscious women of our country was met by with a vicious assault of the Velayat-e Faqih (Supreme Religious Leader) Regime’s thugs, and resulted in the arrest of tens of militants and activists of women's movements of our country. According to the latest reports, the detained militants have started a hunger strike in protest to the anti-human actions of their captors.

Suppression, assault, harassment and torture of those campaigning for freedom and people's right is a distinctive characteristics of the despotic and medieval Regime in our country that Iranian women are very well familiar with its anti-human facets. Clampdown on the women militants on the eve of the International Women's Day, while the women's rights activists were trying to make this day into a peaceful protest day against the violence and violation of the rights of the oppressed women of our country, is nothing but the clear message of reactionary thugs and accomplices of Velayat-e faqih in continuing the policies that in the past quarter of a century has committed atrocities against the women of our country. The aim is the restoration of a gender apartheid on based on medieval ideas.

The growth of the struggles of our nation's women in the past decade has been and will be a blow in the face of the reactionary and pro-Velayat (Supreme religious Leadership) individuals. The significant role of women in the triumph of the popular movement of 23 May 1997 [during presidential elections leading to the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami] and the beginning of the reform era, and the efforts of worker and student women in the fore-front of the struggles of social forces for people's rights and to repulse the despots, has fortified the hatred and hostility of the reactionaries against the militant women of our country.

Tudeh Party of Iran strongly condemns the brutal attack of the Velayat-e Faqih Regime’s thugs on the peaceful gathering of the militant women of our country, and expresses its solidarity with the courageous women that are on a hunger strike in the prisons. We call upon all the progressive and freedom fighting forces of Iran and the world to protest the repression of justice-seeking movement of Iranian women, and demand unconditional and immediate release of the detainees of March the 4th.

Secretariat of the Central Committee of Tudeh Party of Iran 6th March 2007