Seeking Mansoor Hekmat

Maryam Namazie
Welcoming address at Mansoor Hekmat’s memorial ceremony
July 10, 2004
London

Mansoor Hekmat, the great Marxist thinker and leader of the worker-communist movement and parties, not only represents a former generation of the undefeated of the Iranian revolution of 1979, but today, he also represents a new generation struggling against the Islamic Republic of Iran and Islamic reaction. And he represents not just a generation in Iran, but also generations in Iraq, the Middle East, and the world struggling against political Islam and the USA’s New World Order. He is the voice and representative of civilised humanity against both poles of international terrorism in the world today – USA-led and Islamic.

You can see him clearly in the fight against the hejab in Europe, against the Sharia court in Canada, against stoning in the Middle East and North Africa, against minoritism and cultural relativism… You can see him clearly in the fight for secularism, universal rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, refugee rights, workers’ rights… In any fight for humanity and human dignity, you can see him clearly.

He once said that society seeks out its Left and holds its Left in high esteem because it needs justice, and so it is that civilised humanity of the 21st century seeks out and is seeking Mansoor Hekmat and holds him in the highest esteem because it needs justice. It needs a resolute, confident, undefeated humanism, which is nothing other than worker-communism.

And so we gather here on July 10, 2004 to commemorate this great and beloved human being, his aspirations, his demands, and his movement for a life worthy of human beings in the 21st century, for a better world…