For the Islamic regime in Iran stoning is a survival tool. This criminal regime has for over three decades enchained the entire Iranian society through jailing, flogging, torturing, executing, stoning, etc., and thus managed to prolong its despicable life. Stoning more than 150 people, predominantly women, to death for the ‘crime’ of sex out of wedlock; continuous execution of political opponents, including the massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners and burying them in unmarked mass graves; systematic execution of adolescents; execution of the gay people; flogging men and women in public, as well as in front of their loved ones; gouging eyes; amputating limbs; killing the ‘perpetrators’ by pushing them off the cliff; torturing political prisoners physically and emotionally in a multitude of unspeakable ways; opening fire on people in the streets; assassination of opposition activists and personalities inside and outside the country form only a part of this regime’s horrendous track record.

On the one hand, sentencing Sakineh Ashtiani to stoning or hanging is a manifestation of the criminal nature of the Islamic state in Iran, and, on the other hand, fighting to free her is a part of the struggles of the people of Iran, as well as the world, for liberation from this medieval regime. For the past 30 years the Iranian people have been waging continuous, steadfast struggles against the criminal regime in different fields. These struggles reached their peak, and captured the world’s attention, in the summer of last year. Neda Agha-Soltan and Sakineh Ashtiani are two faces, two symbols, of the same revolutionary movement in Iran. Neda fell victim to the murderous regime, but Sakineh can, and must, be saved. Saving Sakineh will be a great step forward in the struggle against the Islamic Republic as well as against the world movement of political Islam in its entirety.

The Islamic Republic is the back bone of Islamic terrorism, which today constantly commits crimes throughout the world, especially in the Middle East and north of Africa. Bringing down the regime in Iran will be a hard blow to the whole movement of political Islam across the world. The people of Iran and, indeed, the world must, therefore, rid themselves of the Islamic Republic. The on-going revolutionary movement in Iran and the current international campaign against stoning are showing the people of the world the real, humane way of doing just that. Military attack or economic siege is not the way. The real way is that the people, the personalities and the progressive organizations of the world support the struggles of the Iranian people, and the governments as well as international bodies refuse to recognize the Islamic regime and isolate it proactively. That is the only viable, humane, civilized and practicable way to bring it down. Even if people are only worried about this regime’s nuclear projects and its support for terrorism in the region, they must actively support the struggles of the Iranian people.

The international campaign against stoning and execution in Iran is now spearheading these struggles. Join this campaign, and support it in any way you can!

Worker-communist Party of Iran
August 25, 2010