CP(M)A: "Stand up against the execution of Afghanistan immigrants in Iran!"

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Thursday June 24, 2010 15:21 by Drew - World People's Resistance Movement

A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a statement by the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan dated 17 May 2010. Translation by A World to Win News Service.

In recent weeks, 45 Afghanistanis in Iran accused of drug trafficking have been executed. The Iranian authorities handed over the bodies to their families at a price of 1.5 million Iranian Touman (around $1,500). It is said that some of their internal organs were removed. It is also said that many more – as many as 3,000 – have been sentenced to die.

There have protests against the mass murder of Afghanistani citizens in Iran, motivated by various considerations. However the puppet regime [in Afghanistan] and its occupier masters have chosen to remain silent. They are in fact cooperating with this crime and have an interest in it. The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the backers of the traitor conference in Bonn (December 2001) that took place under imperialist supervision. It has also been one of the regional backers of the puppet regime and so far has spent around a billion dollars on the so-called reconstruction programme in Afghanistan. Because of its own contradictions with the U.S., the Islamic Republic of Iran sometimes voices opposition to the foreign forces in Afghanistan and backs some circles of the fundamentalist opposition to varying degrees, but it is mainly one of the regional backers of the puppet regime, and the two have good relations.

Furthermore, the drug trafficking networks in Afghanistan linked to high puppet regime officials, including Vali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, and Ghasim Fahim, Karzai's vice president, cannot do business without connections and relations with the network of drug traffickers and dealers in Iran linked to high officials of the Islamic regime there.

According to the puppet regime officials and their foreign masters, there is no basis for the employment of more than 60 percent of Afghanistan's population. In fact, given the framework of the international division of labour under U.S. domination, Afghanistan has been relegated to producing drugs and labourers for neighbouring and other countries.

This is the reason why a big section of Afghanistan's workers have been forced to emigrate, largely to Iran and Pakistan. Most have no valid official residency or work permits, and are paid less than local workers. The hundreds of thousands of Afghanistan immigrants in those two countries are under especially severe pressure. They are brutally exploited – in Iran, their wages are half of those of Iranian workers and they cannot benefit from any social services. They face constant Iranian chauvinism and the threat of arrest and deportation. If they are arrested, they may be sent to prison under various pretexts without having the right to a legal defence. Or they may even be executed.

At the present time around 6,000 Afghanistani toilers are in prison in Iran. Most of the accusations against them involve illegal border crossing, illegal residency, trafficking and selling drugs and in some cases theft and murder. The majority of those accused of drug trafficking have nothing to do with drugs, and they have been falsely accused. Those involved in drug trafficking can be divided into two categories. Those who work for the networks connected to the Iranian government have immunity; even if they are arrested they are often quickly released. The others are small drug traffickers and dealers who work for themselves or networks not connected to the Iranian government.

The networks connected to the Iranian government play the central role in trafficking and transferring drugs. They act through the Iranian security forces to eliminate their rivals. The arrested, imprisoned and executed immigrants from Afghanistan who really have been involved in the drug trade belong to this latter category. Only a few of the 45 executed have been really traffickers or dealers, and the majority of those executed or still in prison were framed up on the basis of false dossiers. It is very likely that in the near future or whenever it feels like it, the criminal government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will execute more of these prisoners.

It is likely that the mass murder of 45 Afghanistanis in Iran is the preface to a bloody internal suppression or a cover for the Islamic Republic to make deals with the imperialists behind closed doors. In any case, it is not possible to remain silent in the face of these continuing crimes by the Iranian Islamic regime.

The Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan condemns the mass execution of Afghanistani immigrants and the mass imprisonment of these immigrants in Iran. To oppose these brutal crimes and to prevent their continuation, we should organise movements and struggles against the dependent mercenaries of the Iranian regime, on all levels inside and outside the country, in the appropriate forms.

The Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan considers the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose hands are deeply soaked in the blood of the children of the Iranian peoples and the blood of the Afghanistani immigrants in Iran, one of the regional enemies of the revolutionary people’s national resistance, and naturally the main enemy of the Iranian revolution, and considers it a link in the chain of international reaction. We believe that we should launch a common struggle, in regional cooperation with the communists and revolutionary forces in Iran, against the imperialist occupiers and their puppet regime in Afghanistan, and wage a common struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran, that regional collaborator of the occupier-puppet regime.

Death to the criminal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

Down with the imperialist occupiers and their puppet regime!

Advance towards the launching and waging of the revolutionary people’s national resistance against the imperialist occupiers and the puppet regime!

Advance towards the launching and waging of coordinated regional struggles against the occupiers and puppet regime and the reactionary Islamic Republic of Iran, a regional collaborator of the puppet regime in Afghanistan!