The disgraceful history of the Islamic bourgeoisie is a history soaked in blood; a system born in blood and consolidated through the orchestration of bloodbaths. This regime has not only been founded upon the systematic suppression of class struggle, but has also secured the foundations of its survival through torture, the silencing of every dissenting voice, and the shackling of human beings.

Within this framework, the violation of human dignity and the denial of the most basic human rights have become routine. The unrestrained massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners in prisons that can rightly be described as the ‘Auschwitzes of the Islamic bourgeoisie’ is only part of this regime’s disgraceful record; a record which demonstrates that its survival has only been possible through naked and organised physical repression.

On 12 April 2026, in a context in which the political atmosphere was described as a temporary ceasefire, one of the well-known figures of the 1980s repressive apparatus—a death judge, a butcher, a tyrant, an executioner—died after a period of illness. His name was Seyyed Hossein Pourmirghafari, known as Seyyed Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi.

Mousavi Tabrizi, during the consolidation of Islamic bourgeois power, entered the judicial structure of the new regime and served as a Sharia judge in the provinces of East and West Azerbaijan. This position made him one of the principal enforcers of the regime’s repressive policies during that period.

What began in the summer of 1981 was not merely an intensification of repression; it was the declaration of the open rule of state terror. Mousavi Tabrizi, who had already issued death sentences prior to that time, became an unrestrained figure within the machinery of killing—a judge who issued nothing but death sentences. He himself had clearly articulated the logic of this apparatus: the wounded must be made more wounded, and those arrested must be killed.

In the shadow of such a logic, repression became routine and systematic. This perpetrator, with cruelty and brutality, laid waste to a generation of those who had helped create the momentous events of 1979. What took place was not merely the physical elimination of individuals, but a conscious attempt to destroy those who had themselves been among the creators and witnesses of those historic days; an attempt to erase historical memory.

The name ‘Land of the Cursed’, which the criminals in power assigned to a section of the Vadi-e Rahmat cemetery in Tabriz where the victims of Mousavi Tabrizi are buried, itself reflects the depth of hatred and brazen contempt embedded in the filthy repression of the Islamic bourgeoisie. Within this logic, even the deaths of the victims were to be humiliated, and collective memory was to be suppressed.

Following the death of Qodousi in an explosion, this executioner, in recognition of his criminal record, was appointed on 6 September 1981 as Prosecutor-General of the country with special powers. This appointment was not merely the promotion of an individual, but the consolidation of his position at the head of the machinery of repression; a position that made him one of the principal symbols of the dictatorial apparatus of repression in the 1980s.

In the 1990s, a faction of the Islamic bourgeoisie reached the conclusion that, in order to manage the crises of a peripheral capitalism and reduce the intensity of confrontation with the West, it was necessary to revise its political and foreign policy approach. Within this framework, it promoted the slogan of the ‘Dialogue of Civilisations’, seeking, on the one hand, to break international isolation and create conditions for attracting investment and expanding economic relations, and, on the other hand, to introduce, domestically, concepts such as ‘civil society’ in order to create a limited and controlled opening within the same existing order. This tendency gradually became known as the ‘reformist’ faction.[1]

In this context, figures such as Saeed Hajjarian—who himself was among the principal founders of the octopus-like Ministry of Intelligence—emerged as theorists of this current. Even this same death judge became a reformist.

Contrary to the demagogy of both right- and left-wing tendencies of capital regarding bourgeois democratic institutions, which reduce criminals to individuals, it must be emphasised that these criminals are not merely the product of a dictatorship, but of a class system, irrespective of its ideological superstructure.[2]

These criminals—executioners and hangmen—would not have been capable of committing such crimes outside of their specific social relations. As long as the class system remains in place, the death of executioners and criminals will not bring about any change in the system as a whole, and one criminal will simply replace another. For this reason, what must be targeted is the class system itself, which produces and reproduces these criminals and executioners.

As long as the class society that constitutes the very basis of state repression is not abolished, the production of criminals will not cease. The reality is that bourgeois dictatorship and bourgeois democracy are two sides of the same coin—namely, the barbarism of capitalism. History has shown that the bourgeoisie, whenever it feels threatened, readily tramples on its democratic and so-called humanitarian principles.

For example, the democratic bourgeoisie in the cradle of its civilisation, France, following the fall of the Paris Commune, slaughtered around 30,000 Parisian proletarians in the space of a week, without its democratic conscience being in any way disturbed. Likewise, it was only after the systematic killing of more than twenty thousand political opponents by death squads in the heart of Europe that the German Revolution, following the First World War, was drowned in the blood of the proletariat of that country.

The communist response to police repression can only take the form of class struggle. It is only the working class that, through its own class struggle, can challenge the apparatus of bourgeois repression and, consequently, its executioners, hangmen, and criminals. In the course of this struggle, the working class is not seeking superficial or temporary satisfaction, nor illusory forms of relief for the discharge of class anger; rather, the aim is the gradual transformation of class anger into class consciousness and the attainment of class identity.

The repression of a working class that has become conscious of its own class identity will be far more difficult. Such a class, as a social force, enters into class struggle with strength and dignity, opens up new horizons in struggle, challenges the capitalist state throughout the course of this struggle, and puts forward its own class alternative; and ultimately eliminates, once and for all, the material conditions that produce executioners and hangmen. All efforts must be directed towards this aim.

M.J.

19 April 2026

Notes:

[1] In this context, the term ‘reformist’ is used solely because it is employed by this bourgeois faction. This is despite the fact that, with capitalism’s entry into its epoch of decline and the onset of imperialist wars and revolutions, it is no longer possible to secure lasting reforms from the bourgeoisie. Within this framework, the defence of workers’ living standards, opposition to redundancies, and other similar demands do not amount to reformism.

[2] For further insight into the demagogy of both right- and left-wing tendencies of capital—particularly the left of capital—in legitimising the Western bourgeois judicial system and bourgeois democratic institutions, it is recommended to read the article “The Release of the Executioner Hamid Nouri: Bourgeois Democracy Is the Other Face of Bourgeois Dictatorship”.

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