Arabs fight Iran tyrants

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As the religious and bourgeois leaders struggle to impose their dictatorship on the Iranian revolution, they are confronted with growing opposition from huge layers of a society still in the throes of transformation.

The various sections of this latest movement have arisen separațely. But they all share a democratic basis that is in conflict with the continuing repression of Khomeini's and Bazargan's divided regime.

Reign of terror

In this new stage, the reign of terror operated by the Revolutionary Courts and Guards will soon be directed away from the Shah's accomplices and henchmen towards the left wing and democratic opposition.

Wider attacks on democratic rights have already been fore: shadowed by the attacks on gays-two more gay men were executed last week in the mullah's campaign against "vice"

Khomeini has now decread that those who insult the clergy' should be punished by the revolutionary courts. This move is directed against all dissidents, but especially against the left.

The self-styled 'Marxist forces of the Fedayeen have recently been attacked by large mobilisations of reactionary elements dominated bigotry.

Khomeini has pressed ahead at other levels with plans to instal a Bonapartist dictatorship controlled by the Islamic clergy with himself as a powerful head of state. Promises of a Constituent Assembly have been tossed aside.

The latest proposal is for the new constitution to be ratified by a 'selected' and totally unelected assembly before passing to a referendum.

This mockery of democracy has already provoked the anger of Iranian lawyers, but their protests will be only the first to be heard.

A fortnight ago, a demonstration of 100,000 people gathered in Tehran to demand an end to media censorship and press their claims for the democratic right to free speech.

Alongside these protests, the regime faces problems in its attempt to integrate the loyal Revolutionary Guards and the remnants of the Shah's army into one massive weapon to be wielded for the counter-revolution.

Orders disobeyed There are reports from various areas offrank and file soldiers in the army who refuse to obey officers' commands and insist on reaching a collective decision after internal discussion.

But the greatest obstacle before the clergy and the bourgeoisie at the moment remains the militancy of the national minorities.

Renewed fighting has broken out in Sanandaj, with Kurds attacking the headquarters of the local Revolutionary Committee.

For the first time, the large Arab minority in the southwestern province of Khuzestan has also come into violent conflict with the forces of the central government.

At Khorramshar (Iran's largest commercial port), a clash between Revolutionary Guards: and strikers led on to a violently racist, anti-Arab demonstration.

Troops and Revolutionary Guards then attacked centres of the Arab Cultural and Political Organisation, which has been demanding local autonomy.

Fighting rapidly spread, with paratroopers flown in, and extra troops to seal off and guard the nearby refineries in this major oil producing area of Iran. Some 200 demonstrators were killed, with hundreds more seriously injured. Kurdish guerrillas in Sanandni 4U Recent developments have shown the determination of Khomeini and his supporters to shroud the Iranian revolution in violent black reaction.

The same period has also revealed the will of the Iranian masses to resist the imposition of a new tyranny, and the tenacity with which they are prepared to fight for the democratic cratic rights promised but denied by the counter-revolutionaries who have replaced the Shah.

that such large numbers can. all be Chinese capitalists.

Already ¼ million have fled to China alone; there are another 40,000 in Hong Kong, where 3,000 arrived on one day last month.

The Chinese Stalinists claim that ½ million refugees have left Vietnam since January, and that the Hanoi government intends to continue the flow at a rate of 10,000 per month. Other reports claim that 60,000 'boatpeople' left Vietnam in April, but that only a quarter of them survived the journey.

It is clear that tens of thousands of these refugees, whatever their origin, will pass into lives of pauperdom in the imperialist colonies of the Far East.

Hard to assess

The part played by the Vietnamese government ir • this exodus remains the most difficult to assess. We have absolutely no sympathy with the plight of capitalists who have been stripped of their property before they can leave But from the numbers involved, it seems certain that other layers must have been drawn into this movement-. technicians, peasants, fishermen, fleeing in desperation from the crisis in Vietnam.

Such a development could only highlight immense material problems prevailing in Vietnam and the hideous bureaucratic deformities of the ruling Stalinist clique.

It reveals more sharply the urgent need for the building of an independent revolutionary party to overthrow by political revolution the Hanoi gang of dictators and traitors to socialism.

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SOCHILISI PRESS. Mednesday 6 June 1979