In 1979, Iran invaded a revolution that changed the face of the country and the entire region, known as the tapes revolution, relative to the audio recordings of Khomeini, which was smuggled and distributed secretly in the markets and places of worship, igniting the spark of popular anger against the regime of Shah Muhammad Reda Pahlavi. The revolution was not armed, but rather relied on the word, and on the ability of the voice to move millions, leading to the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of the so -called Islamic Republic.
But after more than four decades, the Iranian people stand at a new junction, as he wondered: Did you achieve the justice, freedom and dignity that has been promised? Reality indicates the opposite. Iran today is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, attributed to high unemployment, and systematic narrowing of personal and public freedoms, including freedom of expression, the rights of women, and the right to life itself.
One of the ugliest stations of repression in the history of the Islamic Republic of what happened in the summer of 1988, when the Iranian authorities executed thousands of political prisoners, without fair trials, based on a fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader Khomeini. Some human rights sources estimated that the number of those executed may reach 30,000 political prisoners, most of them members and supporters of the Mujahideen Creation Organization and left -wing factions such as the Toddah party and the people’s guerrillas and the testimonies of survivors and international reports indicate that this campaign was systematic and widely organized, and targeted the liquidation of political opponents almost completely in some prisons.
The irony is that what the policy did not take place, began to accomplish art and culture. The international artist Ed Sheeran, in his song Azimzam, presented a glimpse of pre -revolution Iran, in a global musical language, highlighting the spirit of a society that was beating life, openness and modernity. This song was not just an artwork, but a testimony that the world still reminds the other Iran, the one that the Islamic revolution tried to blur.
The most indicative of the current shift today is what we are witnessing public challenges to the regime of the jurisdiction of the jurist from within the Iranian society itself. Lyrical parties in Tehran, music festivals in Bushehr, young men and women dancing in public places, in an explicit break of the laws that have long been suppressed with the simplest manifestations of joy. These scenes are no longer considered just individual violations, but rather indications of a silent cultural revolution, but they are deep and escalating.
These manifestations are no less dangerous on the regime than political demonstrations, because they express my existence’s rejection of what it represents, and for the values that he tried to impose for more than four decades. It is a revolution on the level of identity, in the form of life, and the human right is to be free in his joy as in his opinion.
Ultimately, what the Iranian revolution started with cassette tapes may be completed today with songs singing in the squares, and with a dancer that challenges stillness. And if the first revolution has dropped the Shah, then the next revolution seeks not only to change a regime, but to restore the spirit of a nation that was submerged for decades. It is a revolution that is born from the womb of culture, nourished by the memory of pain, and is pushed by a deep desire for life, freedom and dignity.
