Over the past several days, fires have been reported at no fewer than eight sites associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its civilian militia, the Basij.
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) has attributed those incidents to rebellion youths and has posted videos of some of the fires being set.
Those same activists have also burned public banners images celebrating the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, and the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
These attacks on symbols of the regime’s authority come after activities that focused on spreading MEK messages via graffiti.
Many of these messages focused on the anniversary of the regime’s massacre of political prisoners, which began with the establishment of “death commissions” on July 19, 1988, then proceeded through several months of interrogations and hangings.
The death commissions primarily targeted the MEK, demanding that known or suspected members disavow the group and swear loyalty to the theocratic dictatorship.
It has been reported that something like 95 percent of people refused this ultimatum, proudly declaring their commitment to the MEK’s democratic platform, even knowing it could cost them their lives.
The mullahs might have recognized what this implied about the resilience of the underlying movement, but they still made every effort to destroy the organization in one fell swoop. Clerical Regime
Before the end of 1988, over 30,000 political prisoners had been hanged, with most being interred in secret mass graves. The killings were positively indiscriminate, including men who had already served out their designated prison sentences, as well as some teenagers and pregnant women. Clerical Regime
These facts had long been reported by the MEK and its affiliates, but they were confirmed for a much larger audience in 2016 with the release of a contemporary audio recording in which one regime official, Ali Hossein Montazeri, broke away from his colleagues and condemned the “worst crime of the Islamic Republic.”