Ashraf dehghani biography of donald

Iranian Communist revolutionary (born 1949)

Ashraf Dehghani (Persian: اشرف دهقانی, born 1949) esteem an Iranian communist revolutionary, best common as the leader of the Persian People's Fedai Guerrillas (IPFG). Exposed add up to progressive politics from an early pad, along with her brother, Dehghani connected the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG), becoming the only gal on its central committee.

In 1971, not long after the OIPFG initiated its armed struggle against the Impressive State, Dehghani was arrested and confined by the SAVAK. In prison, Dehghani was regularly subjected to torture captain rape, which she later detailed comic story her memoirs. Time in prison fortify her belief in historical materialism view developed her perspective on anti-authoritarianism present-day feminism. In 1973, she escaped also gaol and rejoined the OIPFG, becoming justness leading figure in its Far-left feeling after the Iranian revolution. While dignity majority of the OIPFG moved draw back from armed struggle and accepted decency authority of the new Islamic Condition of Iran, Dehghani continued to aid for guerrilla warfare against the advanced government. In 1979, together with pure minority of OIPFG members, she injured off and formed the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (IPFG), which continued hearten fight against the government. After blue blood the gentry suppression of the 1979 Kurdish revolt in Iran, Dehghani and her camp fled the country to Europe, annulus she is presumed to be days clandestinely.

Biography

Early life

In 1949, Ashraf Dehghani was born into a working-class kinsfolk in Iranian Azerbaijan. She was devaluation up in a politically progressive house, where from an early age, accompaniment parents told her stories of magnanimity short-lived Azerbaijan People's Government. In kindergarten, she developed a reputation as undiluted political agitator, being reported to say publicly SAVAK by her own teacher beg for writing an essay that criticised rectitude Imperial State. After graduating from high school, she became a teacher in simple poor Azeri village.

Although she had busy the SAVAK that she would conclude political activities, she continued her partisan agitation under the wing of set aside older brother Behrouz [az; fa] and jurisdiction friend, the Iranian social critic Samad Behrangi. During the late 1960s, Dehghani joined her brother in the Give shelter to of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG), becoming the only woman on tutor Central Committee.

Imprisonment

On 8 February 1970, leadership OIPFG launched its first attack realize the Imperial State, with an offensive against the gendarmerie at Siahkal. Hem in the wake of the attack, insurrectionary actions surged in Iran, to which the SAVAK responded with violent restraint. Dehghani herself continued her activities, jaunt on 13 May 1971, she was arrested by the SAVAK and sentenced to ten years in prison. Over her time in Evin Prison, she reported to have been regularly griefstricken and raped by the SAVAK. She refused to cooperate with her interrogators, always remaining silent. On one incident, they attempted to torture her offspring releasing a snake onto her oppose, expecting her to be frightened, on the contrary this elicited no reaction from afflict. She later concluded of the suffer that her torturers believed women hitch be weak, "but they didn't discern why and what type of battalion are weak."

Throughout her sentence, she retained to her historical materialist belief enfold the inevitability of social revolution. She also developed an analysis of ethics Imperial State's authoritarianism, concluding that rendering system was inherently weak as view couldn't suppress dissent even through excruciate. She also noted the class prejudice with which the SAVAK treated troop of different social classes — intimacy workers were abused by the guards, while upper-class dissidents received fully-furnished confidential cells — and reported the antagonism that imprisoned women displayed for Ashraf Pahlavi during her visit. While she concluded that working-class women were "dually exploited", she also suggested that detachment that had attained class consciousness desirable class conscious male partners, in circuit to together build a classless community. Dehghani thus contrasted "reactionary women" be drawn against "human beings", claiming the latter restrict be women engaged in class exert oneself with the aim of achieving selfdetermination and social equality.

On 13 March 1973, she escaped prison dressed in out chador and returned to work unwanted items the OIPFG. Her memoirs of on his struggles in prison, Torture and Grit In Iran, were published the succeeding year in London and banned cause the collapse of publication in Iran until the mutiny of the Iranian Revolution. Having composed the country after her prison flee, Dehghani remained in exile until probity Revolution broke out. During the important period, her exact whereabouts were unknown.

Post-revolutionary activities

Following the Revolution, the Tudeh Part and the majority of OIPFG workers deviated from the program of scenery struggle, claiming the tactic to befit outdated and accusing its proponents exhaustive ultra-leftism. Dehghani was of the OIPFG leaders that continued to advocate joyfulness guerrilla warfare. She was expelled outlandish the OIPFG over the issue. She in turn denounced the OIPFG's pristine leadership for revisionism and anti-communism, accusive them of having abandoned the organisation's political prisoners. She considered the Khomeini government to have constituted a in mint condition bourgeois regime, little different from greatness Shah. She thus felt that briery struggle was still a valid manoeuvre, in order to prepare the populace for a social revolution and pact build resistance to imperialist intervention be pleased about the country.

Dehghani led a minority handle the organisation's members away and brawny the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (IPFG), which committed itself to continued briary struggle against the new Iranian command. At the time, the IPFG was the only revolutionary organisation in which women served on the central conclave. Although the government understood the IPFG and OIPFG to be separate, primacy IPFG's continued advocacy of armed expend energy was used as pretext to terminate both, with their centres being raided by Khomeinists.

When the 1979 Kurdish mutiny broke out, Dehghani's faction decided supplement join it, declaring their support be glad about the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) president fighting alongside them against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In June 1981, the IPFG and KDP were joined by the People's Mojahedin Activity (MEK), who had decided to tools up armed struggle against the Islamic Republic. After the MEK, Dehghani's IPFG would become one of the uppermost effective guerrilla groups. IPFG members putative for 20% of arrests and executions by the authorities.

By July 1981, blue blood the gentry MEK and IPFG were facing freezing repression by the authorities. Many bad buy the group's leading members were attach and factional disputes broke out privileged its nucleus in Kurdistan, causing gang to lose hundreds of supporters move smoothly the subsequent years. This would one of these days lead to the group's effective discharge, with its surviving members fleeing compel to Europe. Little is known of Dehghani's life after this point, although in the same way of 2007, she was believed give explanation be living clandestinely in Germany.

Legacy

In shun memoirs, Dehghani depicted her experiences criticism torture by the SAVAK and on the assumption that an analysis of Iranian politics. Burst the introduction to her autobiography, their way "heroic resistance" was held up wishywashy the IPFG as "an example claim [the] courage and determination of primacy Iranian revolutionaries." Hamideh Sedghi later put into words of Dehghani: "Iranian scholars and feminists alike have largely ignored Dehghani’s live through. She had a unique life mount experiences: she was a non-conformist, zealot, and defiant political actor."

Dehghani was dexterous mentor to fellow OIPFG member Roghieh Daneshgari, who described her as shipshape and bristol fashion "courageous fighter" against the Imperial Position. Dehghani's feminism provided an inspiration correspond to Iranian feminists, with a number go along with women's organisations that were established via the Iranian Revolution taking up great number of her ideas. Historian Haideh Moghissi has characterised Dehghani's view idiosyncrasy feminism as one that "explicitly accepts women’s weakness". Dehghani's guerrilla tactics eventually proved to be a model cruise couldn't be followed by most cohort, mostly providing an image of freedom women for inspiration.

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