What is happening in Iranian society today is not the inevitable fate of its children.
World Children’s Day is a day recognized to honor children. It is celebrated on different dates in various countries. In some countries, it is observed on June 1, while in others it is celebrated on November 20.
In 1959, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child and recommended that November 20 be recognized as World Children’s Day. However, both dates are socially and globally significant to us.
This year, World Children’s Day arrives amid the tragic reality that the criminal Israeli army has massacred nearly 15,000 children in Gaza over the past nine months. Such a horrific crime on this scale is unprecedented in world history. This is a clear genocide happening before the eyes of the world, with the complicity of the U.S. government and its allies. We live in a world where not only are children’s rights not upheld, and children are exploited and used in savage ways worldwide, but in the war between Israel and Hamas, their lives are tools for racial and fascist revenge. In Iran, during the “Jina Revolution,” more than 70 children and teenagers under 18 were killed by this criminal regime in less than a year. During the same period, in a criminal attempt to terrorize teenagers and society, hundreds of girls’ schools across the country were attacked with toxic gases, poisoning thousands of children. These horrific crimes occur while millions of children from working-class and low-income families in Iran, under the Islamic Republic, are deprived of education. Child abuse takes various forms, and corporal punishment still occurs in some schools. The regime’s prisons are still filled with children under 18, making Iran the only country that executes minors.
In schools under the Islamic regime, children’s minds are systematically and purposefully corrupted with superstitions. Children are segregated based on gender. Boys are taught a patriarchal mindset, while girls are conditioned to be submissive and obedient. From the first day of school, young girls must wear headscarves and be separated from boys their age. They are taught that socializing with boys is wrong. Alongside enforcing hijab and preventing girls and boys from playing together, religious indoctrination begins. Textbooks are filled with religious teachings, and children are forced to perform religious rituals and participate in religious ceremonies from a young age. This prevents children from being educated and gaining knowledge free from religious beliefs and superstitions, and from having the opportunity to consciously choose their beliefs and way of life in the future. Schools hold “coming-of-age” ceremonies for 9-year-old girls and encourage children to marry. Clerics, seminarians, and Basijis are sent to schools to promote spying and informant behaviors among children. Schools organize mourning processions and other religious ceremonies. A child growing up in a society polluted with religious superstitions and backwardness will not have the opportunity to enjoy a happy, carefree childhood free from backward indoctrination. They will exhibit unbalanced behavior, abnormal conduct, and weak motivation for learning. Such children will not naturally develop, their sweet childhood dreams will not be fulfilled, and the effects of their childhood deficiencies will accompany them throughout their lives.
The welfare and security of children are primary indicators of the performance of any government or political system. Since its inception, the Islamic government has implemented the most inhumane policies toward children. Sending children into minefields during the Iran-Iraq war, using child soldiers in warfare, involving children in mourning rituals and self-harm with chains and knives, and using Basiji children to suppress people are all unforgettable crimes of the Islamic Republic against children, amounting to crimes against humanity.
Efforts to create a safe social environment and provide conditions that allow children to test their capacities, capabilities, and talents, to ban child labor, to prohibit corporal punishment at home and school, to establish serious re-education classes for children who make mistakes, to abolish the death penalty, especially for children and young people, to ban arming children under the guise of Basijis, to seriously implement international children’s rights conventions, to expand non-governmental organizations defending children’s rights, and to prevent religious interference in education are indispensable duties of communists and progressive social movements.
What is happening in Iranian society today is not the inevitable fate of its children. This situation can and must change. The only way to change these conditions and liberate the children of this society from such a fate is to join forces and fight against the regime and the structures that so cruelly deprive our children of their fundamental and human rights.
