Killing in Silence — Silencide

The historical and almost incomprehensible scale of the killing that has taken place in Iran has, in the source’s formulation, no historical equivalent. This is not the first time authoritarian governments have massacred their own people. Stalin’s killings, the Khmer Rouge and Tiananmen Square are only several historical examples. What makes Iran’s terrible tragedy different, the text argues, is the scale of killing and the number of victims within a period of only two nights.

The only comparable historical example, perhaps, was the massacre of Jews near Kyiv in Ukraine on 29 and 30 September 1941, when the Nazis systematically murdered 33,771 human beings at Babi Yar in only two days.

Yet even that terrible crime was committed by a foreign army. The source argues that nowhere in history have so many people been killed by their own ruling system within so short a period of two days. This human tragedy is so terrible that it will not be forgotten either in Iranians’ collective memory or in world history.

History has not yet found a name for those two nights when Iran went dark and such an incomprehensible human catastrophe became possible. What makes this national tragedy more painful than anything else is, in the author’s view, the ethical collapse of so-called progressive and left-wing groups in the West and in part of the Arab world, who, because of their anti-imperialist and anti-American discourse, have either aligned themselves with the narrative of those repressing the Iranian people or remained silent.

The people of Iran have once again discovered how alone they are, while those who crossed oceans in boats all the way to Gaza have fallen into deadly silence. The reason, the text argues, is their fear that within any discourse they might find themselves aligned with global imperialism.

Thus the human tragedy of the Iranian people is largely ignored by those who have regarded defending the oppressed of the world as their duty. Today they stand not beside but against the people of Iran. Yet not only will the Iranian nation never forget this; history too will not be kind to them.

This silence—this silence filled with lies that makes the heart ache—is a continuation of the same silence that made the crime possible by plunging the people into darkness. Perhaps this is why the killing of the Iranian people can appropriately be called “killing in silence”: *silencide*.

Silence is where the value of life and human dignity are buried for a second time.
What has happened is, before it is political, a human catastrophe. Despite grief and mourning, speaking about the victims, prisoners and families seeking justice is the simplest and at the same time most important duty we have—and perhaps our most formidable historical power.

Our speaking is human before it is political; it is a fundamental principle of ethics. This is not ideology, but conscience.

They have no idea that by retelling the narrative, through writing, poetry, music, theatre, film and culture, these people will bring history crashing down upon them—not only today, but for generations yet to come.

Even if this nation were the loneliest nation in the world, by speaking and drawing upon its historical identity it could create such a great power of art and culture in narrating this catastrophe that nothing would remain for those responsible except defeat and disgrace before history and before this great nation.

Do not stop speaking about Iran. This is the least we owe to the thousands of beautiful lives whose lives were stolen from them, and to the thousands who were wounded, imprisoned, and left as grieving families.