Hassan Zia-Zarifi - Political Activity

Political Activity

Hassan Zia-Zarifi began his political activism as a young boy, inspired by the more permissive political environment in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the movement to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. He organized demonstrations and boycotts in high school, protesting the poor school conditions and harsh treatment of students by teachers. He joined the youth wing of the Tudeh Party in 1953, shortly before the CIA-engineered coup d’etat of August 18, 1953, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq.

He continued his political activity even during the repressive period immediately after the coup. He was arrested for the first time in 1956, and because he was seventeen, sent to juvenile detention. On the day of his release, the martial law commander slapped him across the ear “to save him from future transgressions.” The blow permanently damaged his hearing.

His entry into the law faculty in the early 1960s coincided with a period of relative political openness. He joined the reconstituted liberal National Front and soon gained prominence as a student activist and he was elected to the central committee of the law students’ association (where he joined Abolhassan Banisadr, who would be the first elected president of the Islamic Republic). He was arrested on numerous occasions as the universities became the central battleground against the monarchy.

By 1962, he was a leader of the widespread student political movement. He was elected to represent university students in the National Front of Iran's central congress in 1962, but National Front member Shapur Bakhtiar (who later gained notoriety as the last prime minister of the Pahlavi regime) opposed his membership on the grounds that Zia-Zarifi’s criticism of the Shah’s government was too radical.

On 15 Khordad 1342 (5 June 1963), nation-wide protests broke out against the Shah’s efforts to exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by then a highly vocal critic of the imperial government. The movement was based in the seminaries of Qom and the more religious rural areas, but the leftist students immediately took to the streets in support of the anti-Shah protesters, which resulted in massive demonstrations and riots. Hassan was hospitalized after he received a severe head injury when he was beaten by baton-wielding police. The following day, he was arrested from his hospital bed and detained for three months without charge.

This incident was the first major popular uprising against the Shah after the 1953 coup and, predictably, elicited a tremendous backlash by the security forces. The Shah ended any pretence of pluralism, and the resistance to his rule changed from advocacy of reform led by the liberal National Front to clamor for revolution led by more militant forces inspired by communist and Islamic ideology.