This is some incredible stuff…Khosrow Golsorkhi (1944-1974), a Marxist-Leninist with a rare gift for poetic composition, was given the opportunity to speak at his trial, since the Shah was hosting a human rights conference in Tehran in the hope of propagating an image of Iran as the paragon of modernity, civility and fairness. The verdict of course was a forgone conclusion and ended in Golsorkhi’s execution at the hand’s of the Shah’s firing squad. To this day Iranians of all ideological persuasions remember and heap praise on Golsorkhi’s point-blank refusal to turn his back on his executioners, compelling them to stare him in the face as they mowed him down in a hail of bullets.
It was hoped by the Shah that broadcasting the trial on television would rally public support to the crown. It of course did the exact opposite and to this day stands as a testament to the Shah’s dictatorship and hypocrisy. Moreover, in the course of the trial Golsorkhi launched a truly scathing attack on the institution of the monarchy and the Peacock Throne’s supplication at the alters of outside powers such as the United States and Britain. Because of this, most of the trial proceedings were censored. After the 1979 revolution the entire trial was shown on public television, but was censored once again after the fall of Mehdi Bazargan‘s government. Few people suspected at the time that the symbolic tragedy of the trial of Golsorkhi would go on to be repeated and relived by hundreds, if not thousands of new victims in a myriad of show trials, with only the most perfunctory respect for the rule of law and due process. Sadly, the only thing that had changed was the cast of characters passing sentence…
