Ashraf Dehghani ( fa, اشرف دهقانی, born 1948) is amongst the best known

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

ian female

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

aries, and is a member of the

Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas The Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (IFPG; fa, چريک‌های فدایی خلق ایران, čerikhā-ye Fadāʾi-e xalq-e Irān), also known as the Dehghani faction ( fa, جریان دهقانی) after its leader Ashraf Dehghani, is an Irani ...

. In 1971, Ashraf Dehghani (then a member of the

Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas The Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG; fa, سازمان چريک‌های فدايی خلق ايران, Sāzmān-e čerikhā-ye Fadāʾi-e ḵalq-e Irān), simply known as Fadaiyan-e-Khalq ( fa, فداییان خلق, Fad ...

( OIPFG) cadre) was arrested, imprisoned, and

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

d for her

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

beliefs under the rule of the

Shah of Iran This is a list of monarchs of Persia (or monarchs of the Iranic peoples, in present-day Iran), which are known by the royal title Shah or Shahanshah. This list starts from the establishment of the Medes around 671 BCE until the deposition of th ...

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monoth ...

. Her memoirs, entitled ''Torture and Resistance in Iran'', document the events prior to and during her imprisonment. The memoirs provide not only a detailed personal account of Ashraf Dehghani's inner struggles while in prison, but also a description of the broader political struggles and objective conditions required for any revolutionary party to survive outside and inside of prison. In 1973, she, together with Nahid Jalali, a member of MKO, organized a successful escape from prison. Ashraf Dehghani wrote her memoirs after escaping the Shah's prison in Iran, near the end of 1971. During her years of underground activity, at some point she worked directly with the OIPFG leader

Hamid Ashraf Hamid Ashraf ( fa, حمید اشرف; December 31, 1946 – June 29, 1976) was one of the original member and later the leader of the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG) that waged a guerrilla warfare against the former Pah ...

. Later she fled abroad where she directed the international relations of the organization. In 1979, she led a split away from OIPFG, and formed the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas. The dispute with the leadership of the OIPFG stemmed from Ashraf's unwavering loyalty to Masoud Ahmadzadeh's theories. She also accused the leadership of deviating from Fadai's revolutionary traditions and inclination to compromise with the government. After a war between Kurds and Iranian Islamic Republic in 1981, a Kurdish revolutionary group of Ashraf Dehghani's group was formed.

External links

The Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas

Ashraf Dehghani's Website

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dehghani, Ashraf 1948 births People from Tabriz Iranian communists People of the Iranian Revolution Iranian revolutionaries 20th-century Iranian women politicians 20th-century Iranian politicians Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas members Escapees from Iranian detention Iranian atheists 20th-century atheists 21st-century atheists Living people