Statement of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran: Farewell to Comrade Masoud Maleki
Comrade Masoud Maleki, member of the Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran, a militant and pure human being who spent six decades of his fruitful life to fight for the noble causes of the working class and working people, reached the end of his gruelling yet glorious life and passed away on Tuesday 27th December 2016.
Comrade Masoud Maleki was born on 23 November 1929 in the city of Ardabil [in Azerbaijan province]. He joined the ranks of the Tudeh Party of Iran in his early youth when he entered the military college. Comrade Maleki was a competent athlete in various sports.
Following the 19 August 1953 coup and after the military wing of the Party was uncovered, comrade Masoud who was still a cadet was arrested along with his two brothers Hussein and Samad Maleki, his cousins Taha and Nadali Maleki, and Kamal Moghbel (one of the Party cadres in the city of Khorramshahr [in Khuzestan province]). Comrade Maleki was sentenced to life imprisonment by the courts of the Shah’s brutal regime. The Iranian renowned novelist Ahmad Mahmoud artistically portrays the presence of comrade “Malek” and other Tudeh comrades in the Zerehi [military] jail, in his novel “The Tale of a City”.
Comrade Maleki spent close to a decade of his life in the Shah’s prison and was eventually released on 18 November 1963. While in prison, comrade Maleki suffered from abdomen problems and had to go through surgery in which part of his stomach was removed. He spent the rest of his life with this condition without ever complaining about it. Upon his release from the prison, comrade Maleki was employed by the Labour Ministry the next year and served as General Manager in that Ministry until the first raid of the theocratic regime against the Party in February 1983. Amid this raid, comrade Maleki left his office and began an underground life. During the few years after the 1979 revolution, comrade Maleki was the industrial organiser of the West Tehran District Committee of the Party, and was an active member of the Party’s special Industrial Organisers’ Committee.
Comrade Maleki fled Iran at the end of the summer of 1983. He had a significant role in restoring the Party organizations in those hard times. At the National Conference of the Tudeh Party of Iran in 1985 he was elected as the Consultative member of the Central Committee, and later at the third congress of the Party [Feb. 1992], he was elected to the Central Committee and then the Political Bureau. Comrade Maleki was in charge of the Organizational Bureau of the Party for a long period of time. Before his illness became critical, comrade Maleki took part in the Plenum of the Central Committee for the last time in 2012.
Comrade Maleki was a patient, experienced, and selfless comrade and always followed the same comradely manner and practice for cooperation and collaboration in the Party clubs as he had learnt in prison. His hospitality and lending hand to Party comrades and other Iranian left activists, who had a special respect for him, had turned his small house [in exile] into a lively and safe centre to resolve the problems of enforced exile. The modesty, humanitarian compassion, persistent hard work, and discipline of comrade Maleki, along with his commitment to the causes, path, and goals of the struggle of the working people and working class of Iran and its party, the Tudeh Party of Iran, was well known to and attested by all Tudeh comrades and even the opponents of our Party. The Tudeh Party of Iran and the progressive and freedom-loving movement of our nation have lost a relentless militant activist.
The Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran sends its sincere condolences for the passing away of comrade Masoud Maleki to his family, survivors, and his fellow comrades.
He will be dearly missed and remembered, and others will follow in his path.
The Central Committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran
28 December 2016
