Vida Hajabi, Leftist Activist, Passes Away in Paris

Vida Hajabi Tabrizi, a leftist political activist and a senior former member of the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, passed away on Monday, March 14, in a hospital in Paris. She was 81 years old at the time of her death. Hajabi moved to Paris in her youth to study architecture and taught at the same university where Farah Diba, the next and last queen of Iran, studied. However, in the 1950s, influenced by her sister's leftist ideas, she became interested in anti-Western movements and groups in Latin American countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. She then moved to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and studied sociology at the local university. Hajabi later returned to Iran and worked at the Institute for Social Science Research but was imprisoned in 1972 on charges of membership in an armed group opposing the Pahlavi monarchy. She remained in prison until 1979. Following the victory of the February 1979 Revolution, she joined the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, influenced by the ideas of Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution. However, shortly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, she was one of the thousands of Iranians forced to leave Iran. Hajabi had previously stated in a critique of her activism to Deutsche Welle: 'I should not have aligned myself with the most backward social, religious, and fundamentalist layers of Iranian society. It was possible to oppose the Shah, and it was necessary to do so, but aligning with anti-modernity was the most dangerous thing that led to a revolution that everyone followed.' After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, she moved to France and published the magazine 'A New Beginning' with several like-minded individuals. Her book 'Justice Without Justice' is one of her most important works abroad, which collects the memories of political prisoners in Iran. Ramin Bartu Hajabi, her only child from her marriage to Oswaldo Bartu, a Venezuelan revolutionary, also passed away in Paris in May 2015.