My Act of Solidarity With the Iranian People
Today Ahmadinejad – the loser of the Iranian Presidential Elections – took his oath of office.
It goes without saying that the Iranian people did not choose this puppet figurehead of an oppressive theocratic and dangerously messianic regime. He was foisted upon them by fraud, and is now kept in office by a campaign of rape and murder.
Taraneh was very beautiful and very kind; she used to sing with a beautiful warm voice and played the piano with skill. I cannot imagine that all this life and beauty should be buried under dust and dirt, without mercy.’
…
An unidentified person, probably one of her abductors, called and said Taraneh had a moral problem and that she hadn’t been arrested at all. He said she had been raped and her womb and anus had been torn and she had wanted to kill herself by throwing herself in front of a car. He said she had been brought to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Karaj and that she had also tried to kill herself there with a serum tube.
…
‘I just want Taraneh’s voice to go on, and our call that our most beautiful friend has been cruelly taken from us, that they have raped her brutally for several days and then burned her lifeless body and tossed her out in the desert.
‘When Taraneh sang, her beautiful voice was always in my ear, but from yesterday until now I have only been hearing her screams. Taraneh’s suffering was over, but our pain and suffering will remain with us as long as we live; she was our Taraneh [song].’
Hundreds of people have been slaughtered in Iran. They have been killed because they had the temerity to ask for that which we take for granted: to choose their leaders, to decide on their own country’s destiny, to live an ordinary life. They have protested with dignity and with nobility.
As I type these words, I can barely keep myself from crying.
What makes this all the worse is that there is, on the “Progressive Left”, there is almost no solidarity at all. They have been defamed by the Stalinist, Seauauauamuas Milne, who dismisses those calling for basic democratic and human rights “Tehran’s gilded youth“. The Stop the War Coalition declares:
It would be wrong for us to take any position on the disputed outcome of the Iranian presidential election
A notable exception has been the TUC, which has at least done something. But to build a proper international solidarity campaign takes a great deal of time, effort and determination. Campaigning for democracy and human rights needs to be a top priority for unions, charities, and other community and political groups. Many have come together in Iran Solidarity. But it isn’t yet nearly enough.
However we should not be despondent.
During the misery of Soviet rule, it was the little acts of solidarity that kept hope alive. My school chaplain, for example, used to visit friends in Russia in school holidays. Human Rights campaigners kept the worst of the abuses in the spotlight. And there were always people on the Left who stood up to the lovers of totalitarian politics and loudly denounced the USSR’s brutal internal suppression of dissent.
And so, I am standing here in Trafalgar Square, for Iran Solidarity, where I have just blogged this article.
Others will be taking my place, every day, for 365 days. Each of those people will have a story to tell to others. And so, step by step, a solidarity movement is born.
The people of Iran will not be forgotten. By little acts of solidarity you can also stand with them. All you need to do is to email Iran Solidarity and let them know when you can spend half an hour, showing that you support the Iranian people.
Come on then!
Comments
| 5 August 2009, 7:00 pm |
A little act of solidarity from our President’s mouthpiece.
| 5 August 2009, 7:01 pm |
Forget the so-called “left”. Obama’s press spokesman characterised Ahmedinajad & co today as an “elected government”
| 5 August 2009, 7:10 pm |
Heartfelt appreciation for this post. Will email them
| 5 August 2009, 7:32 pm |
The left needs to be reminded about the fate of the Iranian Communist Party when Khomeini’s regime came to power.
| 5 August 2009, 7:38 pm |
Heavens to Murgatroyd! I was in Trafalgar Square today, my eldest Alphonsine expressed a wish to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace so we came up to town. As we crossed Trafalgar square, it occurred to me to look for the Iran Solidarity person but they were whining about the heat and being hungry. Sorry to have missed you. Excellent example. I remember going on some of the pickets of South Africa House during the 70s. They were also mounted by a ‘dissident’ branch of the left, if memory serves me it was the RCP in those days, and look where they are now! I thought of it as we went past South Africa House. I wonder what happened to the stalwarts on that picket, one bloke was an actor.
| 5 August 2009, 7:46 pm |
Oo – David T is kind of cute.
You’d be lost in the crowd in Traffy Square tho. I wonder if the solidarity campaign people need to do something to make you and others like you more visible? Why does it have to be lone protesters?
| 5 August 2009, 7:49 pm |
Gibbs has taken it back.
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE57441U20090805
| 5 August 2009, 7:51 pm |
Old news mesquito. Here’s the update
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has retreated from his statement that Ahmadinejad is “the elected leader” of the Islamic republic.
Gibbs had been asked on Tuesday whether the White House recognized Ahmadinejad as the country’s legitimate president.
“He’s the elected leader,” Gibbs responded.
Talking to reporters Wednesday while en route to Indiana with President Barack Obama, the spokesman said, “Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. … I would say that’s not for me to pass judgment on.”
Gibbs said that Ahmadinejad has been inaugurated, “that’s a fact.” He said it must be up to the Iranian people to decide whether the election “was fair.”
Associated Press contributed to the report
The same report also mentions allegations made in ‘Etemad Melli’, opposition leader Mehdi Kahroubi’s newspaper, that the youngest person to have been killed in the turmoil following Iran’s disputed June12 elections is now a 12 year old named Ali Reza (his last name wasn’t published).
He was reportedly killed last week during a mourning ceremony for Neda Agha Soltan. Thousands of people attended the ceremony at the cemetery in which she was buried, and clashes with security ensued. The report says Ali Reza arrived at the ceremony with his father, and when the two attempted to leave they were separated. Ali Reza then suffered a massive blow to the head delivered by police, the report says.
The reformist newspaper reported that the family had only succeeded in recovering Ali Reza’s body four days after his death and that the Iranian parliament had appointed an investigating committee in order to verify the claims. The family refused to divulge details about his funeral.
| 5 August 2009, 7:53 pm |
Thanks, David T. Do not be ashamed if you cried, I did.
Is there anything I can do here in the Washington, DC area?
| 5 August 2009, 7:56 pm |
Apparently, our Foreign Secretary decided to allow one of our diplomats to attend the swearing in of Maggot-head. So perhaps if we got the FS tarred and feathered, and hoisted him up on that empty plinth thing in the square….
| 5 August 2009, 8:01 pm |
Monty, now that would get attention!
| 5 August 2009, 8:02 pm |
Gibbs has taken it back.
Signal sent. Signal received. Mission accomplished.
| 5 August 2009, 8:02 pm |
David T, absolutely well done. Someone who talks the talk and walks the walk. I mean it!
——
Two observations:-
1. You appear to have a zone of avoidance around you. Is it a force-field?
2. You look as if you need feeding up. The “must feed someone imperative” in me wants to come and cook you my famous chicken soup and kneidlach (no fat skimmed!)
| 5 August 2009, 8:04 pm |
Where do you work out? ;)
| 5 August 2009, 8:15 pm |
You are a man of honorable principles David T, you should run for office.
| 5 August 2009, 8:23 pm |
That’s weird, I pictured you as an old gray haired grandpa wearing brown twaid jacket (no offence). I think it’s because of the “life experience knowledge” you seem to have.
| 5 August 2009, 9:25 pm |
David T has an astonishingly massive head. It appears to have been photoshopped onto him by someone really, really malicious.
No offence, like. Must admit to being no oil painting meself :D
| 5 August 2009, 9:48 pm |
Can we Seumas Milne a T-shirt that says “I’m writing piss-poor comment pieces for a newspaper I only got a job on because of who my dad was, for Iranian theocracy?”
| 5 August 2009, 10:07 pm |
Well done, Mr T!
The Soviet analogy is a very good one
I’ve e-mailed them
Thanks
| 5 August 2009, 10:39 pm |
David T has an astonishingly massive head. It appears to have been photoshopped onto him by someone really, really malicious.
Ha!
A friend once spread the cruel rumour that the Government of the Easter Islands were suing me for breach of copyright on their famous heads.
| 5 August 2009, 11:04 pm |
You do look good for – what is it, 50? – but I challenge you to be asked your age in Waitrose, as I was at 36. Good old Waitrose, bugger the quality, it’s the compliments you pay for.
| 5 August 2009, 11:04 pm |
This country ought to be renamed “Rapistan” for the (hopefully mercifully short) period until its regime is removed. Pressure in this direction should be put on the Embassy. There is no valid reason for further diplomatic relations.
| 5 August 2009, 11:31 pm |
Mr T’s head has to be big in order to hold all the knowledge that he possess..
| 5 August 2009, 11:38 pm |
He has a far sexier chin than the Easter Island heads.
Though there is a clear resemblance.
| 5 August 2009, 11:47 pm |
Sometimes I just love those adverts in the sidebar.
“Do you look like Cristiano Ronaldo?”
http://i28.tinypic.com/2ldboqw.jpg
Well actually, apart from the dress sense, somehow he does.
| 5 August 2009, 11:55 pm |
Will you be blogging for Saudi Arabian democracy tomorrow?
| 5 August 2009, 11:57 pm |
We have a piece on Dubai, possibly…
| 5 August 2009, 11:59 pm |
My young nieces and nephews in Iran are forever grateful to you. Thank you so much for being our voice.
| 6 August 2009, 12:07 am |
Dubai one of the United Arab Emirates.
| 6 August 2009, 12:34 am |
Well done!!!
| 6 August 2009, 6:06 am |
Bravo
| 6 August 2009, 7:46 am |
David, have you lost weight? You really should eat more.
| 6 August 2009, 8:20 am |
Reading of the convultions of western ‘progressive’ defenders of Islamist theocratic fascism is one of the pleasures of coming to Harry’s Place. But the issues are so frequently greater than the comedy of ‘useful fools’. Simple cogent argument based upon the facts, over and over again.
Well done David.
| 6 August 2009, 8:29 am |
well done david, speaking of ‘progressives’, you must be rather surprised to find that andy Newman is now taken a position far to the right of this blog in defence of police and army brutality both in the UK and across the world.
“” #
The nature of this letter is that it is a statement that a number of Iranians felt they could agree upon; it would therefore be a mistake to parse every sentance and over-analyse the content.
This is a useful letter becasue it points out the wisdom of stepping back from the brink, and points out the context of international pressure upon Iran.
Any zero-sum solution is very dangerous, especially if it is built around a mythology of goodies and baddies, the political logic of which is that there can be no compromise.
A more mature way forward, and i assume that the authors have been influenced by developments in African politics is to recognise that victims are often also perpetrators; and perpetrators often also victims; and to seek a national dialogue towards a compromise solution, without being bounced by external pressure.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 August, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
#
“Any zero-sum solution is very dangerous, especially if it is built around a mythology of goodies and baddies”
God forbid, Andy! The idea that there may be a ‘good and a ‘bad’ when, say, a protester is murdered in the street by a policeman is of course ludicrous. Everyone is just, you know trying to get on. I notice though that you only take this attitude when it involves foreigners and not when ‘bad’ things are done by policemen in the UK. The ‘victims’ of industrial exploitation in Britain are also perpetrators, aren’t they?
Comment by John Meredith — 5 August, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
#
#7 “I notice though that you only take this attitude when it involves foreigners and not when ‘bad’ things are done by policemen in the UK”
No you haven’t “noticed” that, you have assumed that based upn your lazy preconceptions of my views; in fact I have never joined in the chorus of condemnation of the metropolitan police over the unfortunate death of Jean de menezes, for example. There were problems of the police resisting transparency over what exactly went wrong, but the fatal mistake itself was an understandable operation error in the circumstances of the recent bombs.
Nor would I, for example, favour the paratroopers responsible for Bloody Sunday being tried in a criminal court – they were following orders; and nothing would be gained by a criminalising what they did.
But sometimes it is necessary to bend so that you don’t break, and the protests on the streets of Iran are not going to dislodge the government by force, even if that were desirable, and so a way forward needs to be found.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 August, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
#
#7
“The ‘victims’ of industrial exploitation in Britain are also perpetrators, aren’t they?”
This is of course literally true, that although the working class in britain have been historically exploited, the wealth and stablity of the Briitish economy and society has been based upon an exploitative relationship with the colonial and post colonial developing world; and British working class men have served in the armed forces perpetuating that injustice.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 August, 2009 @ 12:35 pm”"
| 6 August 2009, 9:01 am |
I turn your attention to this
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4b_1249043706
Hamas Organises Mass Wedding For 450 Couples In Gaza
Watch the stature of the brides.
The Arabic was translated by a recognized Lebanese profesor, George Chaya in the comments I read in Facebook. He lives in Argentina and is against fundamentalism. I know him from his writings, and if he says that the brides are indeed those, I believe him.
But somebody here must know Arabic too, so you can ask for your own translation.
This is the barbarian face of Hamas.
| 6 August 2009, 9:17 am |
Fabian,
Not so sure you are correct about the HAMAS bride story. See here:
Dozens, and I mean dozens, of websites took the video of the event and wrote lurid stories about Hamas mass paedophilia with headlines about ‘450 child brides’, and endless copy about how disgusting this was, how it showed how depraved Islam is, et al, ad infinitum. Site after site jumped on the story, linking from one totally wrong load of rubbish to the next . I’ll give credit to Tundra Tabloids who at least took down the video, but most sites just ploughed on regardless.
I spent a few hours visiting websites and leaving comments where I could. To little avail. Instead I received a steady stream of vitriol. The best response was on a site run by a Debbie Schlussel . The guy who posted it said he wasn’t interested in the detail. The detail being the fact that the girls weren’t the brides.
It showed how much some people want to believe nonsense like this, as it re-inforces their prejudices, always a comfortably fun thing to do. But Hamas, and the jihadists do enough terrible things without having to make things up about them. Most of the stuff I read was outright, unthinking, gleeful, Islamophobia from people who clearly knew nothing about Arab popular culture. It’s as is they really beleive that because there are examples of child brides, it means all weddings are with child brides.
| 6 August 2009, 9:30 am |
When I was a Bahai, I met many Iranian Bahai refugees, a number of whom had had relatives and friends murdered by the islamist regime for nothing more than a refusal to recant their faith. Young girls were deliberately raped before execution due to the belief that this loss of innocence would bar them entry to heaven. Such is the barbarity and perverse insecurity of these muderers.
Poor Taraneh. But there were many others before her.
| 6 August 2009, 9:39 am |
Fabian: I can’t find the comment fromGeorge Chaya. Can you give a full reference. There is some doubt as to whether the children are brides or bridesmaids.
| 6 August 2009, 9:58 am |
Thanks Neil, I have deleted the post at my Facebook profile regarding this until I have more confirmations.
Sue: the comment was private, sorry.
| 6 August 2009, 1:44 pm |
Don’t overdo the TUC bit, David. The preliminary Congress agenda (the Workers’ Parliament, donch’a know?) has three internatuiinal motions – one on human trafficking, one on Colombia and one on, where was it again, oh yes Palestine. This latter – from the Stalino-Trots at the FBU – wants the TUC to break with Histradut.
| 6 August 2009, 1:46 pm |
internatuiinal is of course the Finnish spelling of international …
| 6 August 2009, 5:40 pm |
I wish that Ahmadinejad had not won. But he did. Iran is a country in which it is still possible for the electorate to vote against the direction of the BBC, and the BBC cannot contain its rage at what is, in itself, this happy fact. Non-Beeb candidates are not only on the ballot paper, but even receive proper coverage. The nerve! The sheer nerve! And for someone like that to WIN!
The North Tehran Trendies, whose opinions were the only ones sought by bone-idle Western reporters in the run-up to the election (or, indeed, since), did not vote for Ahmadinejad. The BBC set up an entire “service” to instruct people not to vote for him. So the election must have been rigged. Mustn’t it?
Look out for how the Democratic primaries were rigged, because Hillary Clinton didn’t win, but the candidate whose organisational base was the black church and whose main crossover appeal was to practising Catholics did. And for how the 2010 General Election was rigged if Cameron doesn’t win, as there is still not the slightest reason to believe that he will.
| 6 August 2009, 6:58 pm |
I’ll try and say hello, when I’m around there next. Good work – please keep it up!
| 6 August 2009, 7:23 pm |
This website http://whereismyvote.org/ is where volunteer and supporter Tressa Kaye collects and publishes details of global events in support of Iran. you can find a local event or decide to start one.
I organised a successful global event using Facebook, Twitter and determination. If David T and Iran Solidarity and Tressa Kaye and I can do it, so can you!
| 6 August 2009, 9:05 pm |
I wish that Ahmadinejad had not won.
Well, I’ve read nothing from you to suggest whom you would have preferred. Was it Mozaee?
Iran is a country in which it is still possible for the electorate to vote against the direction of the BBC
Why, so are North Korea and Zimbabwe.
Non-Beeb candidates are not only on the ballot paper, but even receive proper coverage.
What proportion of IRIB’s coverage was devoted to each of the candidates?
The nerve! The sheer nerve! And for someone like that to WIN!
Again, just like North Korea and Zimbabwe.
| 6 August 2009, 9:10 pm |
I wish that Ahmadinejad had not won.
Well, I’ve read nothing from you to suggest whom you would have preferred. Was it Mohsen Rezaee?
Iran is a country in which it is still possible for the electorate to vote against the direction of the BBC
Why, so are North Korea and Zimbabwe.
Non-Beeb candidates are not only on the ballot paper, but even receive proper coverage.
What proportion of IRIB’s coverage was devoted to each of the candidates?
The nerve! The sheer nerve! And for someone like that to WIN!
Again, just like North Korea and Zimbabwe. And, I dare say, a few more of your favourite dictatorships.
| 7 August 2009, 12:53 am |
Crying for Taraneh. Just the thought horrifies me to my core. What God have in mind. What was he thinking? Elohim Adiereem, where are you!
Crying for all the men, women, boys and girls that been tortured and killed just to satisfy the evil-instinctual fashismo-sadistic of the godless barbarians bastards [ge khodah nadaran].
| 7 August 2009, 12:53 am |
Crying for Taraneh. Just the thought horrifies me to my core. What God have in mind. What was he thinking? Elohim Adiereem, where are you!
Crying for all the men, women, boys and girls that been tortured and killed just to satisfy the evil-instinctual fashismo-sadistic of the godless barbarians bastards [ge khodah nadaran].
| 7 August 2009, 2:03 pm |
I have just read in my local free paper about a local Iranian teenage girl on the 6th day of a hunger strike outside the US embassy in London to protest about the withdrawal of US protection for Iranian refugee camps in Iraq. This is the first I have heard of this protest, and after checking google news, I can’t find any reference to this in any MSM, but I learned from the other online sources this has being going on for at least 2 weeks now.
This may seem off-topic and somewhat cynical, but if the régime comes under too much internal pressure from its own citizens, I think it will provoke an external aggression…perhaps a dustup along the iraqi border… in an effort to galvanise the population and quash dissent.
All these thugs have left as an option, other than brutal oppression of course, is to invoke some extertnal bogeyman in an effort to win public support.