When I Remember Akbar...

29 July 2009

Tomorrow will mark the three year anniversary of the death of my friend and fellow student movement activist, Akbar Mohammadi. He died in Evin Prison.

For several days now I have tried to think about how to write these words. Some pain is just too hard to write, so I will start with facts, and perhaps the words will come. Akbar Mohammadi was part of the July 1999 student movement in Iran. He believed passionately in freedom for the people of Iran. He had a love of country that was remarkable. At the protests our group organized both before and after 18 Tir, Akbar was never far from me, and was outspoken in his passion for the movement. During one of the protests following the dormitory attacks a member of Ansar-e Hesbollah lunged at me with a knife. I was completely blindsided, and it was Akbar who pulled me out of reach and in all likelihood saved my life that day.

When Akbar believed in an idea he followed it to the ends of the earth. During the Iran/Iraq war at the young age of 13 years old Akbar was so disturbed by the Iraqi attacks on our country that he tried to enlist in the army. At that time he was denied entry into the war because of his age, but he persisted until a year or so later, when they finally let him in.

Akbar survived the war and went on to be one of our most active members. The simple truth about him is that he wasn’t particularly interested in making strategic decisions. But once a decision was made, he was someone who executed on plans. He was our best foot soldier in the student movement. He was there to implement what we decided, and he was extremely loyal.

Akbar's strength was what set him apart from most anyone I’ve ever known. He was fiercely strong against the Islamic Republic, and it was that strength that they would ultimately be put to the test in his final days in Evin Prison.

On the day that I was captured after the protests of 18 Tir, Akbar was also arrested at Tehran University. At that time there was a secret jail reserved specifically for political prisoners that we later learned was called Tohid. It was later closed, and became a museum signifying what the Islamic Republic would have people believe was the remnants of the Shah's rule, however, the regime took it to new heights of cruelty before closing its doors.Tohid prison was the darkest place imaginable. It was the place they took us upon our arrest, and it was where they tried to break us. At times they would bring Akbar in to watch my torture sessions, or those of his brother. They did the same for me during Akbar's sessions, though I have tried over the years to put these memories away. What I will say is that Akbar could not be broken.

I also saw Akbar when we finally were given a court hearing and they put us in the back seat of a car, blindfolded and lying on our sides, our feet and legs touching. When we both realized we rode together, there was great joy for an instant.

After months of torture in Tohid prison, we got the word that they were moving us to Evin Prison. For us, this was very good news. Akbar and I believed we were going to the same area within the prison, that the hard times were over for both of us, and that we would be sent to the student section of Evin to wait out the remainder of our sentences. We shook hands in the car on the way over, locking our fingers together for a short embrace before we reached our destination. We were happy at that moment, and in his usual way, he reassured me that everything was going to be okay. When we reached Evin Prison, the unexpected happened. The guards separated us. They took Akbar to Section 209 of the prison.

While the extreme torture of Tohid had ended for me, Akbar’s would continue at Evin Prison. Eventually he was moved with the other student prisoners, but the toll his body had taken was simply too high. He suffered more than any of us for his beliefs. Akbar’s legacy in the student movement was that he came to signify torture by the Islamic Republic.

On July 30, 2006, Akbar Mohammadi died in Evin Prison. Subjected to years of torture that went far beyond what I endured, his physical health was already fragile, and after more than a week of a hunger strike, his body gave out. Whether his death was of natural causes as the Islamic Republic would have us think, or whether the torturers themselves stopped his heart from beating, at the end of the day Akbar died at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What there is to say about Akbar is that there has never been a better fighter for any cause. He was strength personified. His courage in the face of such tyranny is beyond what most of us mere mortals can conceive of. By the time he died, his body was no longer that of a thirty-seven year old man. He suffered from a loss of hearing in one of his ears, and he had major kidney problems, and internal bleeding.

Before his last days at Evin Prison he had a couple of years outside of prison walls. He was released because of his physical ailments so he could seek medical attention. During that time a book was published in the U.S. in Akbar’s name. Not long after that the Islamic authorities picked Akbar up and took him back to Evin Prison. I have often wondered why he didn’t leave Iran during one of his temporary visits home. I believe Akbar must have thought he could endure for the movement.

The circumstances of Akbar’s death have always been questionable. He was taken to the infirmary shortly before he died. He was continually beaten, even during the fast he was undertaking to protest his return to prison. It is believed that he was injected with a substance while in the infirmary, and shortly after that he died.

The events that followed were no less heartbreaking than the last several years of Akbar’s life had been. The government wouldn’t allow his family to bury him in Tehran, and neither would they agree to bury him in his home town of Amol in the Mazandaran Province. He was later buried in a small village cemetery in Changemian. His body was badly beaten, and he was almost unrecognizable according to those who witnessed his remains before he was buried.

And so to my friend, Akbar Mohammadi, I say, this year and every year, I will remember how you fought. I will remember your bravery, and just as we promised one another all those years ago, I will continue to fight in your name, and in the names of all those who have suffered at the hands of the oppressors of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I will not give up, just as you never gave up.

Iranian You

Leila Radan is a blogger for over four years, a writer, actress, model and yoga teacher. As an Iranian-American, she is eager to do what little she can to help her people’s cause. She is working on her first book and currently resides in San Francisco.

I am part Iranian, part Danish. Mention of my Iranian blood stops people in their tracks these days. It used to be something that most outside our San Francisco bubble avoided. “Iranian”. Not anymore.

The world is watching, not enough, but the world is finally watching.

So people want to know how I feel. What is this conflict about? How am I impacted as an Iranian woman?

Yes, they hear the catch word of the day, “Iranian”, and they want to know how I feel.

Hmm…

I was on Facebook the moment the video of the now-well-known-then-unknown-and-nameless-woman Neda’s death was released. I watched her die.

I saw footage of Basijis on rooftops shooting at the crowd beneath… with real bullets… casually walking from one side to the other to shoot some more… and kill some more.

I witnessed a man receive a savage beating by Basijis as he screamed at the top of his lungs… not for mercy… not for help… just screams, shrieks of pain, as he lay bloodied on the floor, vulnerable, desperate, only to be stuffed into the trunk of a police car as an officer screamed at him to put his leg in so that he could shut the trunk.

Elsewhere a woman… maybe it was a man?… knelt by a puddle of blood on the sidewalk, crying, her… or his… hands soaked in that blood.

In the middle of the street, in broad daylight for all to see, a shirtless and bloodied man was dragged like an animal by several riot officers who’d beat him mercilessly along the way. At the end of the footage they stood him up against a car but he could barely stand, his head fell back and I caught a glimpse of his face.

A group of women huddled around a child I could not see but whom I know was beaten by a Basiji, a 7-year-old, as his mother shrieked.

In other footage shot some days later a 10-year-old was killed and, mixed in with primal screams of anger, pain and shock, were chants of “Mikosham, mikosham, an ke baradaram kosht.” I will kill, I will kill he who killed my brother.

Sometimes I couldn’t see anything. It was dark but I heard the chants of “Allah-o Akbar” on Tehran’s rooftops.

Once I also heard shrieks of terror as Basijis invaded a home in the dark, terrorizing its innocent inhabitants.

Later I learned that this became a new nightime norm accompanied by the practice of ground based militia men shooting blindly up into the night sky… at those chanting on the rooftops.

Demonstrators were arrested and hauled off to the feared Evin prison.

Testimonials and articles of the now expected torture leaked out as we received news that our cousin’s son was taken… to Evin.

I read vivid descriptions of beatings that left a college student unrecognizable. Every tooth in his mouth, save four, was smashed. His body bruised and broken beyond description. His anus ruptured from the repeated rape he was subjected to. His spirit broken.

I barely made it through accounts of a brother being made to watch his sister undergo repeated gang rapes.

I learned that one of our passionate and charismatic organizers of protests here in San Francisco was a survivor of the student uprising of ‘99 and lived through imprisonment and terrifying torture himself. I tried to read his accounts. I couldn’t.

I received word from a friend, a recent arrival from Tehran, that her cousin’s friend was detained and raped by so many of these savages that she lost count.

There are more examples I can cite but I think you get the picture.

So how do I feel? What are my views?

Here. Come in. Take a look and see because I am adrift in an endless sea of images that haphazardly come and go and rock me up and down as I flail about, drowning in the tears I shed for Neda as I watch the blood pour out of her chest and every cavity of her frozen face but then shots ring about from up above and whizz sharply past my ears and in an attempt to erase all I see and hear I empty my mind only to watch that space fill immediately with the shrieks, the bloodcurdling shrieks, of the tortured man that disappeared into the trunk of a car and I put my hands up to my face but they are soaked in blood and my heart races and I can barely breathe and as I gasp for air I see the dragged man’s face as he gasped for life whilst being held up against that car in Tehran’s streets, streets that resonated and carried the bloodcurdling shrieks of the wronged 7 year-old’s broken mother towards the crowd that held the dead 10 year-old as blood dripped on their every scream and ALLAH-O AKBAR rang through the night sky in spite of the bullets that still whizzed by as my people were taken away in the dark, in the light of day, it didn’t matter because they were taken away to Evin, to torture and rape and beatings and an endless nightmare that was not my reality and in its very distance made my heart ache even more.

I ache.

I ache so much that I sometimes forget I do.

Some days I cry. I cry so much I cannot function and I can barely care for my children and yet I do but I don’t remember and I wonder if I kissed them enough, if I held them enough, if I love them enough through my tears…

And then I laugh and I cannot connect to the pain and my mind is empty and the break is needed and welcomed, especially by my children, but then guilt sets in because Michael Jackson died and the world got distracted and the world is silent and forgetting and I want to scream and with my shrieks the visions return and the pain and the reality that my safety is not theirs to hold, yet, in Iran take hold of me once more and…

So now I ask, do you really want a history lesson from me? Do you want me to analyze and compare the Green Revolution of ‘09 to the Revolution of ‘79 and theorize that Iran lies in a limbo that shall lead it to a North Korea-like state or, at best, a Chinese way of governance? To coldly analyze the people and their “blind” courage? Do you want me to regurgitate numerous reports that have me hopeful one second and crying in despair the next?

Well, let me tell you what I want. Me… Iranian… wife… lover… friend… mother… daughter… human… flesh that bleeds… heart that beats… tears that burn… soul that aches… you.

Freedom.

… and straight from Iran an unnamed sister said it best. “I see freedom as freedom of choice, as having the opportunity to choose and being aware that choice does exist. I see freedom as being a free thinker, free to take action and free to bring those thoughts and actions together under the condition that they do not take away the rights of others.”

So now please tell me this. Are you watching? Are you listening? How do YOU feel?

- Leila Radan

Why Demonstrations Are So Important

On July 25, 2009, people all over the world will be showing their support for Iranian protesters in numbers never before seen. In protests sponsored by United4Iran, more than 100 cities will be hosting demonstrations simultaneously, spreading a message of human rights throughout the world and sending a message to the Islamic Republic of Iran that we are watching. This is a day for us to show up for civil and human rights, to put our differences aside, and show our solidarity as supporters of the people of Iran.

When we first started demonstrating outside of Iran following the election results in Iran last month, one American friend asked me, “What exactly are you protesting?” From her perspective, she couldn’t imagine what an Iranian who was here in the U.S. would protest. I explained that we were coming out to show our support for the brave people of Iran who were risking so much to stand up to their government and question the elections.

But the truth is, demonstrations for Iranians go even deeper than that. With every disturbing, heart breaking image that comes out if Iran these last few weeks, we are left asking the eternal question, “What more can we do?” Our organizing, printing posters, writing slogans, and coming out in protest is our show of solidarity, yes, but it is also action. It is showing not only the protesters that we are behind them, but it is reminding the world that it isn’t over in Iran. It is away of bringing the media’s attention back to the human rights violations that are rampant in the Islamic Republic of Iran at present.

I remember in the days before 18 Tir as our secular student group had demonstrations that we reported to media outside of Iran, knowing that someone outside the borders of Iran knew about us made us that much stronger. In those days the Internet wasn’t as strong as it is today, and without Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube as tools, we relied on phone calls to radio stations in the U.S. People in Los Angeles knew my voice back then, as a student working to bring democracy to Iran. They heard the panic in our voices as the Islamic Regime stepped up their search for us following the protests of July 1999. They likely thought of us dead men, and they were almost right.

On the day of my capture following 18 Tir, I was on the phone with an LA radio station giving an interview at the moment the Islamic Republic secret police broke down the doors of the apartment where I was seeking refuge. Just as I hung up the phone I heard what sounded like twenty or thirty voices yelling in unison “Allahu Akbar Khamanei rahbar, marg bar zede valayat fagheh.” This was the battle cry meant specifically for us, and literally translated means “In the name of Allah, down with those who oppose the representative of Allah”—the representative referring to Khamanei. The rest is history.

But what I know is that in the months I spent in a cell awaiting the next interrogation, I had hope that those who had heard my voice in the weeks before, knew what was going on in Iran. They were thousands of miles away, but they were thinking of us, holding a thought that we would survive.

When I protest here, whether it’s in the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, or London, I know that somewhere, someone in jail is hoping we haven’t forgotten them. To them, I say, we cannot forget. Your sacrifices have been far too great, and your courage is the inspiration that makes us continue. For these reasons we put our differences aside, and we come out in “a global day of action.”

For more information, see http://united4iran.org/.

Setting the Record Straight

What I stand for...
I want freedom for the people of Iran.
I want men and women to have the opportunity to live prosperous lives in my country.
I want every mother and father in Iran to go to sleep at night knowing that their sons and daughters are not spending the last hours of their lives in the torture chambers of Iranian prisons.
I'm weary of seeing another photo of a young Iranian face beside headlines that speak to horrific suffering before death, simply for a desire for freedom.
I want human rights for my country.

I am secular. I do not believe that religion belongs in government.

As a child I discovered the history of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossedeqh, and he has guided all my political beliefs. He understood democracy in its purest state. He wanted freedom for his people, and he devoted his life to this cause. He took no money for his service to his country.

It's more than a week now since the ten year anniversary of 18 Tir. I spent the beginning of the week in Los Angeles, working to organize our members there for a Thursday protest. That night after the demonstration at the Federal Building on Wilshire, I drove back up to the Bay Area to help get ready for the Friday protest there.

The last few weeks have been exhausting for most of us who have been paying attention to the news coming out of Iran. But what has made our work here even more difficult is the back biting and bickering that has become commonplace among many of the activists working in protest of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Iranian press in Los Angeles has never been particularly kind to me. When I first arrived in the U.S. I represented a student movement that many of them were leary of. I came to the U.S. believing that I could do more work to help my country from here, then I could have from inside. I was from the student movement that stood up to the government during the protests of 18 Tir. I was one of the leaders of the first openly secular student group in Iran at that time, I spent time in jail as a result of my work, and when I came to the U.S. I had no interest in joining any other group inside or outside of Iran.

That proved problematic in how I was accepted into the Iranian-American Community in Los Angeles. After a brief honeymoon period, they realized that I was independant. I didn't choose sides, but instead stood strong as a representative of the secular, democratic student movement of 18 Tir. I took a stand against the old guard that had been in LA since the 1979 Revolution, and that stand has cost me dearly over the years. I have no regrets for my actions, but since they have published so many stories that spread lies so proposterous that even I have to laugh at them, I wanted to take the opportunity to set the record straight once an for all.

I'm not on the inside when it comes to the groups in LA. Some of my friends from the past have taken sides with the elitests within the community, and it has tainted their politics, in my opinion. I have no regrets for having stayed strong in the simplicity of my own political beliefs, and I welcome others to join me in our own brand of protest against the Islamic Republic that does not seek a return to past, but instead looks to a future that is non-violent, secular, and democratic.

Despite what I have read about myself in the Iranian press from Los Angeles, I do not drive a Mercedes. I live a very simple life as a student who came to this country with nothing. I have always believed that profiting from my work in the student movement would be against my beliefs, and therefore, have rarely had much money with which to do my political work. I've been fortunate to have talented members of the International Alliance of Iranian Students, a group I founded after I left Iran. Our members have volunteered countless hours to posting on our website, writing articles, setting up Facebook groups, sending news feeds via Twitter, designing banners and posters and flyers, showing up at rallies and demonstrations in London, Zurich, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities all over the world. They, like me, have done it all for the good of Iran, for the future, and for freedom for our country.

I do believe that most Iranians outside of Iran want something similar for our country, but the fighting between us has to stop. When we put our personal agendas before the good of the people who are still within the Islamic Republic's borders, we miss the point entirely.

We cannot forget the suffering of the political prisoners who remain in Iranian jails. We must remember the face of Neda Agha Soltan in the final moments of her life when she looked at the camera in disbelief as her life slipped away. We must continue to share with the world the images of young Iranians like Sohrab Aarabi, taken from his parents too soon.

I am sickened and saddened by the loss of young lives in Iran. But I believe that we can survive. We must protest, we must use the media available to us, and we must stop fighting among ourselves.

A Decade Later...

18 Tir
a decade later…

In July of 1999 representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran attacked the dorms of Tehran University in the middle of the night. In the days that followed students rose up in protest in the largest demonstration against the regime in twenty years. Ten years later protesters have again filled the streets of Iran fighting for justice and human rights. Let not their voices be silenced…

Los Angeles
Thursday, July 8, 2009
Los Angeles Federal Building
11000 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Pacific

Berkeley
Friday, July 9, 2009
UC Berkeley Campus
@ the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph
Berkeley, CA
5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Pacific

London
Friday, July 9, 2009
Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran
16 Princes Street
London, United Kingdom
5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

http://www.daneshjooyan.org/ imalon18@gmail.com

or find us on Facebook by searching for International Alliance of Iranian Students

Remembering 18 Tir

For those of us who lived through July 1999 in Iran, these last few weeks have been a mix of hope that the protesters would be strong enough to continue, excitement at watching their courage and strength, and dread at what we knew they faced should they be arrested. Many of us have remembered the days ten years ago that followed the attack by government thugs on the Tehran University dorms.

I was in the dorms that night, and the sounds of the attacks will never completely fade from my mind. They shot and killed Ezzat Ibrahim Nejad during the attacks, and countless others were beaten badly. There has always been an absence of clarity about the true number of casualties that resulted from the attack. Then, just as they do now, the Islamic Republic's accounting of the dead can be deceiving at best.

I promised myself then as I heard the gunshots ringing through the night air and later in the months I spent in Iranian prisons, that if I survived, I'd spend the rest of my life working to make right what the Islamic Republic tried to destroy in the people of my country.

In the days that followed the attacks, students came out into the streets in numbers that hadn't been seen under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The attacks happened on a Thursday night, and by Sunday night there were some 50,000 students who had taken to the streets of Tehran. They weren't alone. Cities all over Iran burst into protest, just as they have since the fraudulent election results of June 12, 2009.

What 18 Tir represented to Iran was a very important beginning. The government at that time was taken by surprise, and that gave us an advantage. Then, like now, they hunted us down and imprisoned us. They broke our bones, but never did they break our spirits.

Just as students have come out at Tehran University every year since 1999 to remember our movement, this year we remember not only what happened a decade ago, but we come out and remember the protesters who currently languish in Islamic Republic jails, whose loved ones have been beaten and killed, and who have continued night after night to chant from the rooftops in a constant cry for freedom.

This year in cities all over the world supporters of the Iranian people will come out to mark the anniversary of 18 Tir. We gather in protest because we do not want protesters from back then, or now, to think that what they have done has been in vain. We raise our voices so that the world knows that we will not stop.

Mayor to Mayor...

The following is reprinted by permission of the author. Mayor Sepi Richardson of Brisbane, California, wrote the following letter to the Mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baquer Qalibaf. The significance of this post is that public servants everywhere in the world are in a unique position to show their support from their positions of authority. Mayor Richardson's letter is a great example of a public show of support for the people of Iran. The original letter was published on Payvand Iran News.

July 4, 2009

Honorable Mohammad Baquer Qalibaf
Mayor of Tehran
Office of Tehran Municipality
Behesht Ave
Tehran
Islamic Republic of Iran

Dear Mr. Qalibaf,

My name is Sepi Richardson, Mayor of the City of Brisbane located in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. I have the distinct honor of being the First Persian American Elected Councilwoman and Mayor in the World. I am writing to you as one public servant to another and also as a an Iranian American.

Over the last ten days, I and the citizens of my community along with the citizens of the world have watched the events unfold in Tehran. We have seen protests by Citizens of Tehran and we have seen the harsh response by various elements including Tehran's Police towards these protests leading to loss of life and property.

In his speech, late President John F. Kennedy cited the following powerful quote: "The word crisis, when written in Chinese is composed of two characters, one represents danger and the other represents opportunity''. When w e took office as Mayors of our respective cities, we took an oath to protect our Citizens and their property. I know you are and will be doing whatever in your power to ensure the citizens of your city are protected. This is our opportunity to act and demonstrate our leadership. For Democracy to be truly meaningful, it must be put into practice. I want to express my concerns and those of my constituents for the basic rights of Iranian Citizens.

Mr. Mayor, the world is watching and history will judge us as we serve our sacred offices. I send you my sincere well wishes and prayers in these defining moments.


Sepi Richardson
Mayor
City Of Brisbane
California
United States of America