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.