On #Iran and the brave Iranian protesters

Last night I had dinner with a lovely Iranian woman whose family is still living in Tehran.  She is planning to go back in a few weeks to visit her parents. I will worry about her when she goes.

This morning I came across this video, posted Feb 26, 2011, and Josh Shahryar’s remarkable comment about the Iranian state. Here are some excerpts:

Imagine a country where when protesters are killed, their families have to pay something called a “bullet fee,” because the government expended resources to murder them. Imagine being a war veteran, standing in a morgue and begging the very men who are responsible for your son’s death to return his body to you because you cannot possibly pay the amount they’re asking for.

Yes, stoning is horrifying, but there are other things you don’t hear about much. Imagine a regime that doesn’t execute virgin women. Don’t get too excited. It doesn’t mean what you think. It actually means that when a woman who’s a virgin is condemned to death, she’s married off to a prison guard in a sham ceremony hours before her execution so he can rape her. Only then can she be executed.

Imagine a prison, where instead of cells, they have shipping containers out in the yard. Dozens of detained protesters are forced into a container until there is no more room, then shut in for days without food or water. But that’s the least of prisoners’ concerns when they cannot breathe in such a confined space under the burning sun and can only wait to die of asphyxiation.

Imagine a police force that will drag the dead bodies of your loved ones from the streets after shooting them in a protest, then, bury them in unmarked graves. Imagine finding your child’s grave after bribing a dozen officials, then coming the next day to find the grave gone. Imagine that.

But most of all, try to imagine a state where if you speak of regime change or go out to protest or even try to raise awareness about these brutalities, you are condemned and tried for “fighting against God,” because apparently, the state is governed not by human laws, but by the laws of the divine. You won’t be tried for sedition, but for daring to challenge God’s authority on earth because you wanted to speak your mind.

…

This is what a proponent of democracy faces when he or she goes out to protest in Iran. Almost certain torture, rape, and even murder in the event of arrest. Fifteen hundred protesters were arrested on February 14 and many more on the 20th.

Now, tell me what you would do if you were a hungry, unemployed, disenfranchised Iranian? Would you try to go and camp out in a public square? Or would you march around the city? The fact that thousands of Iranians went out to protest on Sunday wasn’t a show of discontent, but a show of unparalleled heroism.

I’ll warn you, your subconscious may try to block you from absorbing the atrocities that I have written about here — it is certainly easier to think of Iran as if it is on another planet or even in an entirely different dimension. Makes us all feel better if we are as far away from such inhumanity as possible. I won’t blame you for not believing any of it, though. Sometimes, I can’t believe it myself.