Pro-regime scum desecrate Neda’s grave... again

The Times reports that supporters of the Iranian Government have for a second time desecrated the grave of Neda Soltan, the student whose shooting during a street demonstration last June made her a worldwide symbol of the opposition.

The black marble grave stone on which her face is engraved has been pockmarked by bullets. This is despite the constant presence of security forces who are there to prevent the grave from becoming a shrine.

The current tombstone was put in place on December 14 after the previous one was smashed in mid-November. The damage was discovered on December 31.

Not only wishing to destroy her last resting place the regime has increased its efforts to smear her name. A recent documentary (excerpts were aired by Press TV, the English language propaganda station which employs Galloway as one of its useful idiots) made the preposterous claims that Neda was an agent of the US and Britain and that her death was a hoax. It suggests that she squeezed fake blood over herself as she lay on the pavement but was then shot dead by her fellow conspirators in the car that took her away — presumably to silence her.

“Neda for a moment realizes their wicked plan and struggles to escape but they quickly shoot her from behind,” the narrator claims, and goes on to name Arash Hejazi, the doctor who tried to save her and has since fled to Britain, as one of her killers.

Previously the regime claimed that she was killed by British and US intelligence agents, by the BBC or by the opposition for propaganda purposes. It has also unsuccessfully pressured her parents to say that their daughter was killed by foreign agents.

I would like to view these acts as part of the death rattle of a desperate and increasingly insane regime. In reality the near future of Iran will include a lot more blood, sadly. The sooner they are gone, the better

Neda Soltan is the Times Person of the Year

The Times has chosen a martyr of the Iranian protests as its person of the year. Six months ago Neda Soltan’s death flashed across the world and a tragic icon was born. This is an edited version of the Times article:

Neda was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran. Hours after leaving home, she was shot, by a government militiaman, as she and other demonstrators chanted: “Death to the dictator.”

Arash Hejazi, a doctor standing near by, remembers her looking down in surprise as blood gushed from her chest. She collapsed. More blood spewed from her mouth. As she lay dying on the pavement, her life ebbing out of her, “I felt she was trying to ask a question. Why?” said Dr Hejazi, who tried to save her life. Why had an election that generated so much excitement ended with a government that claims to champion the highest moral values, the finest Islamic principles, butchering its own youth?

A 40-second telephone clip of Ms Soltan’s final moments flashed around the world. Overnight she became a global symbol of the regime’s brutality, and of the remarkable courage of Iran’s opposition in a region where other populations are all too easily suppressed by despotic governments.

She was no less of an icon inside Iran, whose Shia population is steeped in the mythology of martyrdom. Vigils were held. Her grave became something of a shrine, and the 40th day after her death — an important date in Shia mourning rituals — was marked by a big demonstration in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran that riot police broke up.

It was not hard to see why Ms Soltan so quickly became the face of the opposition, the Iranian equivalent of the young man who confronted China’s tanks during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations 20 years earlier. She was young and pretty, innocent, brave and modern. The story of her death was so potent that the regime went to extraordinary lengths to suppress it. It banned a mourning ceremony, tore down black banners outside her home, and insisted that her funeral be private. It ordered her family to stay silent.

In the subsequent weeks any number of leading officials, ayatollahs included, sought to blame her death on British and American intelligence agencies, the opposition, and even the BBC — accusing its soon-to-beexpelled Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, of arranging her death so that he could get good pictures. The regime announced investigations that, to no one’s surprise, exonerated it and all its agents.

When The Queen’s College, Oxford, established a scholarship in Ms Soltan’s name the regime sent the university a furious letter of complaint.

Back in Tehran, the regime tried to buy off Ms Soltan’s parents by promising them a pension if they agreed that their daughter was a “martyr” killed by foreign agents. Her mother, Hajar Rostami Motlagh, was outraged. “Neda died for her country, not so that I could get a monthly income from the Martyr Foundation,” she said. “If these officials say Neda was a martyr, why do they keep wiping off the word ‘martyr’ in red which people write on her gravestone? ... Even if they give the world to me I will never accept the offer.”

Soon afterwards, government supporters desecrated her grave. The regime has not arrested or investigated Abbas Kargar Javid, who was caught by demonstrators seconds after he shot Ms Soltan. The crowd, unwilling to use violence, and with the police the enemy, let him go — but not before they had taken his identity card.

Six months on, it is obvious that Ms Soltan did not die in vain. The manner of her death, and the regime’s response, has shredded what little legitimacy it had left. She helped to inspire an opposition movement that is now led by her generation, which a systematic campaign of arrests, show trials, beatings, torture and security force violence has failed to crush, and whose courage and defiance has won the admiration of the world.

As the new year approaches, the so-called Green Movement appears to be gaining confidence and momentum. It no longer seems impossible that the regime could fall in 2010. If and when it does, Ms Soltan will be remembered as the pre-eminent martyr of the second Iranian revolution.

What to say but hope yet again that the Iranian regime is consigned to the worst circle of Hell where it and its Western apologists belong.

The Iranian protests have brought forward thousands of brave men and women and they are moist certainly not forgotten. However it is the case that one image can symbolise a whole event. Think of the Vietnam War and I would imagine that the picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked down a road is the image that springs to mind. Think of Tiananmen and it is the unknown protestor standing in front of a tank. Think of Iraq and I bet the image of Lynddie England dragging a prisoner on a chain in Abu Ghraib springs quickly to mind.

And so the murder of Neda Soltan is the defining image of the Iranian protests. The Times choice is appropriate in that it acknowledges just this.

The Neda Soltan scholarship

According to the Times, Queens College Oxford has received thousands of pounds in unsolicited public donations in support of a scholarship honouring an Iranian student murdered during a street protest in Tehran.

For those who do not already know Neda was shot dead on June 20 during a street protest against Iran’s rigged presidential election. She has become a worldwide icon of the protests.

But the public support for commemorating Neda Soltan contrasts sharply with the attitude of the British Government. The Times learnt that it would have advised Queen’s College against establishing the scholarship, saying that Iran would regard it as a provocative move.

Diplomatic sources apparently stated that the scholarship has driven “another nail into the coffin” of an already strained Iranian/British relationship. Critics will see this as further evidence of the Government’s reluctance to confront the Iranian regime despite its repeated claims that Britain fomented the protests that followed the hotly disputed presidential election in June and its arrest of the British Embassy’s Iranian staff.

Since Queen’s established the Neda Soltan scholarship with two anonymous donations last month, almost £15,000 has been sent in by former students, parents and members of the public.
A spokesman for Queen’s College said that the decision to set up the scholarship was not a political one, but he was not surprised that it was perceived in that light. He added that if the college had decided to turn down the initial funds of £4,000 from two private donors this would have also been viewed as political.

“One of the initial donors has also indicated that he will commit £10,000 over the coming five years to support the scholarship further. The college is of course pleased to receive donations that will support one of its primary aims, which is to fund bursaries and scholarships which help students who might otherwise be unable to study at Oxford.”

The Iranian authorities have wrongly accused the Government of helping to establish the scholarship, which prompted a furious letter from the deputy Iranian Ambassador in London to the Queen’s College Provost, Professor Paul Madden.

To be honest it doesn’t matter what the Iranian authorities think. They follow the idiotic view that Britain is somehow responsible for many of their country’s woes and will look to stick it to us at any opportunity. There aren’t many more nails that could be driven into the coffin of UK/Iranian relations!

As far as I am concerned the scholarship is a fitting tribute to a young woman cut down in her youth by a brutal regime. The British Government should grow a pair (but no I am not advocating an attack on Iran, I’m not that stupid!), the Iranian Government can go screw itself

Neda’s family forced out of home?

Yesterday’s Guardian reported that the Iranian authorities had ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home. Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed.

The authorities have apparently treated the family with utter contempt: They did not let the family have her body back, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.
In accordance with tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building. But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.

A tearful middle-aged woman who was an immediate neighbour said her family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, out in force in the area harassing people since Soltan's death.The area in front of Soltan's house was empty (yesterday). There was no sign of black cloths, banners or mourning. Secret police patrolled the street.

"We are trembling," one neighbour said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve."

"In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda's family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here," he said. "The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That's ridiculous – if that's true why don't they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government."

WW - Neda

Neda Agha Soltani. Murdered by the Iranian regime 20 June 2009. This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Wordless Wednesday.