The Lost Honour of Neda Soltani

Some images are iconic - think of Kim Phuc or Sharbat Gula... if you don't know their names you will know their photos. Neda Agha Soltan, who was murdered by Baseej thugs  was the icon of the protests against Ahmadinejad's fraudulent election win in 2009. I missed this Guardian articlewhen it was published last week. It is quite shocking

Neda Agha Soltan

Her face adorned a thousand placards and posters, an emblem of the failed Iranian uprising.
 Unfortunately, it wasn't herwell not always....  As 26-year-old Neda bled to death on the pavement, her shocked eyes stared into an onlooker's mobile phone video camera and the terrible images were uploaded to international websites. It made her a martyr to those inside and outside Iran protesting at the flawed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Scrambling to cover the story and looking to find a photograph of the dead woman in life, journalists who had been banned at the time from entering Iran lifted a photograph of a woman called Neda Soltani from her Facebook page and published it – and the life of the 32-year-old, middle-class university English lecturer changed for ever.

 
"It destroyed my life," said Soltani, who has now written a book called My Stolen Face and still has to endure her image appearing as if she were the murdered Neda Soltan.

For Soltani, the mix-up brought her to the attention of the Iranian secret service. "They wanted to use me to say the whole thing was a fake made up by western media – 'see, here is this Neda and she is alive'. They didn't care that it was nothing to do with me, that it was a mistake; they wanted me to co-operate and when I wouldn't, they hounded me," she said.

"I was interrogated three times and confronted with increasingly wild theories. They were threatening me and my brother and my mother. They charged me with treason. They said I was endangering the security of my own country. I knew what that meant: death. "In a matter of 12 days, everything in my life had changed. From the day Neda was killed to the day I fled. "My family were so shocked to see people everywhere carrying my photo, decorating it with black ribbons and flowers. Neda's own family were in shock and it was some time before they released her real photo and by then it was too late; the world had mine."

Luckily, Soltani had an exit visa in her passport, obtained for an academic conference she had been due to attend in Athens. Her friends bundled her out of the country just hours before the soldiers came for her. "I owe them my life because I was still so shocked, I didn't really know what was happening."

For nine months she lived in a refugee camp in Germany, Finally she was granted leave to stay and is now, slowly, trying to adjust to the culture, learn the language and build herself another life in Munich.

"It's hard. My friends have got married and had babies and I can never be there. My grandmother passed away, my brother graduated. Sometimes just the smallest thing, a smell, a certain moment, will bring back memories of home I am angry because it was amateurish and reckless. It shows how dangerous sloppy journalism can be. I had an apology a long time later from a news agency. It said: 'We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.'"

The consequences of a such a mix up can be dire anywhere but in an oppressive state like Iran? Well if you've got this far you will have seen and realise that it could have been far worse for the other Neda A lazy hack can destroy a life.

Neda – the official version

As a living Lady fills the scumbag junta of Burma with terror so in death does Neda Agha Soltan to the vermin in charge of Iran . It does not matter that her death was one of many during the protests that followed Iran’s fraudulent election last year (and those to come of course – those to be executed after show trials), in death, Neda is the icon of Iran's struggle for democracy.

That Neda terrifies Ahmadinejad and his minions is clear. If not then they would not have jammed satellite broadcasts of “For Neda”. According to today’s Independent the regime has released its own film about her death,. – which blames the resistance movement outside Iran for Neda's death. This will come as no surprise as the regime has tried to blame just about everyone but the Baseej for her murder, including the doctor who held her dying in his arms and those who shot the video footage of her death. The regime has even claimed that she was alive and well in Greece!

Despite what must have been enormous pressure Neda’s family has refused to cooperate one jot with the regime. They refused to contribute to the “official” version but did, however, co-operate with the British documentary “For Neda” that depicts her death and the impact it has had on her family, on Iran and around the world.

Neda's mother, Hajar Rostami Motlagh, spoke yesterday of the heartache and inspiration that her daughter's death has come to symbolise. Neda's death was one of many during the Iranian Green Revolution, but international coverage of her killing has left her family fearful of constant intimidation.

"It has become more difficult for us to visit Neda's grave", her mother explains. "Every time we visit, there are a couple of officers watching us from a distance. They're afraid even of her dead body... I've always been an ordinary Iranian mother, I've never been into politics... but since Neda's death, our lives have been changed. People expect us to react and participate in meetings. I have been in touch with the mothers of those protesters who've been killed after the election and participated in women's rights meetings."

Speaking about the global impact of her daughter's death, she said: "It's an honour for our family. We thank everybody in the world for paying attention to Neda's story. There have been hundreds of other Nedas in Iran who were killed after last year's election, but their stories are not so well known. I hope the world would pay attention to their stories too."
"It's too late for the government to discredit Neda's story and the film. Her moment of death is seen by the world. Every time they try to build up lies upon lies about Neda's death and they have been unsuccessful."

Oppression has not deterred Neda's family. Ms Motlagh said she was no longer afraid. "I lost my daughter; I don't have anything else to lose. I was not frightened at all. The least I can do is to let the world know what has happened to my daughter's life."

What more can one add to this? The regime’s attempt to present lies about Neda’s death will not be believed except by the regime and its sycophants, useful idiots like Galloway and Seumas Milne and other credulous fools (like Further Left?)

Regime cannot stop For Neda

The Iranian regime is resorting to jamming satellite broadcasts in a vain attempt to stop people seeing a new film telling the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, According to the Guardian viewers in Tehran complained of jamming and power cuts last week when the Voice of America Persian TV network broadcast the documentary For Neda, featuring the first film interviews with the family of the 27-year-old.

Unsurprisingly, given the groundswell of feeling in the country the film has rapidly gone viral in Iran in the run-up to next Saturday's anniversary of the disputed elections that triggered the protests. It is available on YouTube so can be seen by anyone with access to the internet.
The film was directed by Antony Thomas and co-produced by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, a former Guardian correspondent in Iran. Kamali Dehghan risked arrest to interview Neda's parents and siblings and obtain unseen footage of her life.

Witnesses have said that she was shot in the heart by a sniper with the Basij militia force, who has been named as Abbas Kargar-Javid.

Iran's intelligence ministry is reportedly due to release its own documentary to remove "ambiguities" surrounding her death and provide "new evidence" about what it calls the west's version of events. Neda's family were under pressure to cooperate with the official documentary but refused. Two of her friends were forced to participate.

The Iranian regime will probably suggest again that Neda was an agent of the US and Britain who staged her own death and poured blood on her face. BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne was also blamed for her killing before being expelled.

Meanwhile Ahmadinejad today warned the opposition of tough measures, ahead of protests next week. "Those who want to tarnish the image of the country and its system will be removed from the [political] scene," he said in a speech marking the 21st anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, architect of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the shah.

"The election last year was the most democratic in the world as nowhere else would 40 million people turn up for elections," he claimed. Ahmadinejad pledged: "Whoever stands against the Islamic system will not survive." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, boasted that Iran, facing new UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, was in a position to "see off any conspiracies".

Democratic? Don’t make me laugh! It was as rigged as HMS Victory! A few Stalinist scumbags George Galloway, Seumas Milne et al may swallow that bullshit but most people don’t. Protests have been muted for several months but there is still a huge reservoir of anger among the people of Iran. Ahmadinejad is a dead man walking, metaphorically speaking. He will be flushed into the sewers of history, count on it.

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.

Justice for Neda? Somehow I think not

Hypocrite

On MondayIranian “President” Ahmadinejad called the death of Neda Agha-Soltan "suspicious" and urged the authorities to identify those responsible.

Ahmadinejad told the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, to probe the incident and make the results of his investigations public "The massive propaganda of the foreign media, as well as other evidence, proves the interference of the enemies of the Iranian nation who want to take political advantage and darken the pure face of the Islamic republic," he said in a letter to Shahroudi, according to the Fars news agency.

On the same day Press TV said Agha-Soltan did not die the way the opposition claims. Two people told the channel that there were no security forces in the area when she was killed. Also it claimed that the fatal bullet, from a small calibre pistol is not used by Iranian security forces.

According to a report on Press Tv today Iran's Police Chief, Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqadam, stated that Neda’s murder was a 'prearranged 'premeditated act of murder'. Ahmadi-Mogadam blamed Arash Hejazi (pictured below) who witnessed Neda's final moments, has fanned the flames of the western media hype. He said that the Iranian Intelligence Ministry is making every effort to discover the whereabouts of Hejazi. "He has fled the country and is working against the Iranian government abroad." In fact Arash Hejazi is postgraduate student at Oxford Brookes University rather than a fugitive. AFP also reports that Arash is also now wanted by Interpol

Scape goat?

According to CNN, Iran's ambassador to Mexico, Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri, has suggested that U.S. intelligence services could be responsible for her death."This death of Neda is very suspicious "My question is, how is it that this Miss Neda is shot from behind, got shot in front of several cameras, and is shot in an area where no significant demonstration was behind held?...Well, if the CIA wants to kill some people and attribute that to the government elements, then choosing women is an appropriate choice, because the death of a woman draws more sympathy."

In the light of the above I wonder what the chance of Neda’s murder being pinned on the Basij militia? Somewhere between fat and fuck all, methinks. My money would be put on a joint Mossad.MI6/CIA operation carried out by a crack team consisting of the ghost of Ofra Haza, Emo Phillips and Jade Goody’s mum.

Needless to say they will besmirch the name of a young woman who appeared to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meanwhile a respected author and translator seems to be the object of the regime's bile. No doubt if he was returned to Iran his fate would not be pleasant.