"Real democracy is the only path for Iranians"
ANN ARBOR NEWS (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
On the Web at:
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/07/other_voices_real_democracy_is.html
By Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
In a wounded and burning Middle East, aching under U.S. and Israeli military boots, with constantly expanding invasions by Israel (Lebanon, 2006; Gaza, 2009), with close to 2 million dead Iraqis just next door, with millions more Iraqis wounded, made homeless and poisoned by uranium, with daily Israeli threats of nuclear bombing of Iran and Iranians; in an Iran where U.S. sanctions constantly tighten its grip on all aspects of life, making it impossible to get necessities to treat and maintain close to 80 million people, where food prices are on a par with the U.S. while the average income of an Iranian family is a small fraction of that of an American family; at a time when unemployment and drug abuse are at unimaginable heights; when prostitution is destroying the fabric of an ancient society, Iranians are demanding dignity and freedom, and a new Iran is being born.
A new Iran shines in the faces of those marching peaceably with their daughters on their shoulders, and with their grandparents using wheelchairs. To attribute this monumental nonviolent popular movement to Western instigation is to dishonor those millions who showed up on the streets for two weeks - despite the threat of government-backed "Basiji" hooligans beating them mercilessly, despite the threat of being expelled from their jobs and universities, despite having their homes attacked at night by the Basiji, despite their family members being kidnapped by the various security personnel.
The 2009 coup d'etat, against more than 40 million Iranian voters, was an inside job.
The day after the election results were announced I talked to a friend in Iran who told me "if they (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's camp) won fair and square, why aren't they celebrating on the streets?" The streets of Isfahan (and all other big cities in Iran) were desolate after the announcement.
People were dumbfounded.
The very next day, people organized and took to the streets again, carrying their children on their shoulders and pushing wheelchairs for the elderly.
Iranians know what a foreign coup d'etat looks like, and feels like. One of the most humiliating instances in our history was the 1953 CIA coup that removed the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosadegh from office and installed the shah.
For the next 25 years, the shah, with his Israeli-trained SAVAK torturers, murdered and tortured the nation into silence. Iranians still remember "the hired help," the U.S. and Israeli collaborators who got paid only pennies to roam the streets of Tehran (and other large cities); the vigilantes who swung metal chains in the air; metal chains that had bashed many young skulls and ripped through soft tissue of people's stomach. No, Iranians have not forgotten the shah's "Shaboon-Bi-Mokh" (brainless Shaboon) and his other brutal gangs.
That was a revolution ago, many political fights back, and long before many large and small civil victories.
Iranians of 2009 expect more from life and demand more of their government. After all, the most significant popular revolution of this century succeeded in Iran. We survived a brutal U.S.-instigated war, between Iran and Iraq, for eight years. Over a million died, throughout the 1980s.
Every Iranian knows that, were it not for the U.S.-fueled war with Iraq, a million Iranian and Iraqi youths would have been spared. Every Iranian knows that, were it not for the war with Iraq, democratic forces in Iran would have survived. Every Iranian knows that the new bullies, of the new regime, were strengthened by that war (this is admitted by current leaders of the regime itself).
Every Iranian knows that democracy was the real casualty of war inflicted on them by the U.S.
And Iranians know, in their bones, that what has already happened to Iraq and Afghanistan could easily have happened to them.
Real democracy (the people's ability to install social mechanisms to protect freedom of speech, freedom of writing, freedom of gathering, etc.) is now the only path that Iranians will accept, if we are to protect ourselves against further U.S. and Israeli wars. Knowing this in our bones, Iranians poured onto the streets in the millions, to cry for freedom.
May all people of the Middle East hear our call and answer with similar nonviolent rallies. Resistance to occupation, to invasion; to undemocratic regimes is our only hope for a safe Middle East where our children can grow to become painters and poets and mathematicians.
Remember your Iranian sisters and brothers who overcame their fear of bullets and tanks by chanting, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, we are all together"; and remember the revolution's 1979 chants, which also echoed in Iran after the 2009 elections: "Bullets, tanks and machine guns will not work anymore."
Nothing but solidarity between Iran and its neighbors will protect us from U.S. and Israeli drones, and from uranium bombs. May all the people of the region hear Iran's call and answer with comparable nonviolent rallies, especially in the occupied nations.
Iran is calling you: "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, we are all together."
Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, a native of Iran, is an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor. Her new book is "Pollution and Reproductive Damage: Pollution Induced Cell-death and Reproductive Damage in Fish and Mammals" published by DVM publishers (Germany). She has written on the effects of plasticizers and pesticides on the female reproductive cycle, and on pollution related to wars and invasions in the Middle East.
______________________________________________________________________
