Stealing Home

Any one of a certain age that attended university pre-Iranian revolution had many, many Iranian friends. I certainly did. After the revolution, many disappeared for reasons I never new. Since the hostage taking at the end of the Carter years, we now only hear disappointing things about life for the people of that country and it makes me sad. They may not have wanted to be party to the excesses of the peacock throne, but they did not deserve the poverty and intolerance that followed the overthrow. Today’s election steals more of their home.

Opposition leader Mir Houssain Musavi speaks in an open letter to the people of Iran(H/T to BB),

In the Name of God

Honorable people of Iran

The reported results of the 10th Iranians residential Election are appalling. The people who witnessed the mixture of votes in long lineups know who they have voted for and observe the wizardry of I.R.I.B (State run TV and Radio) and election officials. Now more than ever before they want to know how and by which officials this game plan has been designed. I object fully to the current procedures and obvious and abundant deviations from law on the day of election and alert people to not surrender to this dangerous plot. Dishonesty and corruption of officials as we have seen will only result in weakening the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran and empowers lies and dictatorships.

I am obliged, due to my religious and national duties, to expose this dangerous plot and to explain its devastating effects on the future of Iran. I am concerned that the continuation of the current situation will transform all key members of this regime into fabulists in confrontation with the nation and seriously jeopardize them in this world and the next.

I advise all officials to halt this agenda at once before it is too late, return to the rule of law and protect the nation’s vote and know that deviation from law renders them illegitimate. They are aware better than anyone else that this country has been through a grand Islamic revolution and the least message of this revolution is that our nation is alert and will oppose anyone who aims to seize the power against the law.

I use this chance to honor the emotions of the nation of Iran and remind them that Iran, this sacred being, belongs to them and not to the fraudulent. It is you who should stay alert. The traitors to the nation’s vote have no fear if this house of Persians burns in flames. We will continue with our green wave of rationality that is inspired by our religious leanings and our love for prophet Mohammad and will confront the rampage of lies that has appeared and marked the image of our nation. However we will not allow our movement to become blind one.

I thank every citizen who took part in spreading this green message by becoming a campaigner and all official and self organized campaigns, I insist that their presence is essential until we achieve results deserving of our country.

[ verse from in Quran: Why not trust in God, who has shown us our ways. We are patient in face of what disturbs us. Our resilience is in God. ]

Mir Hossein Mousavi

I watched this election in interest because I do not want to see nuclear proliferation anywhere and because Mir Hossein Mousavi has a wife who takes the chador and has used its symbolic power as a way to transform. With Zhara, the chador becomes a symbol of women’s empowerment instead of their powerlessness. Like the nascent gay rights movement that embraced the word queer, then transformed proudly into the Queer Nation, Mousaivi’s wife Zhara seeks full participation of women in Iranian society. Her chadors are multicolored and demonstrate a glimpse at what could be possible in a new Iran. Flowers around her face peep out underneath the traditional black. They whisper of what might lurk beneath. Zhara Rahnavard is trying to change life for other professional women in the traditional patriarchal society and so was her now, possibly imprisoned husband.

But Mr Mousavi has – for Iran – an unusual political asset; his wife, Zhara Rahnavard.

She is Iran’s first top-ranking female university professor and like her husband is a respected painter. Their most daring move as a couple has caused a stir – they hold hands as they campaign together.

In a BBC interview in Tehran, she described politics as art, and her choice of veil – a black chador with a flowery scarf peaking from beneath it – as a “beautiful composition.”

Politicians’ wives haven’t campaigned like this since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But this is 2009 and women’s issues are on the agenda as they’ve never been before.

“Equality between men and women,” is Ms Rahnavard’s firm answer when I ask what women’s activists are fighting for.

An umbrella organisation of women’s organisations is not supporting any candidate. But it is lobbying for change including amendments to the constitution that would affect women, including rights within the family.

For women backing Mr Mousavi, or the other reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi, they know equality has limits. It is an issue of rights: the right to study what they choose; to have a say if their husband wants to take a second wife; to do jobs they are qualified for.

“I’m a graduate from one of our country’s best universities,” Sara tells me in Isfahan in a quiet voice tinged with palpable frustration. “But I still can’t do everything I want. I can’t say everything I want.”

Many young Iranians attend University and 65% of them are women.

Trained as an architect, Sara has found she is allowed to design buildings, but supervising her projects on site can be difficult, and sometimes its forbidden.

There is interesting insight from the Guardian concerning circumstances of the Iranian election from reporter Abbas Barzegar. Was the fix in on this election or not?

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad’s victory that Mousavi’s supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day’s events.

As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.

On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister’s supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava.

But the failure to properly gauge Iran’s affairs is hardly a new phenomenon. When the 1979 revolution shattered the military dictatorship of America’s strongest ally in the region few experts outside of the country suspected that the Islamic current would emerge as the leading party.

To those of us that know first hand how easy it is to game elections, the outcome will undoubtedly jade us further. Raw Story reports that once again, the opposition has been arrested and people have taken to the streets to express outrage.

Iran is in turmoil and the country’s political scene is undergoing moment-by-moment changes following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory in yesterday’s presidential elections, with evidence growing of a brutal government crackdown on supporters of reformist opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Reports from several news sources indicate that Mousavi himself has been placed under arrest; according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate voice in Iranian politics, “resigned from all of his official positions in protest against the results of the election.”

“I feel like I went to sleep in one country and woke up in another,” says Lindsay Hilson, a reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News.

It seems this headline repeats many times over the world. Election held. Opposition loses. Opposition in Jail. Here is a related headline about Mynamar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been jailed once again. As the article states, “The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years in some form of detention”.

Let us not forget the terrible shooting of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan who was assassinated in Pakistan on December 27, 2007. Pakistan itself sits on the brink of civil war. A nuclear armed Pakistan in an unstable part of the world with one foot in the science of the 20th century and one foot in the beliefs of the bronze age.

The hopes of many Iranian women were with Hossein Mousavi as reported in the BBC article.

“President Ahmadinejad isn’t bothering us about our headscarves during the elections. But if he returns to power, it would be terrible,” she moans, her voice rising with emphasis on the last word.

She complains of police raids on gatherings in private homes and hassles over women’s dress during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s four years as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Her main theme this week, like many young Iranians yearning for an atmosphere of greater liberalism, has been green – the colour of the reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Golnaz’s tunic is moss green.

Her cousin Sara, a year older, sits next to her wearing a soft shade of lime.

But in Isfahan’s magnificent Imam Square, I met a small group of young women, all wearing black, proudly waving their posters of a smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “We’re voting for him,” they shout in unison.

It takes so much bravery to fight for right and wrong in a world where you can be imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in many unspeakable ways. When I read the stories of the many men and women that fight for the rights of humanity in such ways and such places, it makes me feel very very small. I like feel a mouse looking up at huge people who are braver than I could ever hope to be. They challenge so much and demonstrate willingness to sacrifice all for the dreams of so many. We must always support these people who hold up human possibility and dignity with whatever we can muster. It is my hope that we will hear–at the very least–a statement of similar sentiment from our SOS Hillary Clinton and POTUS Barack Obama that shows we Americans recognize and support the struggle for human rights wherever they occur. I hope that speech will also denounce those who suppress human possibility and dignity with violence, ignorance, and evil. If these people can give so much, perhaps we can stand up for them against those that hold an oil barrel, a powerful, well-funded lobby, or our treasury debt to our collective heads.