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Students in Iran are risking everything to rise up against the government

43 points by eternalban 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Wish them the best. It’s fascinating seeing the older generation in Iran and Russia blame America for every protest against their power. It seems to be losing its effectiveness with the youth of their countries.
- eternalban 4y ago
  I do not believe this is strictly a generational matter. It is also incorrect to think that previous attempts to reform the theocratic state were undermined due to deflecting propaganda. A letter from Evin [prison] by Bahareh Hedayati (part of student uprising in 2012) can clarify these matters for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahareh_Hedayat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahareh_Hedayat https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/bahareh-hedayat https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/bahareh-hedaya... https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/biography_of_bahareh_hedayat.pdf https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/biography_of_bahareh_hedayat.pd... -- part 1 (too long for single post) -- This is the umpteenth text that I am writing and I cannot finish it. My sentences are so overflowing with anger that I am afraid it will mangle my logic. But controlling your anger when a 22-year-old man is hanged for blocking a street to protest is tough, or perhaps impossible to do, especially anger at a government that has blocked the vital highways to an ordinary and honorable life for the people and especially for the women of this land. The revolution is inevitable To argue that the Islamic Republic is the enemy of this land, of this nation, has been redundant for a long time. The nature and the fate of this government is decay and it must go. Getting rid of this criminal government is bound to be costly and fraught with danger, but there is no other way but to pay this cost and face up to the dangers because this power structure is unable to recognize new social forces and to assimilate them within itself. In other words, there is no chance that the existing regime can extricate itself from the situation that has emerged, because neither can a tiny part of the protesters’ demands be fulfilled within the present system, and nor can the majority of the people waive any of their demands. The government cannot fulfill these demands because all possibilities and mechanisms for flexibility within the power structure have already either been eliminated or have lost credibility. And the people cannot forgo their demands because these demands are tied to their normal, everyday lives. No matter how we look at them, these demands are legitimate, undeniable and self-evident. As a result, these demands are now confronting the power structure itself, which is going to crumble whether they are fulfilled or they are resisted. Therefore, revolution is inevitable. We must be on guard against uncontrolled violence By its nature, a revolution is a perilous and violent affair. So, although forbidding violence is practical up to a point, insistence on absolute avoidance of violence is the same as forbidding the revolution itself, meaning canceling the revolution, denying the necessity of bringing down the existing power structure and of arriving at a new social covenant. What has been going on in the streets in the past few months is the strongest argument that we have in response to those who are still not convinced that the Islamic Republic must be brought down or argue against it. But we have to say to those who believe that this is a necessity that although — unfortunately — a revolution is not devoid of violence, we have to keep a red light on to warn against uncontrolled violence. When it comes to violence — besides the moral issue that might genuinely be disturbing to some — the more important issue is the stability of Iran after the collapse of this regime. Therefore, the kind of violence that would start and sustain a cycle of revenge after the downfall of the regime must be avoided because it would threaten the stability of Iran and the survival of the government that is borne from the coming revolution. We, the 1980s generation, were the last to test the possibility of peaceful change No impartial observer can accuse the Iranian people of impatience or a propensity to violence because, in these past decades, the collective minds of Iranians have repeatedly tried every possible way to peacefully change the existing situation, but each and every time these methods have been blocked by the ruling totalitarian regime. We, part of the generation of the 1980s whose lives were spent in war and under relentless ideological indoctrination, and whose adolescence and youth came during the so-called reform period, are perfect examples of those who tried to find the last possible outlets for change. We even agreed — mistakenly — to gamble on the social capital accumulated through the Green Movement [the name for the protest movement of 2009-10 – IranWire] under the illusion that fulfilling some of the people’s demands — normalization of relations between the government and the world and its inevitable consequence, namely the government’s compliance with modern rules of governing — would make the lives of our fellow Iranians better without violence. At every juncture, however, the government was adamant about continuing its wrongful ways. We did everything to prevent violence, but this fear of violence both backfired and gave rise to a misunderstanding. It backfired because it gave the appearance that no action in the streets is acceptable and the reformists, following this misinterpretation of avoiding violence, virtually stopped protesting in any shape or form! It was a misunderstanding because the government came to believe in the illusion that we were afraid for our lives and even our former friends imagined that the policy of avoiding violence was the same as compromising with power! But both these ideas were illusions. Explaining why both friends and enemies were under such an impression requires extensive discussions at another time, but suffice it say sociopolitical upheavals revolve around the forces that they release from within themselves, not prescribed guidelines and advice. ...
  - eternalban 4y ago
    [cont] Green Movement’s trenches of resistance fell Before all these tests, the greatest political experience of our generation, the Green Movement, met defeat despite all our hopes and sacrifices and despite giving birth to a precious political identity that, if nothing else, was a few steps ahead of the previous generation that was contaminated by political Islam. Not only were some of us killed, but many, many of us were sent to prison. We were not only suppressed but we were also forced to accept the last remnants of political Islam within ourselves when we trusted reformist leaders and Mir-Hossein Mousavi personally as allies of the movement. This was clear from our slogans. At that time our trust was not unjustified, but, more importantly, we had no other choice. Nevertheless, as long as the movement survived in the streets, we of the Green Movement were the victors of this coalition. As long as the streets were ours, it was we who defined the movement and its demands, and Mousavi and the reformists followed us. But when the movement was suppressed and we were forced to take shelter in our homes, the trenches that we had left undefended were taken over by the reformists’ interpretation of the movement, gradually, but more and more with the passing of the years. The moral defeat of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Only a few months ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi put the last nail in the coffin of the political identity that “we”, the 20-somethings, had built a decade earlier with our blood and toil. Cut off from reality and using the Shah-Khomeini duality, he defended the organized and continuous crimes of Khomeini’s regime with an undeniable clarity and called the man who bloodied and set on fire a region or perhaps the world and condemned the women of this land to hijab slavery an “ever-awake soul”. He did not even glance at young supporters of the Green Movement to see that he owed them his new political life over the past decade, young people who, at a critical political juncture, welcomed him as an ally of the Green Movement to achieve a peaceful transfer away from Khomeini’s regime, or at least for a fundamental change in the totalitarian elements that had been established firmly within the existing system based on the reactionary principle of the Guardianship of the Islamist Jurist. Without the Green Movement and with only his previous political identity, Mousavi’s views would have been as important as the views expressed by Ahmad Tavakoli and Ali Akbar Velayati in the introduction to their painting book or the views expressed by government ministers in the first decade after the revolution. Unlike them, Mousavi was elevated by the young people’s movement in 2009, but he turned his back on them to renew his fealty to his “Imam”. Mousavi was the purest, the most resolute and the sincerest person who carried the reformist project to its logical conclusion. The political failure of this movement in achieving its goals aside, Mousavi has now signed a declaration of the moral defeat of the movement with his “ever-awake soul” remark. Our understanding of reforms was different The generation of the 1980s did not shrink from sacrificing our lives to change things, but in the end the movement’s defeats outweighed its victories because of the existing realities, the repression, the absence of planning to manage change, the inescapable coalition with the reformists and the general preference for finding the least dangerous way to bring about change. The problem with the reformists was and is that they want to save and strengthen the regime at the same time that they want to bring about a series of low-risk changes, while, in my view, reforms meant fundamental changes by peaceful means to the point where none of the totalitarian foundations of the regime remain. This, of course, was going to bring about a final confrontation. Therefore we should have anticipated the need to mobilize forces and to organize so that when the existing structure fell apart or became inactive we could arrive at a totally new social covenant. This was my understanding of reforms as a student activist who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the same time I witnessed the dying of the movement in the streets. My friends and my comrades-in-arms emigrated one after another, and institutions, networks and organizations were shattered by the repressions and frustration and helplessness as a result of defeat, the enemy’s success and the suffocating environment that infiltrated every aspect of the lives even of those who were nominally not in prison. ...
realce 4y ago
What's a way to help digitally? Is anyone running signal proxies still?
infocollector 4y ago
Just one more datapoint: I did talk to an Iranian friend who said things are dire and the uprising is real.
aerodog 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Uh8LM https://archive.ph/Uh8LM (1) beware of US articles about the Muslim world written by people with names like "Miriam" "Berger" => agendas are afoot by certain people who are taught in their community to hate Muslims, and especially Iran, which has an Islamic government they see as a mortal enemy (2) propaganda pieces like this one are scant on real facts, and loaded with anecdotes to get readers some downer feels... “The regime maximizes pressure on students to an extent that you cannot walk, dress, talk or even laugh in a way that doesn’t match their standards,” "The Post could not independently confirm these accounts,..." "An untold number of students arrested have faced..." "One fed-up woman in Tehran told The Post she quit school after..." "He says he is haunted by the image of " “I went back home and cried the whole way,” “They are very radical and they are •very brave*,” he said.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]

43 points by eternalban 4y ago

Wish them the best. It’s fascinating seeing the older generation in Iran and Russia blame America for every protest against their power. It seems to be losing its effectiveness with the youth of their countries.

eternalban 4y ago
I do not believe this is strictly a generational matter. It is also incorrect to think that previous attempts to reform the theocratic state were undermined due to deflecting propaganda. A letter from Evin [prison] by Bahareh Hedayati (part of student uprising in 2012) can clarify these matters for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahareh_Hedayat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahareh_Hedayat https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/bahareh-hedayat https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/bahareh-hedaya... https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/biography_of_bahareh_hedayat.pdf https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/biography_of_bahareh_hedayat.pd... -- part 1 (too long for single post) -- This is the umpteenth text that I am writing and I cannot finish it. My sentences are so overflowing with anger that I am afraid it will mangle my logic. But controlling your anger when a 22-year-old man is hanged for blocking a street to protest is tough, or perhaps impossible to do, especially anger at a government that has blocked the vital highways to an ordinary and honorable life for the people and especially for the women of this land. The revolution is inevitable To argue that the Islamic Republic is the enemy of this land, of this nation, has been redundant for a long time. The nature and the fate of this government is decay and it must go. Getting rid of this criminal government is bound to be costly and fraught with danger, but there is no other way but to pay this cost and face up to the dangers because this power structure is unable to recognize new social forces and to assimilate them within itself. In other words, there is no chance that the existing regime can extricate itself from the situation that has emerged, because neither can a tiny part of the protesters’ demands be fulfilled within the present system, and nor can the majority of the people waive any of their demands. The government cannot fulfill these demands because all possibilities and mechanisms for flexibility within the power structure have already either been eliminated or have lost credibility. And the people cannot forgo their demands because these demands are tied to their normal, everyday lives. No matter how we look at them, these demands are legitimate, undeniable and self-evident. As a result, these demands are now confronting the power structure itself, which is going to crumble whether they are fulfilled or they are resisted. Therefore, revolution is inevitable. We must be on guard against uncontrolled violence By its nature, a revolution is a perilous and violent affair. So, although forbidding violence is practical up to a point, insistence on absolute avoidance of violence is the same as forbidding the revolution itself, meaning canceling the revolution, denying the necessity of bringing down the existing power structure and of arriving at a new social covenant. What has been going on in the streets in the past few months is the strongest argument that we have in response to those who are still not convinced that the Islamic Republic must be brought down or argue against it. But we have to say to those who believe that this is a necessity that although — unfortunately — a revolution is not devoid of violence, we have to keep a red light on to warn against uncontrolled violence. When it comes to violence — besides the moral issue that might genuinely be disturbing to some — the more important issue is the stability of Iran after the collapse of this regime. Therefore, the kind of violence that would start and sustain a cycle of revenge after the downfall of the regime must be avoided because it would threaten the stability of Iran and the survival of the government that is borne from the coming revolution. We, the 1980s generation, were the last to test the possibility of peaceful change No impartial observer can accuse the Iranian people of impatience or a propensity to violence because, in these past decades, the collective minds of Iranians have repeatedly tried every possible way to peacefully change the existing situation, but each and every time these methods have been blocked by the ruling totalitarian regime. We, part of the generation of the 1980s whose lives were spent in war and under relentless ideological indoctrination, and whose adolescence and youth came during the so-called reform period, are perfect examples of those who tried to find the last possible outlets for change. We even agreed — mistakenly — to gamble on the social capital accumulated through the Green Movement [the name for the protest movement of 2009-10 – IranWire] under the illusion that fulfilling some of the people’s demands — normalization of relations between the government and the world and its inevitable consequence, namely the government’s compliance with modern rules of governing — would make the lives of our fellow Iranians better without violence. At every juncture, however, the government was adamant about continuing its wrongful ways. We did everything to prevent violence, but this fear of violence both backfired and gave rise to a misunderstanding. It backfired because it gave the appearance that no action in the streets is acceptable and the reformists, following this misinterpretation of avoiding violence, virtually stopped protesting in any shape or form! It was a misunderstanding because the government came to believe in the illusion that we were afraid for our lives and even our former friends imagined that the policy of avoiding violence was the same as compromising with power! But both these ideas were illusions. Explaining why both friends and enemies were under such an impression requires extensive discussions at another time, but suffice it say sociopolitical upheavals revolve around the forces that they release from within themselves, not prescribed guidelines and advice. ...
- eternalban 4y ago
  [cont] Green Movement’s trenches of resistance fell Before all these tests, the greatest political experience of our generation, the Green Movement, met defeat despite all our hopes and sacrifices and despite giving birth to a precious political identity that, if nothing else, was a few steps ahead of the previous generation that was contaminated by political Islam. Not only were some of us killed, but many, many of us were sent to prison. We were not only suppressed but we were also forced to accept the last remnants of political Islam within ourselves when we trusted reformist leaders and Mir-Hossein Mousavi personally as allies of the movement. This was clear from our slogans. At that time our trust was not unjustified, but, more importantly, we had no other choice. Nevertheless, as long as the movement survived in the streets, we of the Green Movement were the victors of this coalition. As long as the streets were ours, it was we who defined the movement and its demands, and Mousavi and the reformists followed us. But when the movement was suppressed and we were forced to take shelter in our homes, the trenches that we had left undefended were taken over by the reformists’ interpretation of the movement, gradually, but more and more with the passing of the years. The moral defeat of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Only a few months ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi put the last nail in the coffin of the political identity that “we”, the 20-somethings, had built a decade earlier with our blood and toil. Cut off from reality and using the Shah-Khomeini duality, he defended the organized and continuous crimes of Khomeini’s regime with an undeniable clarity and called the man who bloodied and set on fire a region or perhaps the world and condemned the women of this land to hijab slavery an “ever-awake soul”. He did not even glance at young supporters of the Green Movement to see that he owed them his new political life over the past decade, young people who, at a critical political juncture, welcomed him as an ally of the Green Movement to achieve a peaceful transfer away from Khomeini’s regime, or at least for a fundamental change in the totalitarian elements that had been established firmly within the existing system based on the reactionary principle of the Guardianship of the Islamist Jurist. Without the Green Movement and with only his previous political identity, Mousavi’s views would have been as important as the views expressed by Ahmad Tavakoli and Ali Akbar Velayati in the introduction to their painting book or the views expressed by government ministers in the first decade after the revolution. Unlike them, Mousavi was elevated by the young people’s movement in 2009, but he turned his back on them to renew his fealty to his “Imam”. Mousavi was the purest, the most resolute and the sincerest person who carried the reformist project to its logical conclusion. The political failure of this movement in achieving its goals aside, Mousavi has now signed a declaration of the moral defeat of the movement with his “ever-awake soul” remark. Our understanding of reforms was different The generation of the 1980s did not shrink from sacrificing our lives to change things, but in the end the movement’s defeats outweighed its victories because of the existing realities, the repression, the absence of planning to manage change, the inescapable coalition with the reformists and the general preference for finding the least dangerous way to bring about change. The problem with the reformists was and is that they want to save and strengthen the regime at the same time that they want to bring about a series of low-risk changes, while, in my view, reforms meant fundamental changes by peaceful means to the point where none of the totalitarian foundations of the regime remain. This, of course, was going to bring about a final confrontation. Therefore we should have anticipated the need to mobilize forces and to organize so that when the existing structure fell apart or became inactive we could arrive at a totally new social covenant. This was my understanding of reforms as a student activist who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison. At the same time I witnessed the dying of the movement in the streets. My friends and my comrades-in-arms emigrated one after another, and institutions, networks and organizations were shattered by the repressions and frustration and helplessness as a result of defeat, the enemy’s success and the suffocating environment that infiltrated every aspect of the lives even of those who were nominally not in prison. ...

realce 4y ago

What's a way to help digitally? Is anyone running signal proxies still?

infocollector 4y ago

Just one more datapoint: I did talk to an Iranian friend who said things are dire and the uprising is real.

aerodog 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Uh8LM https://archive.ph/Uh8LM (1) beware of US articles about the Muslim world written by people with names like "Miriam" "Berger" => agendas are afoot by certain people who are taught in their community to hate Muslims, and especially Iran, which has an Islamic government they see as a mortal enemy (2) propaganda pieces like this one are scant on real facts, and loaded with anecdotes to get readers some downer feels... “The regime maximizes pressure on students to an extent that you cannot walk, dress, talk or even laugh in a way that doesn’t match their standards,” "The Post could not independently confirm these accounts,..." "An untold number of students arrested have faced..." "One fed-up woman in Tehran told The Post she quit school after..." "He says he is haunted by the image of " “I went back home and cried the whole way,” “They are very radical and they are •very brave*,” he said.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]