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We are constantly amazed, though, at how different our reality is from what some American journalists, academics, and opinion-makers portray it as. So often, we hear self-described Iran experts on CNN and reporters in America's leading newspapers explain away the dictatorship under which we suffer. We hear them talk about how young people and women still support President Khatami! No. We do not! Yes, Khatami did win elections, but those came absent any real competition. In 1997, he won the election only after his colleagues on the Guardian Council disqualified 234 other candidates. Is that a democracy? Listen to us: We no more want to be part of an Islamic Republic than did the Hungarians, Czechs, or Poles want to be part of a Communist dictatorship. Understand we want freedom. I am still at the university, but many of my peers are in prison for nothing more than demanding freedom of speech, or waving a bloody shirt. We aspire to establish a democracy based on a modern, liberal, and, yes, the Western model of secularism. Our reasons are quite simple and obvious: We do not follow the Arab or the Islamic model. Iranians, as a people, do not have problems with Western civilization. We are Muslims, but our sense of Iranian national identity dwarfs any religious identity we hold. We are proud heirs of a once-great civilization that brought forth the concept of tolerance and civility predating Islam. Iranians are comfortable with the simple fact that the West has the best-refined modern concepts of democracy, human rights, and individual opportunity. To us, the Islamic revolution has failed. The system, in its entirely, is the problem; no Band-Aid reform will fix it. Iran's 23-year-old theocracy is as incapable of granting freedom and human rights as was the Soviet Union. No politician associated with the Islamic Republic is acceptable to us. There are no reformers in the clerical government. Our real reformers are among the 600,000 languishing in prison, or the hundreds of candidates who are disqualified in each election for believing in human rights or secularism. Do not sell out our freedom because of Khatami's meaningless double talk and irrelevant rhetoric. He is simply a smiling face of an ugly regime. Secretary Colin Powell, Senators Arlen Specter and Chuck Hagel, please understand that Iranians are no less deserving of freedom and equality than are residents of Pennsylvania or Nebraska. You cannot fall for the so-called reformers who by design attempt to sway world opinion with promises, yet fail to deliver a single reform at home. Please understand that Iranians themselves have come to the conclusion that the only solution to our present dilemma is a Western-style democracy, complete with freedom of the press, secularism, equality between sexes, and respect for other religious and political beliefs. Do not listen to the growing number of organizations like the American-Iranian Council [AIC]. The AIC and its sister groups are nothing more than circuitously funded lobby groups pushing the interest of the Islamic Republic. In America we hear money to campaigns go a long way. Shame, we say, if a few campaign dollars are able to divert the focus away from the issue of freedom and human rights for an entire people. My peers in Tehran do not understand how the American media and certain policymakers repeatedly fall for the baseless half truths offered by such lobby groups. The streets of Tehran view Americans as good people, yet breathtakingly naive when it comes to their inability to see through the propaganda of the politicians and theocracy that oppress us. Rather than attend their events or dine with their spokesmen, ask why AIC president, Mr. Hooshang Amirahmadi, has access to unlimited funds to hold lavish galas and conferences that only push policies surprisingly parallel to those of all-powerful Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. We want you to know that the AIC and its president in no way, shape, or form represent the Iranian people, especially the hundreds of thousands languishing in jail, nor the hungry, starved or the disenfranchised. The vast majorities of Iranians despise such groups and their leaders and view them as conscience-less business brokers for the unelected few whose days are numbered. We also ask you: Please tune out the biased and shallow works of journalists who use their pens to editorialize rather than report news. The Los Angeles Times's Robin Wright often calls Khatami "the leading reformer in Iran." How is it that she has such open access to Iran, while her colleagues who report real and hard news are refused visas? Ms. Wright, why is it you have yet to write a single sentence critical of the abhorrent atrocities of the clerical regime? Where are you during our public executions, or the stoning of women that have doubled under Mr. Khatami? Where are your reports on the students languishing in prison, the girls detained, raped, and abused by the Islamic Republic's judges? You call Khatami a democrat yet you neglect his rejection and belittling of the very concept in the pages of Keyhan? Perhaps your Iran expertise does not include speaking Farsi? You quote his liberal speeches in Europe, yet are deafeningly silent about his televised speeches in Iran, declaring: "Those who abide by the Quran must mobilize to kill." To us as Iranians, that is unfathomable. Don't you realize that when we read your work, we ask what good is free press if it does not report the truth? At this moment in our history, Iranians have limited means to voice our calls to the world beyond the rapidly crumbling walls of the clerical regime. We have a sense of urgency. Yet we feel left behind by the very champions of civil rights, human rights, and liberal reform who once dominated headlines. Don't abandon us now, not at this junction in our history. — Farideh Tehrani is a 27-year-old woman and a doctoral candidate in Tehran, Iran. |
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veryday, my peers and I sit and talk. We want only one thing: Freedom.
Basic human rights. The same thing those who fled Iran 20 years ago now
enjoy in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Washington. Sometimes I check
the Internet for news. At other times, my friends and I watch satellite
television or listen to the short-wave radio broadcasts of the freed world.
