The Iranian holocaust
Prisoner of Tehran is a new book that I really recommend reading. The author, Marina Nemat, was only a teenager when the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979. She was a good student from a Christian Iranian family who was brought up to speak her mind, which got her in to trouble in a new repressive society that was in the making during the revolution. Where no one was allowed to disagree with what was happening to their beloved country.
Twenty five years after her arrest by the Islamic revolutionary guards, she speaks of the horror she experienced in Evin prison during a period of time which she calls the Iranian holocaust. This 16 year old girl was taken to Evin and tortured by not much older revolutionary guards and then taken to a cell built for 6 people, which was now used as a new home for 60 people, left with no food or water. She describes how everyday they took some of the prisoners out and only a few came back..and soon it was her turn. She was taken to middle of the Evin complex in an open space with only gallows to see. This poor starved Iranian teenager was not sure if this was really happening to her..
This book is a very detailed first hand account of the horror that took place under the name of revolution. One that promoted oppression, inequality, religious dictatorship, theocracy… 190 years after the French revolution.
Originally posted here.
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The biggest victim of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people for the last 27 years!
5000 years of culture of civilizations are being killed by the ayatollahs!
Thanks for sharing this mate…I’ll check out Marina Nemat’s new book
I’ll be looking for that one as soon as I finish Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel, although I don’t want my reading to get too one-sided.
City boy,
Does Marina Nemat have anything to say about her fellow Christians from America and Britain who toppled the democratically government of Iran in the 1950′s and put in its place the puppet Shah who suppressed freedom of speech?
Does she have anything to say about how her fellow Chrisitians from the United States had provided false intelligence and sold weapons to both sides of the IRan-Iraq war?
Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kisenger had said about the war: “I hope they kill each other”
See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292
I’ll let you know after I read the book, or vice versa if you read it first?
RandallJones, aka the Devil’s Advocate
Fellow Christians? Are you serious? We are talking apples and oranges, bud. I don’t think religion is the issue here. Yes we are all familiar with how the US help a coup to get Mossadeq out and put the Shah in because the Shah was friendly to our needs in the area. So what? That’s history man. Talk about something else for once.
The reality is that this Islamic regime is probably the destructive force in Iranian history. Believe me. Why do insist on badgering and digging up old irrelevant skeletons in the US closet? What’s the point?
Omid T, aka apologists for Western war criminals
You say I am “digging up old irrelevant skeletons in the US closet.” But what I dug up happened during the time period that the book discusses.
The Shah also imprisoned/tortured/killed many people, but I guess because the United States supported him, that is okay.
Because it was in the United States best “interests,” it was okay for the United States to give false intelligence and weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.
What about what the Untied States is currently doing in Iraq?
The United States justified invading Iraq by saying Saddam killed his own people, but they left out that the U.S. supported him, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities.
The human rights activists who live in Iran object to the threats and accusations made against Iran and say this only solidifies the power of the religious extremists.
Israel (and so therefore the United States) object to Iran having nuclear power, but Israel had no problem with giving apartheid era South Africa its nuclear weapons.
MyTwoCents,
Here is information on Brigitte Gabriel that you won’t find in her book, interviews, or lectures.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/brigitte-gabriel-on-terrorism-it-takes-one-to-know-one/
Hey dont think I am for one moment defending some Machiavellian method. I am not an apologist for any one. This is just cold hard political reality. Every nation-state does it. My point is that there is little point to keep talking over and over and over and over about that same issue. Move on. Focus on now.
Omid T,
But people have no problem going over and over again about the human rights violations of Muslims, so why not go over and over again about the criminal actions of the United States? The United States’ illegal actions are not history, it continues today not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, and South America.
YOU have Western human rights activists who claim they are concerned with human rights in Muslim countries but have nothing to say about their own countries contributing to the problems in these Muslim countries.
For those who live in democracies, while we have more freedoms, we have not been able to make the changes in our government that we want, yet we make demands of those in nondemocratic countries to change things overnight. When trying to help those living in the Third World, we should look at how human rights developed in the West. It wasn’t by having sanctions placed upon them or foreign powers invading their countries.
If you are referring to the US, you may want to think back to the revolutionary war. Britain did impose sanctions and tariffs. Every modern country, or western country has gone through a war or two to get to where they are. To deny this would be to deny history. You can’t name one country who hasn’t gone through a war and now considers itself “1st World”.
My point is that always beating the same dead horse is pointless. Everyone besides Americans know about how nasty our foreign policy is in some situations. Its just plan realpolitik.
The practical solution is to do what you can, instead of always playing the blame game, which there is obviously enough to go around, focus on the here and now.
We all know that the Iraq war should not have happened. But now that we are there, we are stuck and to leave would be worse. Am I wrong?