The Story Begins: Iranians Blame Ahmadinejad
By Kamangir • Apr 5th, 2007 • Category: Iran
“It’s enough Mahmoud!”, By Nikahang Kowsar, Rooz.
The story of the British sailors ended happily, after they left Iran with backpacks full of presents from Ahmadinejad and the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (Sepah), the same body who had arrested them. The fact is, the story has just begun for Ahmadinejad.
The conduct of the incident by the Islamic Republic was so bizarre that it almost overshadowed many important events, including the arrest of two activist women, who were subsequently transferred to the infamous Evin Prison. Especially, Ahmadinejad’s reference to “Islamic compassion” as one of the reasons for the release of the Britons was considered rather embarrassing by many bloggers.
Nahid Keshavarz and Mahboubeh Hossein Zadeh were arrested a few days ago on accounts related to fighting for women’s rights.
Haji Kensington asks why the compassion did not apply to the detained activists. Jomhour finds Ahmadinejad’s remark embarrassing when he responded to the question whether the sailors were traded for an Iranian diplomat (who was released yesterday) by saying “if we were to trade, we should have traded them for a hundred thousand people”. Maryam asks what the final outcome of all this has been for Iran. She uses the title “Fifteen-one for the UK”. Mahjad feels pity for the people who protested in front of the British Embassy, asking for a harsh fate for the sailors. He writes “this proved that we do not bow to what we do not like unless it is too strong”. To him, it was all “a silly soap opera“. Yaghi goes further and asks if this has not been a British plot to boost Blair’s popularity. Omid asks where on earth the highest administration figure shows up to say goodbye to a few detainees. Behrang compares this with the hostage-taking of the Americans about thirty years ago. He asks why what formerly was called “lack of dignity” is now addressed as “Islamic compassion”. Malakut finds Ahmadinejad’s comments silly, especially when he asked the British Government to not to prosecute the sailors for “admitting the truth”. Keyvan thinks what has happened is solely Ahmadinejad finding the chance to show up in front of cameras and journalists. Elnaz writes “when Ahmadinejad complained that a British mother has been sent to the front, the camera rolled on a female journalist’s face and she was smiling sarcastically”.
Nahid Keshavarz and Mahboubeh Hossein Zadeh with handcuffs on the way to prison (Farnaaz).
The conclusion is, the arrest of the British sailors brought about many results. Inside Iran, for many, the obvious outcome was feeling ashamed because of having such a president.
Posted by Kamangir
Author's email address: arash@kamangir.net | All posts by Kamangir
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Today WSJ’s editorial had similar response:
While the release of the Brits is cause for celebration, we hope the world won’t forget those who aren’t getting out – the myriad political prisoners, often democrats, in Iran’s dungeons. These are the truly courageous people the West has paid too little attentions to as it focuses on diplomacy and business with Iran. Given his regime’s persecution of Iran’s tiny Christian(coverts) community, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s invocation of Easter as a reason for freeing the sailors is particularly offensive.
Read the rest online..http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009890,3.000,3,0,3,0
Exactly where is the compassion toward his own people, Political prisoners, Bahais,poor, and disadvatange in Iran??
Sailor’s interview after release:
“I WENT TO IRAN AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY SUIT”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007150662,00.html
Frieda
I read an interview with some of minority of christians and bahai living in Iran. What struck me most was their answer to proposal to leave Iran, many of them said “we don’t want to leave Iran, we are iranians and we don’t want to live anywhere else”. Some of them were prosecuted and put in prison, but still they did not want to leave Iran. I believe it takes real courage to turn down such proposal knowing that they at any time they may go to prison or be otherwise discriminated against.
ups
pls read “knowing that at any time they may go to prison” i/o “knowing that they at any time they”
Baha’i schoolchildren in Iran increasingly harassed and abused by school authorities
http://news.bahai.org/story.cfm?storyid=515
Ella
A good family friend of ours works for the American Immigration dept here in DC. She routinely pays areas of the world who have a high number of refugees seeking entrance into the US visits in order to conduct personal one on one interviews. I have already told Archer this story but she went to Turkey and spoke with a group of Baha’is 550 strong desiring to leave Iran, well in fact already gone from Iran. They told her horrible stories of their treatment, the deaths of their families, Baha’is are consider what she told me to be priority refugees in US immigration law.
She cleared over 450 of them for entrance into America.
Why we never hear these stories about our dealings and attempts to provide help and assistance to those who were lucky enough to escape the Iranian regime I don’t know. We don’t seem to very keen on engaging our enemy in any kind of media forum and or informative means.
oh and I wanted to add I have only read this story of these Iranina women’s capture (how can I call it an arrest, that seems to add justified authority) on blogs not mainstream media outlets. We also seem to not wish to engage the true enemy as it appears before us. So many accept that Iran is acting only in self defence when it came to the British invaders, do they again see these actions as merely the defense of a nation?
Bucket
I think that MSM are going for “newsworthy” news, bahai stories and stories about women being put into prison in Iran are less colorful, less PC, perhaps less against the current administration.
Sometimes I think that present war in Iraq divided some americans so much that they do not want to hear good things government is doing just because it is done by the current administration, or by republicans, and sometimes republicans do not want to hear some positive things done by the democrats.
The end result of the above is that some of the media provide ammunition for people who hate not only the current administration but also all american and western governments. The sad story is that many people do not realize that fact.