Kamangir (Archer)

Did you know that Kamangir turns four tomorrow? See the classic "Hello World" dated October 17, 2008!

Horrible Child Abuse

Kamangir | September 12, 2007 | Category Children, Human Rights, Iran

A vital part of blogging is being honest, to my understanding. That is the reason for posting these pictures here, although I am aware of their graphic content and the fact that this is embarrassing for any Iranian, if not any human being.

The story started this way, I was chatting with a South African friend when he started talking about horrible pictures he had seen in the net. “I have seen pictures of executions, but this one is different”, he said. After asking for a couple of times if I would be offended, he sent this link (warning: pornographic content in parts of the page). The link carries pictures of a little boy’s arm being run over by a car, what the website claims to be “Arm Crash, as Punishment for Kids in Iran”.

Looking at the pictures, and even ignoring the fact that I have already seen these pictures in many Iranian sources, it is clear that this has happened in Iran. For example, the car in the picture is Peykan, Iran’s national car for a long while, and the license plate reads Tehran. Having said that, this is not punishment (I wish it was). The man is doing a (illegal) circus, and that’s why he is holding the microphone. The trick he is showing to the people, and is earning money out of, is the fact that a heavy car passes over the little boy’s hand.

The fact that one policeman would run after a girl for her ” immodest” clothes, while such events happen in Iran, is horrible, disgusting, and shameful. The rest of the pictures are archived in the photoblog. Warning: they are horrible.

Update: Just a quick reminder, this is couple of years old.

Reader's Comments

Grotesque Iran « Full Metal Cynic | September 12th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
[...] Grotesque Iran What goes on in Islamic Iran is too horrible to describe. [...]
serendip | September 13th, 2007 at 11:04 am
This is utterly sickening!
Hanif | September 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
This picture is completely decontextualized. How do we know the government knew about this? Iran is a big country of seventy million people. This probably happened in some remote village or in a slum far away from government control.

And if it is a circus, then it can’t possibly be that he breaks the kids arm. I mean, that would mean he could only do the trick once, or he would have to find a new kid every time he wanted to do the trick. Economically, that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would he have the kid’s arm run over once, have it break, have the kid probably end up in a hospital, when he could make far more money employing the kid selling flowers, washing car windows, or even simply juggling. It really only makes sense to assume what we see in the picture is a performance trick designed to fool the audience, like when magicians cut their volunteers in half. Besides, no crowed would pay to see someone, a child especially, genuinely injured. Crowds pay to see skill, not sadism.

Of course endangering children is wrong. But this picture unfairly portrays Iranians as people who enjoying seeing children really get injured, when that is most definitely not the case. A picture is worth a thousand words….sometimes it can be worth a thousand lies.
Josh Scholar | September 16th, 2007 at 2:21 am
It’s been suggested that this is a magic trick.

The way it works is that, under the boys arm, hidden in the blanket is a pipe, cut in half.

The boy’s arm fits into the pipe, and the edges of the pipe push up from under the blanket and prevent his arm from being crushed. Since all of this is hidden under the blanket, the audience sees nothing.

Kamangir: With all respect, I don’t think so.
wind | November 19th, 2008 at 10:22 am
That boy’s arm won’t get hurt
You who call yourself Arash Kamangir, Arash’s weapon was a bow your weapons are stupid lies, With all respect, I think so