Media Re:public

Iranian writer and journalist Ebrahim Nabavi has written an amazing passionate letter to ayatollah Khamenei which thanks to the wonderful site tehranbroadcast.com we can read in English. I’m so sad I never learned farsi, I would be helping them.

Instead, I can only marvel at the courageous eloquence of the letter, here are some of my favorite parts:

“You were not to spill blood, which you did, you were to keep the boundaries, which you did not, and you were to preserve respect, which you violated, you trampled the right of a whole nation with utmost inequity and total injustice….

Mr. Khamenei!

You do believe in the day of judgment! I’m not talking about the Armageddon that has started now in Tehran, but you do believe in a judgment day in the next world, don’t you? … How are you going to meet your teacher and mentor [ayatollah Khomeini] in that judgment day that you believe in and tell him that you have rejected all of his family? … That you denied the right of an honest man like Mousavi and put a toady liar in his place?…

People would not tolerate oppression, if you burn them their flames will rise into the air, if you beat them their screams will, if you pressure them from above they will flow like a river, and then it will be such that no one can do anything. It is not right to rule unjustly….

There are many graveyards in the world where men of politics who have spoken word similar to yours lie. They had forgot one thing, that death will also conquer the powerful. Hitler, Slatin, Pol Pot, Lenin, the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini all died, and so will you eventually. When a great man dies there are two reactions in the masses, some of them mourn the loss of the great man, and some send him an eternal curse. Dear sir! Take your words back before death has taken over you and you have been left with that eternal curse.”

Strong stuff. Sites like this and of course Global Voices, which is collecting testimonials including photos and videos of demonstrations, are invaluable as more and more foreign reporters are thrown out of the country. As Ebrahim Nabavi says to Khamenei:

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, you have restricted all media access, closing all of the information paths such that only the voice of the people can be heard. No other voice can be heard any more, not the voice of America, not the voice of England, not the voice of Israel, only the sound of the noise inflicted by the government on these channels can be heard. But the people’s voice can be heard, it is loud, up to the heavens…

I don’t believe in heaven, but I hope that he’s right.

Khamenei Poster, Tehran by cfarivar via Flickr.
Iran Election by .faramarz via Flickr.

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