Roya reflects on the importance of Neda for Iranians' 30 year quest for freedom and calls for a memorial campaign across religious lines to remember her.
With Neda's death, the Iran I know finally has a face. The sequence of her death is the sequence of our nation's struggle in the past 30 years: The democratic future that 1979 was to deliver collapsing, then trails of blood -- that of so many executed or assassinated -- streaming across its bright promise. The film of Neda's death is the abbreviated history of contemporary Iran.
If history is a contest among competing narratives and icons, let the image of a young woman lying on the ground endure as that of Iran today. Let it loom so large to wipe away the memory of the thugs marching American hostages out of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Let the scarf that loosens and falls off her head to expose her dark hair be emblazoned in our memories as the metaphor for the plight of Iran's women.
Here in the United States, I hope you join me and thousands of my compatriots in a memorial campaign for Neda by asking your religious and spiritual leaders to include a prayer for Neda and other fallen Iranians of the recent days in this week's services.
For 30 years, Iran's regime has appropriated God. Let us reclaim God from those who deny a family the right to properly mourn the death of their child through our prayers and help bring peace to a tormented nation.
Roya's talk was one of the best we've had in our series, both in terms of content and the audience's responses. Roya is gracious and funny, but also intellectually challenging."
-- Noga Wizansky, West European Studies at UC Berkeley
Check out this excerpt from Roya's interview on the now iconic image of Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian woman killed on June 20, 2009 during Iranian election protests, taken by an amateur photographer. Roya spoke about the viral photograph of the hailed "Angel of Iran" during the last moments of her life.
"Every revolution needs icons and symbols -- an image that embodies a sense of universality of blight and at the same time innocence," said Roya Hakakian of Connecticut, a writer, poet and journalist who was born and raised in Iran. "The image of Neda does both."
What outsiders have seen over the past three decades, she said, are fist-pumping men decrying America, images of hostages and "the burning of Uncle Sam effigies." Americans, she continued, have gotten to know little beyond the talk of Hezbollah and Hamas support, discussions of nuclear bombs and the rants of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling for, among other things, the destruction of Israel.
"We come from different corners of the world, but we see the same thing," Hakakian said of the video of Neda's death. "You don't need to be Iranian. You don't need to be her neighbor. You don't need to know her name. ... Anyone can watch this and come away with the sense of injustice and what's taking place, and I think that's why it's catching on."
"Today, once again, Iran is receiving another bounty of coverage. But this column is to remind all those who are covering Iran now that if they partake in the feast, they must be there for the famine that is sure to follow. Green is not the last color to symbolize the quest of Iranians, and Mousavi, the true winner of the 2009 elections, is merely an incidental figure on the road of the nation's thirty-year fight for freedom and equal rights.
It is also to remind fellow expatriates that it is not enough to explain to Americans that Ahmadinejad and his band of thugs do not represent Iran and Iranians. They must believe that fact themselves and remember that a nation's dignity does not only stem from the glories of its past, but also from the undaunted way it goes about ridding itself of those who deface that past."
Feminism has a rich history in Iran. Now more than ever, says journalist Roya Hakakian, it is alive and well and at its most vibrant.
Forbes: What was your first reaction to seeing women among the protesters in the streets of Iran?
Hakakian: The presence of women is not a surprise to me at all. Iran has had a robust women's movement for several decades now. But in the late 1990s, a new generation took charge; and in the early 2000s, they managed to organize and unite in ways that women had not since the revolution in 1979. It started as petition movement to collect signatures to ban stoning women to death and has spun out to become the "One Million Signatures Campaign." So this is precisely what I expected.
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