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Race

Defending Hassan
We should somehow turn the other cheek when others raise their hands against us


Ramin Shomali
October 16, 2005
iranian.com

I write to you regarding the beating of and my anger at the continued transmission of the attack, which was videoed, over the internet.

Like many other young Iranians, I was absolutely appalled and angered when alerted a couple of days ago to a video showing a young, slightly built and visibly shaken 17-year-old Hassan Rahgozar being set about by a group of filthy cowards in his school bathroom. I typed his name into a search engine and read about the incident in the San Francisco Bay area, which apparently gained alot of media attention on the West Coast in mid-May of this year.

What made me even more angry was the lengths his school, the reporting journalists and the Hercules Police Department went to dismiss any notion that the attack was racially motivated or a hate crime despite assertions from the boy and his family that he had undergone constant intimidation and insults such as 'Saddam Hussein', 'Bin Laden' and 'Taleban' at the school.

I am a law student and in the UK the police will treat a crime as racially motivated if the victim of the crime deems that to be the case  ("A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person." - The Macpherson Report, 1999 - produced in relation to the police's handling of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London six years beforehand). I'm glad that the Rahgozar family are pursuing legal action against the school for failing to protect their son despite warnings that he was being targeted. 

I also hope that the two cowards recieve an appropriate sentence especially the punk who grinned as he beat Rahgozar and seemed to take pleasure in the youngster's discomfort and who still found it funny when he was booked after having the audacity to negotiate his surrender with the police (what a joke!). He should have been flown to Iran and taken to South Tehran and we'd have soon seen if he acted the big homeboy there!

It especially annoys me that the two attackers were from another ethnic minority, and one which is very quick to point out any racism or injustice directed at them. I am sure that some of their resentment comes from the fact that most Iranians don't glamourise ghetto culture/ gangster mentality and instead place an emphasis on education as well as to struggle and work damn hard for themselves, their family and their community (contrary to popular belief the vast majority of Iranians living in the west did not jump ship after the revolution with their pockets and bags stuffed full of stolen money) while preserving a distinct culture and not being confined to a stereotype bestowed upon them by a society and culture that ultimately sees them as subservient. 

I have read that the Iranian community is one of the, if not the, most educated and successful of all minorities in the US. However, this does not mean that we should somehow turn the other cheek when others raise their hands against us. Not all Iranians lving in the west lead such privileged lives (see the communities in parts of UK and Europe where the majority have immigrated from the old country relatively recently) and a lot of us have had to struggle for what we have got.

My father came from a working class family in provincial Gorgan and as I grew up he instilled in me a respect for the law and the value of education as a means to better myself. Much of what I have achieved I owe to him. However, while discouraging me from seeking trouble he always taught me to be strong if trouble came looking for me (which it sometimes did growing up as an Iranian kid in the UK) and believe me, in some of the communities in the bleak former-industrial cities here an attack like the one on Hassan Rahgozar would have been answered severely.

I read also that the video of the attack, which was shamelessly posted on the internet, has been removed from the UK site on which it first appeared (Putfile.com) and that Hercules police were investigating how the images were circulated. However, it should be known that one website, Ogrish.com, is still showing the complete unedited version of the tape showing Hassan with his back aganst the wall trying to placate the group of youths while being hit repeatedly around the head.

The clip entitled 'Hercules High School Beating Caught On Tape' can be found in the archives amongst a whole load of other frankly disgusting images on the site - designed it seems for the sickos out there who get some kind of sexual pleasure from watching images of pain, carnage and the aftermath of war/execution.

Perhaps there are some perverts who get off on watching a young Iranian kid being beaten about in a school toilet. I hope this information could be forwarded to the appropriate authorities if they are unaware so that the video can be removed and so the the Rahgozar family do not have to keep reliving a painful ordeal made even worse by its filming.

I also hope that, if at all possible, the sincere regards and best wishes of myself and many other young Iranians in the UK could be passed on to Hassan, his father Mohsen and the rest of the Rahgozar family. We wish Hassan a speedy recovery from his ordeal and the happy and successful completion of his high school studies.

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