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Save Nazanin from Nazanin
Former Miss Canada's efforts are nothing more than attempts at self-promotion

 

 

David Maynard
October 2, 2006
iranian.com

I am writing this to express my astonishment regarding your coverage of the case of 18 year old Nazanin Fatehi. Specifically, I can not help but find myself extremely puzzled about how you could find Ms. Afshin Jam's assertions regarding her role in "saving" Naznin Fatehi credible on any level!

To start, Ms. Afshin Jam learned about the "Save Nazanin" campaign after a group of international human rights organizations, lawyers, and activists had already launched the initiative. When she expressed her interest in becoming involved with the effort, the group welcomed her, as they did and do with any other person expressing such an interest. However, it soon became painfully evident that Ms. Afshin Jam's motives for becoming involved in this campaign were not exactly what she had originally claimed.

The lawyers, organizations, and other entities and individuals who speak for the Nazanin Fatehi's of this world were astonished when they came across websites, claiming to be informational sites for Nazanin Fatehi, but were, in fact, elaborately designed websites promoting the release of Ms. Afshin Jam's pop album and her ambitions for a career in modeling!

Posing in various provocative photos and showing as much skin as possible without having to label the websites those containing "adult content," Ms. Afshin Jam and her record company, public relations crew, and other related individuals with a financial interest in Ms. Afshin Jam's so-called "career," lured the public to these websites while claiming to champion Nazanin Fatehi's fight for life.

Ms. Afshin Jam then launched an impressive all-media campaign, and, for all intents and purposes, hijacked the "Save Nazanin" campaign from those who had worked tirelessly to initiate and organize it, and advertised it as her own brain-child. At every turn, Ms. Afshin Jam plugged her new pop album when she spoke of poor Nazanin Fatehi and the miserable fate to which she has been condemned.

Among Ms. Afshin Jam's infinite baffling claims about her "work" on behalf of Nazanin Fatehi is her so-called phone interview with the poor girl. As a leading human rights lawyer in Paris observed: "We did not realize that the Iranian authorities have been providing free and widespread international cell phone service and Kurdish translators in Evin these days"!

When the lawyers and human rights activists who have spent years working on this and similar cases questioned Ms. Afshin Jam about this so-called "interview," Ms. Afshin Jam became extremely defensive and refused to provide any details.  To this day, it is unclear how Ms. Afshin Jam, a former beauty pageant contestant and an aspiring model and pop singer, living some 9000 miles away from Nazanin Fatehi, could gain such access to a prisoner in solitary confinement in Evin prison, when the prisoner's own lawyers and family members could not do so from Tehran!

Ms. Afshin Jam's claims regarding her interview of Nazanin Fatehi are further questionable given the fact that Nazanin Fatehi is a native of Kurdistan, has a 2d grade level of education, and speaks little Farsi with a significant accent that make her Farsi statements virtually impossible to understand. When long after she had supposedly interviewed Nazanin Fatehi in Evin prison by phone all the way from Vancouver Canada, it became known that Ms. Afshin Jam was unaware of Nazanin Fatehi's language skills, even those who had granted her the benefit of the doubt began to distance themselves from her so-called "efforts" on behalf of poor Nazanin Fatehi.

Ms. Afshin Jam has demonstrated other mind-boggling reactions to pertinent questions in response to her alleged efforts on behalf of Nazanin Fatehi. For example, when speaking with a number of human rights lawyers who specialize in this type of work, it became woefully clear that Ms. Afshin Jam had absolutely no knowledge or even a basic understanding of the legal, administrative, international, political, or even personal mechanisms that are utilized to free the Nazanin Fatehi's of this world from prison or the subsequent steps that are needed to ensure the safety of such individuals even after their release from prison. Had she in fact completed a fraction of the work that she relentlessly proclaims to have done so on behalf of Nazanin Fatehi, it would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for Nazanin Afshin Jam to be so uninformed and clueless regarding the very basics of a case such as that of Nazanin Fatehi.

Regretfully, those who have been actively protecting and defending the human rights of countless persons in Iran and other parts of the world over the course of many years,  have had to come to terms with the fact that Ms. Afshin Jam's efforts are nothing more than attempts at self-promotion by an individual with an insatiable and desperately need for attention.

If you truly wish to recognize legitimate efforts on behalf of Iranian women and girls, you might want to look up Ms. Lily Mazahery, Ms. Shadi Sadr, and many others who launched the campaigns to save Nazanin Fatehi, Malak Ghorbany, Ashraf Kalhori, Kobra Rahmanpour, Delar Darabi, Hajieh Esmailvand, Fatemeh M., and Soghra Mola'i, to name a few, instead of promoting an individual whose agenda is nothing less than self-serving and disingenuous.

I have included some web links to information related to the efforts of those whose sole and true mission is to improve the lives of Iranians and others around the world. I hope that you will grant these individuals the credit that they deserve and honor their work and self-less dedication accordingly:
Comment

-- "A Marriage Made in Hell", Village Voice
-- "Lily Mazahery Responds to Khatami At Harvard University", Persian Journal
-- "Nazanin and Million Others", Originally published in Kayhan (London)
-- "Group Urges Bush to Rebuke Iran's Stoning of Women" , CNSNews.com
-- "The President's New Direction", Washington Post
-- "Stoning Women to Death", Village Voice
-- "Save Malak Ghorbany from stoning"
-- "Mother of 2 faces death by stoning" WorldNet Daily
-- "Lily Mazahery Challenges Khatami" Iran Freedom Concert
-- "San Francisco: State Dept Must Condemn Female Stoning Deaths in Iran", Mpetrelis.blogspot.com
-- "Shame on Harvard", Publius Pundit
-- "Petition to save the life of Malak Ghorbany" Kurdish Media
-- "Stop Legal Action Aganist Iranian Archeological Assets in the US" Petition
-- "Women Protest Stoning To Death of Iranian", BIA
-- "Save Nazanin" T-shirts on Cafe Press
-- "Mixed Crowd Protests Khatami", Miss Kelly
-- "Islamic Injustice: Petition To Save Malak Ghorbany", Western Resistance

 

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