As we say in Farsi “این تو بمیری ها از اون تو بمیری ها نیست” This ‘To-Bemiri’ is unlike previous ‘To-Bemiri’s. To-Bemiri is like ‘I swear on your life’. It is generally said when you want to emphasise that you are telling the absolute truth. But like any other ‘swear word’ it is so often mis-used that the audience knows you may purely be bragging and therefore would not pay any attention to what you have to say! That’s why این تو بمیری ها از اون تو بمیری ها نیست is stated when you want to emphasise something uncommon, somehow different, almost opposite to the use of the French ‘De ja vu’ meaning we have seen it before!
I am not the first one to talk about the the uniqueness of this ‘To-Bemiri’ when speaking about the recent #iranelection protests. The scale and the level of protests are such that for example Garry Sick, who has first-hand experiece of Iran Feb 1979 revolution, talks about the post-election events as the nearest thing that has happended in Iran threatening the regime, much larger than the student uprising of 18 Tir, just over ten years ago. But not everyone agrees that the regime should feel threatened by another major upheavel. Academics such as ‘Hamid Dabashi’ talk about a civil rights movement when referring to Iran’s Green movement rather than a revolution, either a velvet-type or otherwise.
Most reformists proclaim that the government is over reacting and wrong to talk about a velet revolution. They say the government should not have started to use unreasonable and unproportionate force in dealing with the protestors of the vote-rigging coup by the Sepah-Basij in support of Khamenei-Ahmadinejad. Leading reformists such as Ex-President M Khatami are still hopeful that the regime would back down and therefore call for freedom of all political prisoners and a vote of confidence (Referundum) on the new government. This is rightly aimed as a minimum to show that they (opposition) are prepared to accept the popular vote and the will of the electorate. This they hope will expose the otherside as denying the will of the nation. The pro-coup fundamentalists however are not bothered to proclaim the rule of the faghih (Islamic Jurisprudence) as above the will of the voters, which begs the question about such blatant duplicity: Why did you call people to vote in ‘free’ elections, if the ‘Supreme Leader’ is supposed to have the final say?
What fuelled an anti-Ahmadinejad vote was the undermining of Iranian national pride in the past four years. What fuels the anti-coup movement is this open duplicity. The regime’s mouthpiece, in particular Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, claim on one hand that the Islamic Iran is more democratic than any other country even and specially the West, while on the other hand clearly telling their own supporters such as Basij that they would never relinquish power to the majority ‘other-somes’ (gheir-e-khodi) even if they become an sbsolute minority in Iran.
For the Iranian voters world-wide there is a sense of being deprived not only of their vote, their will but also their intelligence ‘raped’ by such an obvious turn of events based on the regime’s unashamed duplicity. On the otherhand after 30 years of bottling it up, the people of Iran have lost their fear of expressing and demanding their rights and are also now full of pride and hope. The pride of having shown the world that they deserve a better government and the hope that while the struggle will most probably demand further hardships and unfortunately more loss of life but that it will definitely lead to something different …, a situation they believe is already opening-up where the naked dictatorship cannot stamp its feet on the ground, divisions are opening up at the top while the street and other civil protests do not demonstrate any sign of abating. That’s why many have come to believe that this ‘To-Bemiri’ is like no other such! Call it a civil rights movement, or a green revolution, … it feels different … watch this space … it is not a ‘To-Bemiri’ de-ja-vu but more like “you ain’t seen nothing yet”!
25 July 2009
