Speech in Washington, DC at the 22 Bahman gathering in Freedom Plaza, 13 February 2010
“Pastor Niemöller spoke for thousands and thousands of men, when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something–but then it was too late.”
Why we cannot be silent, ever again. Why we should organize, work in human rights organizations, work with world bodies, work to expose this regime on this most important issue, I will tell you why:
When they took Farokh Rou Parsa in a coffin and executed her, we sighed.
When they took Saeid Soltanpour on his wedding night to the gallows, we cried.
When they desecrated the Bahai cemeteries, we watched.
When they executed thousands of prisoners in Evin, we remembered.
When they stabbed Shapour Bakhtiar so savagely we were shocked.
When they gunned down leaders of the Kurdish movement in Berlin and in Vienna, we went to court.
When they stabbed and murdered Parvaneh and Dariush Forouhar at their homes; when they took Mokthari and Pouyandeh and returned their limbless bodies, we were outraged.
When they went to the dormitories and crushed our students on 18 Tir and ransacked their chambers, we came to the streets and shouted.
When they took Zahra Kazemi, tortured her and smashed her skull, we watched in bewilderment and cried in agony.
When they destroyed the Khavaran cemetery, we cried out.
When we asked “where is our vote,” in Iran, they shot Neda, Sohrab, Zahra, and so many more.
When they imprisoned, tortured and maimed, we finally rose up throughout the world in horror and made headlines… But this time we will not sit, we will not forget, we might have to forgive, if we want to bring sanity to our society. But we will not be silent anymore.
We acted and reacted but in retrospect we didn’t do enough. Because we thought these were just as separate incidents rather than events in a larger pattern of relentless brutality, systemic abuse of human rights but now we know:
Human rights have been ignored for nearly 30 years. We cannot let it slide by us anymore, and let abuses continue. We cannot have 68 journalists in jail; we cannot have Maleki, Zeidabadi, Yazdi, and so many others in jail while their jailers are free. Human rights violations by the Islamic regime under Ahmadi Nejad, is far worse than any time in the history of this so-called Republic. When we say Republic we should ask is this really a republic? Or is it now a dictatorship with all the means of terrorizing the population as we saw the viciousness of a regime that will not stop at anything to silence our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers in Iran. We will not sit still anymore, we will go on and we will expose, we will come to the streets, we will gather at our universities and places of work, we will strike, we will write petitions, we will gather in small and large numbers and we will demand an end to years of abuse and we will go the UN, to demand that this regime, a signatory to the UN Human Rights Charter stop terrorizing the children of Iran.
We will not rest until you are free one day… We will not rest until you have peace and liberty.
The late Akbar Mohammadi who died in Evin in 2006, wrote in the last pages of his memoirs:
“It was then that we tried to hide from the Ansar Hezbollah in the buses, but soon they broke the windows while the bus was en route. This is a token of what happened to me in the last few years in the horrific prisons of the Islamic Republic; I can’t recall everything.
I just hope that one day, the dark shadow that is taken over our country, the dark shadow of dictatorship, injustice and oppression will be replaced by the light of democracy and freedom on the plateau of Iran. I hope we will never see a single political prisoner, the reign of terror, torture, oppression and fear.
Until that day, I say:
Long live freedom, End to tyranny, Long live Iran.”
