NYT excerpt on Iranian protests

Source: The Lede Blog, New York Times
Writer: Nazila Fathi (Tehran)

It was hot in the car, so the young woman and her singing instructor got out for a breath of fresh air on a quiet side street not far from the anti-government protests they had ventured out to attend. A gunshot rang out, and the woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, fell to the ground. “It burnt me,” she said before she died.

The bloody video of her death on Saturday –circulated in Iran and around the world — has made Ms. Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old whom her relatives said was not political, an instant symbol of the anti-government movement. Her death is stirring wide outrage in a society that is infused with the culture of martyrdom — although the word itself has become discredited because the government has pointed to the martyrs’ death of Iranian soldiers to justify repressive measures.

Ms. Agha-Soltan’s fate resonates particularly with other women, who have been at the vanguard of many of the protests throughout Iran. “I am so worried that all the sacrifices that we made in the past week, the blood that was spilled, would be wasted,” said one woman today who came to mourn Ms. Agha-Soltan outside Niloofar mosque here. “ I cry every time I see Neda’s face on TV.”

Opposition Web sites and television channels, which Iranians view with satellite dishes, have repeatedly aired the video, which shows blood gushing from her body as she dies.

On the Web site The Daily Beast, an Iranian university student explains that, in his family, the video has exposed the deep rift in the way younger Iranians look outside the state-run media for the truth, while their parents and grandparents may not. Telmah Parsa writes:

After watching the video my brother’s eyes were full of tears. I was too incensed to cry. But not everyone was disturbed by the video.

“That’s what comes from pouring into the streets,” was my mother’s casual reaction when I showed her the clip. My mother is hardly a callous person. On Friday, when the Supreme Leader declared in his nationally broadcast sermon that he is willing to give his life for “upholding Islam,” my mother—like most people listening, including a prayer hall filled with grown men—wept.

She was not touched by the video of Neda because it was not compatible with her essential presumptions. [...] Her offhand reaction, however, offended me. She was quick to detect my indignation. “Son, you and your brother have been brainwashed by the Western media…Why do you believe everything they say?” This is our parents’ typical line when they encounter the deep chasm that separates our way of thinking. [...]

My brother and I often forget that the state-run TV is almost the only way our parents, like many Iranians of their generation, get information. The state knows this very well. [...]

As for the current protests, the state-run TV refers to the demonstrators as “mobs.” Broken shops and burned cars are the only parts of the protests the regime TV is prepared to air. Interviews show people in the street complaining that “mobs” have ruined their businesses and students who cannot study because of the noise the “mobs” make. What is never even implied in the TV is that hundreds of thousands of Iranians in major cities are marching peacefully in the streets to show their lack of trust in the state-announced election results. Nor will the clip of Neda’s murder ever make the airwaves.

Autobiography (for the Dr. Doris Brougham Scholarship)

When I look back at my life, I can hardly believe how many times I have had to literally pick myself up after a bad fall. As a child, my body was weak and fragile because of congenital muscular dystrophy. Although I could walk, I could not run, jump, or ride a bike. I fell down easily if I wasn’t watching my steps, and I needed someone to help me up after a fall.

When I was eight, I had a surgery performed near my right ankle to lengthen a contracting tendon, and that was when I got my first wheelchair, donated by the hospital. After spending two months with my leg in a cast, I was finally free of the cast and the wheelchair. The mischief of my eight-year-old mind, though, got the better of me.

One afternoon, I told my brother to tie a rope around the armrests of the wheelchair and pull me like a carriage up the road in front of our house in Nantou County. He did, but in no time we found out how dangerous our plan was. As my brother pulled me up the hill, my wheelchair suddenly tipped forward and I hit my forehead on the asphalt pavement. I started crying. Mother ran out of the house and pulled me out from between the tangled ropes, all the while scolding us for doing such a foolish thing. That incident, however, did not stop me from my experimentations.

In 1995, my family moved to Singapore because of my father's work as a church minister. By the time I entered secondary school in Singapore, muscular dystrophy had weakened my body so that I spent most of my waking hours in a wheelchair. My classmates in the girls' school took wonderful care of me--pushing me around campus, carrying books for me, and even bringing me to the bathroom. One day, a few weeks after school started, I asked my classmates to let go of my wheelchair on top of the gentle slope by the cafeteria. It was such a thrill! But a teacher saw us and informed our form teacher. During class later that day, the form teacher told us never to do that again. I sighed, and reluctantly agreed.

In those first few years of being confined to a wheelchair, I took a couple more falls before I finally gave up those thrilling rides. In 2000, when I was fourteen years old, I developed severe scoliosis that began affect my heart and lungs. The doctors said that surgery was necessary, but my congenital condition would complicate the process. After extensive research and support from family and friends, I finally had the operation in Loma Linda, California.

The surgery was a success. With two metal rods hooked around my spine, I no longer experienced back pain or breathing problems--and I was done with risky wheelchair tricks. After returning to Taiwan in 2001 and finishing my high school through distance learning, I went to Texas for my freshman year of college. The memories still bring smiles to my face.

Now in my junior year at Fu Jen University, I have grown to be a composed, studious young lady. My classmates and teachers sometimes describe me as being mature beyond my years, but I know better. Maybe I don't rush down slopes in my wheelchair anymore, but beneath the surface still lurks an insatiable desire for all things fun and crazy. After all, I've learnt this over the years: pick yourself up after a fall, and, really, it's going to be okay.