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.