When Will This Stop? When Will it End?
Feb 23rd, 2010 by pedestrian
I have been nauseated since watching this video. By now, many of you have seen it.
My friend who was one of the kids lying in the ground somewhere had told me of this … had told me that they lined them up on the ground like that the way butchers do sacrificial lamb. But it’s one thing to hear about it, another thing to see it with your own eyes.
I know the answer to my own question is “this will go on for quite some time now” … But having walked those very streets and having spent all those years with those students, it’s hard to imagine that horror of this magnitude can strike the very streets you once sat in, laughed in, shared a burger and fries in. How can so unexceptional and mundane a life turn into such exceptional horror?
Many others Iranian students across the world feel the way I do today. Iranian blogger Dar Golestaneh writes:
They were dragging them on the ground as if they were lamb to be beheaded.
Then they threw them on top of one another, like meat.
Then, the violence got so bad that they themselves would tell one another: “don’t him anymore, please stop hitting!”
Do you believe that technology has so advanced that it can now bring our worst nightmares to life on TV?
The most frightening part is that no one can wake me up from this dream … because I’m not even asleep.
Damn it.
prisoners of conscience
light a candle
your voice for justice
behind the prison walls
Love your stuff. The link provided for the video is not working.
I was sent this video but can’t bring myself to watch it – I start it and then have to stop. I just can’t bear the violence.
One of my colleagues at work was lecturing last summer at Tehran university – in the social sciences – he wanted to bring all his students back here with him……
Kate, the version I linked to (the BBC video) is edited, so there are no explicit scenes. The other version, is worse. But both version don’t have the extent of the violence. From my friend, I know that they were badly beaten to blood, and you can actually see blood beneath their bodies as they are lying there. But, we don’t really see the extent of the beating that has gotten them the way they are.
It took me over an hour to watch the 18 minute full video. I had to stop it every 30 seconds. You see, like your colleague, all those signs and streets are so famliar to me, I just can’t believe what I am seeing.
jlbtwee, I think it’s working, isn’t it? I just clicked on it.
I can’t imagine how it must make you feel – what emotions must swirl around. I’m just so sorry..so sorry that anyone could do that to another human being……and if I was a mother of those children….oh….it’s unthinkable.
I sent a comment on your ‘what it’s like to be Iranian these days’ entry – I don’t know if you saw it.
Kate, thanks so much for directing me towards your comment. I must have missed it. I’m sorry! It’s there now!
You know what makes it so terrible? Once again, it is the shahrestani (small-town) kids who are paying the price. The ones who’ve had to work the hardest to get where they are. The ones whose parents couldn’t afford a loft in North Tehran. The ones this newly “elected” president claims to represent. In their dormitories, miles away from any family, from any friend …
It’s always the same……..and I imagine their families, who must have been so proud that their kids were studying in Tehran, just can’t understand what on earth must have happened – I mean how their children, (who were just being like any other student in any other university in the world) could have been so brutality attacked….and then disappeared. Awful awful….
I have not been able to watch it. It is just too much for me. The most sickening thing is that, these people are doing this in the name of religion; No god can be part of this barbarity.
Thank you for publishing that video. As to the contents, no comment is possible!
[As to the source, there is one question:
As the video seems to have been taken by a member of the security forces, the question to be put could perhaps be: How come that this video is available ?]
Publicola, everyone is asking/wondering about that question. Was it an accident? Was it leaked on purpose, for instance, to sack Rajab Zadeh (who is mentioned in the video) and hold him responsible for everything? We’ll have to see how things go.
The fact that the person filming and some of the other basijis are shouting from the top of their lungs ,”don’t hit them!” , depicts a clear fraction amongst the aggressors , which is being confirmed by revealing this incriminating video …. yet another blow to this repressive system , but alas TOO HIGHLY paid for
.
Peace, my friend who was badly beaten on Ashura told me the same thing: when a big group gangs up on protesters, some shout: “don’t hit”, some are hesitant … so clearly these doubts do exist among their clan.
As you said however, too highly paid for …
The abyss-deep, absolutely groundless and unfounded hatred, which is and has been purposefully sown by and from the upper echelons of Iranian society willfully and intentiontally for some considerable time, is engendering the worst imaginable consequences, which will not be able to vanish and fade out of (any) society that easily and within a short-term foreseeable future,
as these brutishly brutalized non-human activities of the security organs prove.
This video was from last June. I’m am sure that since then the Basij have probably replaced the people that called for mercy. It is so very disturbing to watch the whole 18 min video in one sitting. It is just so hard to believe that these people can be so heartless and brutal to so many innocent students. They use religion as an excuse to hide thier true reason, power! As with most people who act in this manner they will someday get what they deserve, justice. They must answer to the people.