Neda

UPDATE June 25: The Twitter user quoted at length in this column reappeared after three days of silence, saying he was stiff, sore and bruised, and now outside Tehran, but still alive.

It seems to me that many people are still trying to find out as much as they can about the situation in the Islamic Republic, even though a week-and-a-half has gone by since the election.

Journalists tend to treat stories like, literally, ‘nine-day wonders’, because few, anywhere, about anything, stay on the front page for much longer.

Yet at least on Twitter, as I write, among the top ten trending topics are ‘Iran elections’, ‘Iran’, ‘Tehran’, ‘Mousavi’, and ‘Neda’. Neda, by the way, was the name of the young woman shot dead by paramilitary forces at the weekend.

If you haven’t seen the footage or the still picture of her lifeless, bleeding face already, it’s probably because you can’t face it. I sympathise; yet Neda’s may yet become the face of events as they unfold in Iran. Whether it’s a revolution or a counter-revolution, and whether or not it succeeds, it will make martyrs, and martyrs are central to Iranian culture.

Continue reading "The death of Neda: Iran’s potent history of martyrdom" »