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Vice Blog

THE IRAN PROTESTS IN FRONT OF THE UN WERE LAME, BUT AT LEAST I WASN'T HUNG UPSIDE DOWN AND WHIPPED AFTER AN ICE-COLD BATH

After a few months of stress-induced insomnia, fearing midnight raids on my apartment, friends disappearing, bald spots, and nervous twitches, I've made it back from Iran to the US un-murdered, un-tortured and un-raped.

But being back on the West Coast sucks even more. No one is rioting against the fucking Safeway, or breaking bank windows, or setting gas-guzzlers on fire, and there's definitely no rooftops in any neighbor suitable for yelling "Allah Akbar" ("God is Great") or "Marg bar Dictator!" ("Death to the Dictator!"). So when I heard that a bunch of unsettled young Iranian-Americans were getting together to protest Ahmadinejad showing his ape face at the UN General Assembly last week, I quickly wiped out half of my savings for a ticket to New York.

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Before I go on about the civil grassroots "Iranian Diaspora" movement and make any judgments on my generation or "my people," I want to clarify that there are some great young Iranian-Americans (excluding most of the ones in southern California, of course). There's Fared Shafinury, whom I call the "voice of a generation"; Negar Azimi, a jet setting writer who seems to be on the tip of a lot of jealous-hipster-Iranian-youth's tongues; and, to be modest, myself. And these are just a few.

Now, if the Green Movement in Iran is a fearless youth movement ready to lose their brains throwing off a regime of creepy wrinkly mullahs, then the overwhelming majority of demonstrators in front of the UN this week were the opposite.

Fortunately, I found a non-affiliated group called Voices 4 Iran (they drew the largest and loudest supporters during the late-July hunger strike demonstrations in front of the UN). Despite it being headed by a handful of recent college grads unattached to any special interest groups, this time around the crowd average was a modest 52 and already eyeing retirement. Sadly, when the event coordinators tried to get their parents' generation to help foot the organization's mounting $20,000 debt, the elders dove under a carpet. For them it wasn't a moment to provoke monumental change for US-Iran relations (like the 1977 tear gassed Anti-Shah protest in front of the White House), but more of an occasion to clap, dance, joke, meet up with old friends, and yell "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ahmadinejad has to go!

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At the center of the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the UN, the Voices 4 Iran crowd managed to wrestle for prime location, pushing out other groups onto the sidelines. I asked Sheyda D., a key organizer for Voice 4 Iran, what she thought of the crowd. "A lot of government and special interest came out today to promote their political agenda," she said. "Some of them are really fucked up. This 45 year-old man just came up to me from the Pro-Shah crowd and said 'You suck Khamenei's cock!'"

Surveying the periphery of the Voices 4 Iran crowd, the Shah supporters—sadly positioned next to "Free Tibet"—waved Iran's former monarchist flag, and unaware of the irony, chanted "No More Dictator, Democracy for Iran!" Then there was the Stand for Freedom in Iran group, backed and funded by special interests like AIPAC and Zionist Organization of America. I wasn't surprised when I heard someone from their crowd yell "Nuke Ahmadinejad!"

Throughout all the groups you heard mixed responses to military aggression. They couldn't make up their minds on economic sanctions. And when it came to this ambiguous, omnipresent "Dictator," some claimed it was Ahmadinejad, while others said it was Supreme Leader Khamenei, and still others said it was Islam. The only thing everyone could agree on was human rights, which I guess is good, even though that's pretty much a no-brainer in this country unless you're one of the people running it.

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Behind the Voices 4 Iran stage, I spotted and I coerced Dr. Hadi Ghaemi, founder of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, into a reveal-it-all interview.

Vice: I've heard this human rights stuff is something of a career change for you. Would you please tell us a little about how you got interested in murder, torture, and rape?

*Dr. Ghaemi: I was formerly a professor of physics at City University of New York. After 9/11, I had a change of heart, and went to Afghanistan to work with the U.N. Since then, I've decided to devote my time more on humanitarian efforts.*

More time with humans and less with equations. What have you been doing recently?I'm heading the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. It's a medium to expose and highlight human rights issues in Iran, where we research and document violations in real time and provide information to the international community. Our prime focus is to reveal the extent of the ongoing violations--hopefully we can provide enough pressure for domestic and international change.

Yeah, that does sound better than lab work and lectures. But if you're living in the US how are you able to get testimony and evidence of human rights violations? We get it directly from lawyers and families of detainees of in Iran, and we're always thinking of sketchy but creative means of getting in contact. It certainly gets difficult when the Iranian government threatens them to not come forward. But we've been able to gain confidence back home. So far, we have cases from over 250 arrested prominent Iranian citizens. These include former politicians, loyalists to Ayatollah Khomeini, professors—basically the crème de la crème of Iranian society.

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In your talks with the families and lawyers, what have they been telling you about the treatment of detainees?They are saying that rape is widespread, much like the case of Ebrahim Sharifi. From many of the cases we have gathered, we have found a systematic pattern of torture. First off, there is no due process. The moment prisoners are apprehended, they are collectively sleep deprived, beaten, starved, subjected to mock executions, and raped.

Yes, while I was in Iran, it wasn't uncommon to hear that prisoners, like years past, were forced to eat their own shit, drink their own urine, be hanged upside down from ceilings, whipped after ice-cold baths, and the list goes on. Have they been able to tell you who is committing the torture? In comparison to former human rights violation cases, this one appears to be different. Many of these underground prison guards are thugs with no experience who are capable of being extremely brutal and who have been recruited and incorporated into the Basij and Revolutionary Guard forces. Often these guards come from rural and destitute areas of Iran. And as long as they do what they are told, the guards and their families receive handouts and government benefits.

Where do these tortures take place? Evin Prison is the most notorious, but I've heard other exist. Certainly. A lot of the tortures are taking place in underground prisons and at unknown locations. Often times the prisoners are blindfolded and have no way of knowing where they have been taken. Just a few months ago it was revealed that there was an underground and unmonitored prison in southern Tehran, Karizak. It was at this location that the son of a close advisor to the former chief of the Revolutionary Guard was brutally tortured. Basically they tortured to death one of their own. It becomes clear that these prisons do not have due process of law.

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Fuck. Well, what can the international community do? Right now we are asking that the United Nations' General Assembly appoint a special envoy to document and research what is happening to political prisoners and detainees in Iran, and to research the extent of murder, torture, and rape.

In your talks with families of detainees or lawyers, have you been able to get a feel for what they want for the future of the country? For the last half century, Iran's history has been tainted with bloodshed. Now, the people don't want abrupt change or bloodshed. They don't want their lives to be turned upside down like the last revolution. They realize they live under a dictatorship but they prefer to have gradual change for liberties.

When the demonstrators say "Marg bar Dictator," who do you think they are referring to? Some people think that it's Ahmadinejad. I think it's the Supreme Leader Khamenei. He's the arbitrator of power in Iran's political factions, but now his legitimacy is in high question. This government claimed to be based on religion, but the current system is neither "Islamic" nor "Republic." They have committed murder, torture, and vicious rape in the name of Islam. A lot of people out of Iran don't know this, but all of Iran's Grand Ayatollahs are holding back recognition for Ahmadinejad's re-election.

Do you think you will be able to go back to Iran anytime soon? I left in 1983 for school, and went back several times. But now I'm not sure when it will be safe to return. We were very public with our work and who we are. I've been recently named in a number of the post-election court trial indictments—and that was simply for providing information to the international community. Obviously the regime is very unhappy with our exposure.

I would think so.