Blogger; mother of four; B.A., English, University of Birmingham; M.A., English as a Second Language; post-graduate Ph.D. field: linguistics; religion: Wahabbi Muslim.
The Kingdom had to have seen this greater day coming, “greater” for connecting the privileged of Saudi Arabia with the full breadth of the world’s English-speaking and other intelligentsia, i.e., the broad if thin international band of cosmopolitan, engaged, informed, and rapidly “chatyping” personalities. Nafjan has not only fit right in with the world’s intellectual class, she appears to be in trouble with the medieval kingdom for having been raised for the modernizing path and role taken.
What is it about feudal / medieval / tribal peacocks that so sustains contempt and fear in relation to women that the royal response to mild challenge, criticism, and practical reasoning comes to a still barbarous demand: “Lock her up!”
Addendum – March 14, 2019 (added to post July 27, 2019)
NEW YORK—PEN America announced today that it will award the 2019 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award to journalist, blogger, and activist Nouf Abdulaziz, activist and social media commentator Loujain Al-Hathloul, and blogger, columnist, and activist Eman Al-Nafjan—three Saudi women imprisoned for challenging, through their writing and their activism, therestrictive guardianship system that governs Saudi women and limits theirability to travel, marry, work, or receive education and healthcare without approval from a male guardian. Abdulaziz, Al-Hathloul, and Al-Nafjan each used their digital and news-reporting platforms to speak out on women’s rights and other forms of human rights repression in Saudi Arabia, including the long-standing ban on women driving. The ban was lifted in June 2018, yet immediately thereafter, many of those who had advocated for this change were arrested. Today these three writer-activists are among those still incarcerated for their dissent, reportedly facing torture, isolation, and threats of rape. In early March, Saudi authorities announced that they are planning to indict a number of those detained on national security-related charges; initial hearings in the trials of Loujain Al-Hathloul and Eman Al-Nafjan began March 13.
Those under arrest have been branded threats to national security and have been accused of being foreign agents. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the reason for the arrest is to silence the women and prevent others from participating in activism.
Rights organisations and governments around the world have called on the Saudi authorities to release all political prisoners, but to no avail.
Most people in the West, naturally enough, get their ideas about Saudi life from the media. They learn that women here are forbidden to drive, that they must be almost completely covered up when they appear in public, that unmarried women and girls can’t appear in public unaccompanied by family members.
All of this is more or less true, but it omits the reality that, for the average middle class Saudi woman who comes from a healthy family background, life is pretty good.
When everything is in place, a Saudi woman can live a comfortable life. A respectable husband is arranged for her to marry; she typically has a driver, servants and an extended family ready to give her financial and emotional support. All that’s expected of her is to have babies and fulfill social obligations.
Official statements in state media accused Loujain al-Hathloul, Iman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Youssef of forming a “cell,” posing a threat to state security for their “contact with foreign entities with the aim of undermining the country’s stability and social fabric.” A related hashtag describing them as “Agents of Embassies”, along with a graphic showing the six activists’ faces, have also been circulating on social media and Saudi Arabian print and broadcast media. Amnesty International is concerned that if charged, the activists could face up to 20 years in prison. Now is the time to take action and defend these brave activists, who are some of the most prominent heroines of the human rights movement in Saudi Arabia.
As the world praises Saudi Arabia for recent “reforms” – including allowing women to drive – we must raise the alarm for these imprisoned defenders who have fought tirelessly for years for women’s rights in the Kingdom.
According to three separate testimonies obtained by the organization, the activists were repeatedly tortured by electrocution and flogging, leaving some unable to walk or stand properly. In one reported instance, one of the activists was made to hang from the ceiling, and according to another testimony, one of the detained women was reportedly subjected to sexual harassment, by interrogators wearing face masks.
منذ اول اعتقالات جرت بالمملكة توافقت الدولة والمجتمع على عدم التعريض والاساءة للمعتقل بالصحف، ومن حتى يلمح ويفعل ذلك محاولا التكسب ينظر له باحتقار من قبل زملائه والمسؤلين . للأسف انهارت تلك القيم في زماننا هذا ! أدناه نموذجا لوضاعة وسيلة إعلامية مرخصة pic.twitter.com/22Vznd2XYL
Visitor’s Center, Antietam National Battlefield Park, Sharpsburg, Maryland, June 1, 2017.
For visitors from other lands, the small patch of Maryland countryside on which the center has been planted represents the beginning of the end of slavery as an institution in the United States of America. In one horrific days of battle, General McClennan’s forces pushed General Lee’s Confederate army from the field but left it also to retreat west across the Potomac River and thence to fight a long war that would end about where it began but with the moral vision and structure of the country forever changed in favor of equality under the law and “liberty and justice for all”.
It takes a long time to change men — and to change their attitudes and beliefs about money and about one another. My America remains a work in progress, but as long as the work hews to the liberal view of man and the earnest distribution of political power through democracy accompanied by integrity, I think we Americans — and everyone else — will continue getting better in the building or forming of greater societies.
Where we have let people down, I’m sure we are going to be made to remember it. Where we have helped people up, one may hope we’ll be remembered for that too.
Russia has had a long history of virulent and institutionalized anti-Semitism. Before Arafat’s arrival, it used anti-Semitic sentiment to court its targets in the Arab world. https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/ In addition to spreading the forgery and libel that was the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, it produce a propaganda campaign accompanied by sending trained agents and workers into the middle east to facilitate its own ends.
In states burdened today by the legacy of “medieval political absolutism”, the narcissistic egomaniac only appears to represent the cultural spirituality of the state, but the same presumptuously does as much at any and every cost to The People — and that may include what has happened to the Palestinian People.
The malign qualities in leadership may stem from damage done to the self-concept of the leader in childhood or youth as humiliation or similar injury finds an antidote in that person’s reinvention of personality and its appearance. In the context of militarized societies or others obsessed with honor, the observation that the people ultimately create the Great Leader — and the Great Leader becomes also their own Great Burden — would seem to have become in this era entirely predictable.
The prompt: a discussion about why Arafat failed to set up conditions for a Palestinian democratic society.
The most basic and honest answer to that is this: Arafat’s handlers in Moscow forbid him any development of liberalism or democracy in territories to which he was assigned. Instead, Moscow asserted its will to impose itself on the Palestinian People and produce a sustained conflict beneath which many would profit from long decades engaged in corruption, crime, and related patronage. The would be no justice within the Palestinian community for the leadership and its cronies.
More recently, as noted in the BackChannels piece, “Palestinian KGB” (cited above), it has been revealed that Mahmoud Abbas has himself had KGB status — a fact of life that never goes away — and appears today to be as hamstrung in his political stance as his predecessor and probably for the same reason. He may be representing modern Palestinian interests far less than the archaic medieval interests of Moscow in sustaining dictatorships and the related looting-by-leadership known to too many Soviet-style intimidated and subjugated populations worldwide.
For the greater base of the Palestinian people, the Middle East Conflict has been a good business for the Palestinian privileged by way of the favor of politically criminal Palestinian leaders.
Nazanin Fatehi appears to have committed a murder in self-defense as a 17-year-old girl in 2005. The regime initially found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to death by hanging. The human rights community took up her cause and the lunatic processes of what passes for justice in Iran released her (with financial obligations) in 2012. She has disappeared.
Nazanin Afshin-Jam, an Iranian-Canadian possessed of gorgeous looks and multiple talents took up Fatehi’s cause on top of the cause of freedom in Iran and became part of the run-up to the 2009 challenge to the regime. As an advocate for Nazanin Fatehi, she published a book, The Tale of Two Nazanins (2012).
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is today a British citizen held by the regime on secret charges — an affront to British Power, a potential casus belli — and part of an absurd diplomacy involving provocative behaviors (e.g., seizing patrol boats in open waters) that appears to play out between Iran and its western marks with fair regularity.
Posted to YouTube December 22, 2006.
Posted to YouTube April 27, 2007.
Posted to YouTube June 21, 2009.
Posted to YouTube June 3, 2012 (22-minute interview).
Posted to YouTube May 10, 2016.
Posted to YouTube December 19, 2016.
As of July 2012, the whereabouts of Fatehi, age approx. 25, were reported as unknown by individuals in the West with whom she had prior contact, with current contact being only the most sporadic.[2][6][10] A book from Canadian supporter and activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam appeared in 2012 chronicling the divergent lives of these two Iranian Nazanins, whose lives intersected during the period of Fatehi’s trial;[11] media responses to the book were generally positive
The business newspaper Vedomosti analyzed the reasons why the case of a largely unknown opposition activist received so much attention, including that of the Kremlin. Even the presidential spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, who usually avoids commenting on such topics, called the situation unacceptable. This, on the one hand, might mean that the state propaganda machine seeks to use its full capacity to cover this issue. On the other hand, there might be a darker motive: Dadin’s case could be used as a reminder for the population of what discontent and opposition activity might lead to.
The online publication Gazeta.ru believes that it might take a while before the situation with Dadin is resolved. There are different assessments of the developments, with some arguing that Dadin might have deliberately exaggerated the situation, lying about the torture and humiliations. The situation gets even more complex, since doctors have avoided giving their accounts on Dadin’s health examination.
This isn’t a correctional institution, it’s a concentration camp. People aren’t held here to be to be reformed but to be humiliated. Please send a statement in my name to the Investigations Committee in connection with the fact that a whole array of torture is being used on the prisoners in IK-7. The beatings and torture aren’t stopping even now, after the intervention by [human rights ombudsman] Tatyana Moskalkova and the arrival of members of the HRC [president’s Human Rights Council] Pavel Chikov and Igor Kalyapin.
I hear people being beaten, I hear them shouting. I know the torture with hunger and cold is continuing, and I can’t write a complaint about that myself. I’m prepared to give specific dates, but personally in a conversation with human rights defenders, because I’m afraid the guard will find out and also delete those video recordings (Pavel Chikov said that the recording of Dadin’s beating may have been deleted, as the data from the video cameras is stored for 30 days, and the incident happened in September – Meduza). I know that recently they deleted video recordings from the hard disk and I want to request all the video recordings from all the cells that should exist – while at least some are still saved. It will be easy to confirm my words because the beatings take place here virtually every day.
Russia’s jailing of a peaceful opposition activist for violating the country’s new law on public assemblies is a shocking and cynical attack on freedom of expression, Amnesty International said today.
Ildar Dadin was sentenced to three years in jail by a Moscow court for repeated anti-government street protests. He is the first person to be jailed using the law, which was introduced in 2014 and punishes repeated breaches of public assembly rules.
“Instead of upholding justice, the Hamas authorities and leadership have continuously encouraged and facilitated these appalling crimes against powerless individuals. Their failure to even condemn the unlawful killings, abduction and torture of perceived suspects leaves them effectively with blood on their hands,” said Philip Luther.
From the PDF of the Amnesty International Report (p. 12):
Amnesty International is concerned that the bodies and mechanisms set up by the Hamas de facto administration to carry out law enforcement and the administration of justice lack the necessary skills, independence, oversight, and accountability to ensure that the rule of law is respected for both victims and accused; to protect individuals from human rights abuses against them; to ensure that victims have access to effective mechanisms to obtain redress; and that accused persons are afforded due process. On the contrary, it seems clear that perpetrators of human rights abuses continue to enjoy impunity, and that the Hamas de facto administration lacks the political will to hold perpetrators of such crimes to account, particularly Hamas members, and to respect fundamental human rights, including the rights to life and to be free from torture.
The four-and-a-half-year-long process of relocating members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) to countries of safety was successfully completed on September 9, 2016 when the last 280 Camp Liberty residents left Iraq for Albania.
Displacement is not a “win”, but give the “People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran” its due: it appears to BackChannels as one of very few organizations that have moved from U.S. status as a terrorist organization to de-listing on that score. In the years tracked here, it has consistently spoken a democratic-egalitarian and peace line, so here it may be considered good that the people involved have found a less contentious and more secure home.
Posted to YouTube December 16, 2014.
Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani do not represent our nation Iran. The Iranian regime holds the record in the number of executions. It holds and is a symbol of bankrupt terrorism. It must be overthrown. This the verdict of history. This is what 120,000 martyrs of freedom have called for. This is the message of our gathering today: religious fascism must be overthrown.
Posted to YouTube June 27, 2014
And even though I want to believe that no Judiciary seeks to execute innocent people, the Iranian system makes the likelihood of unfair trials and arbitrary killings unacceptably high. Iranians are routinely subject to arbitrary detentions, beating and interrogations without the presence of a lawyer, vaguely worded national security laws, and prejudiced institutions that fail to protect them.
HRANA News Agency – After seven months of Saeed Shirzad’s arrest, he is still kept as detainee and under uncertain condition. His attorneys are not permitted to review his case.
An informed source regarding Nahid Gorji’s condition, told HRANA’s reporter, “She used to have contact with her daughter every week, but since three weeks ago she has not been allowed to make a phone call and has had no visit with her family which has made her family and relatives worried.”
HRANA News Agency – Atena Dayemi, civil rights and children’s rights activist, is still being kept in solitary confinement after nearly three months.
According to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Atena Dayemi who was arrested on October 21, 2014 in her house and transferred to ward 2-A in Evin Prison which is controlled by IRGC, is still being kept in solitary confinement although the interrogation process has been finished.
This abominable crime has a special character: the savage assassination of writers and journalists under the name of Islam. For this reason, on behalf of the Iranian people and Resistance, I condemned this crime in strongest possible terms and state as a Muslim woman that the religion of Islam and the conduct of its great Prophet reject such acts of barbarism.
Today, the people of France hold a great gathering of solidarity, which we also participated, and we express our solidarity with them.
Eric Shawn: You mentioned the nuclear issue and of course, July 20th is a deadline for the nuclear agreement. Do you think Tehran can be trusted?
Maryam Rajavi: Certainly not. The mu↑llahs are masters of deception, duplicity and charlatanism. For this reason they can in no way be trusted. You know full well that Rouhani, himself, acknowledged during the election campaign that he had deceived the West in order to continue the nuclear activities inside Iran while the West being misled that thee regime has engaged in negotiations in order to halt their nuclear program. Therefore, they cannot be trusted.
Or has it already passed, and I am watching the stragglers?
I don’t think I am watching the stragglers, but I have been watching this parade for a while.
Additional Reference
My ears have been seduced, for Rajavi speaks well. However, the MEK past and perhaps her own present online behavior or encouragement of behavior carries forward a whiff of “KGB-itis” in the malignantly narcissistic signal of faith and investment in control of constituent perception through unsavory manipulations in information space.
___
Of course, when on the internet, like-minded people, especially those who strongly support parties or causes, will naturally act in a like-minded way; changing their pictures to similar ones, using similar backgrounds and slogans, etc.
But these accounts are literally identical in almost every respect. Similar pictures, similar slogans, similar lack of any personal touch whatsoever, and all devoted to either retweeting or paraphrasing Mrs Rajavi’s every word.
Throughout the decade, the MEK orchestrated terrorist attacks against the state that killed several Americans working in Iran, including military officers and civilian contractors, according to the U.S. State Department. (By 1978, some 45,000 of the 60,000 foreigners working in Iran were Americans.) The MEK denies any involvement with these incidents, asserting that they were the work of a breakaway Marxist-Leninist faction, known as Peykar, which hijacked the movement after the arrest of Rajavi.
Some analysts support this. “Rajavi, upon release from prison during the revolution, had to rebuild the organization, which had been badly battered by the Peykar experience,” said Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute, in a CFR interview.
Yesterday, I listed a few names, most from Morteza Abolalian’s list, and here, reporting and commenting in reverse, I’ve started to get to know them better–who they were, how they lived–if possible.
So far, I’ve found web material scant.
There’s something wrong, of course, when my page comes up top on a Google search for any of the persons murdered allegedly, an appropriate term one must use even if reluctantly, by the Iranian state.
Politically, each name affords a window into the history and machinery of the Islamic revolution in Iran, most past, some nearly present.
From an empathic standpoint, one would wish to know them better, and that whether they were bad in some way or remarkably good. Such work has been undertaken by Human Rights & Democracy for Iran (http://www.iranrights.org/english/) through its undertaking “Omid”, in translation from Persian, “Hope”:
“Omid’s citizens were of varying social origins, nationalities, and religions; they held diverse, and often opposing, opinions and ideologies. Despite the differences in their personality, spirit and moral fiber, they are all united in Omid by their natural rights and their humanity. What makes them fellow citizens is the fact that one day each of them was unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. At that moment, while the world watched the unspeakable happen, an individual destiny was shattered, a family was destroyed, and an indescribable suffering was inflicted.”
Our World Wide Web becomes memory for all humanity.
A week or two back I added this from writer Milan Kundera to my blog (bottom of the column on the right):
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
I may perhaps owe my own some work, but I don’t wish to dwell too much on that.
At the level of mind, we are a rapidly evolving species, cross-communicating, sorting, crystallizing, and we know injustice in one place is felt and has meaning in other places.
I’ve started working down the list I’ve got, but I can see that in the way of the web or human-to-web-to-human interaction, I’ve obligated myself to spend some time at Omid and appreciate the stories there.
The common denominator for all listed in relation to state repression is all were cheated of their lives, their works, and their voices in their greater potential.
This morning started out as quest for references, but even on the web and reading swiftly, one may travel only so far in two or three hours.
“The book in essence is a memorial volume in honour of Professor Ahmad Tafazzoli (1937-1996), containing nineteen articles by prominent scholars in the fields of Iranology, Ancient Persian Studies and Onomastics, on topics of Zoroastrianism, Ancient Iranian Religions, History of Ancient Persia, Studies in Middle Persian, Pazand and Sogdian texts. Prof. Tafazzoli himself contributed scholarly works in Middle Persian and Classical Persian Studies. The book contains a frontispiece of Prof. Tafazzoli and a bibliography of his published works and it is indeed unfortunate that the editors have opted to omit his works in the Persian language from that bibliography.”
Rafizadeh, Shahram. “A Caricature of Justice: Contradictions and Inconsistences in the Cases of the Political Serial Murders.” Gozaar – A Forum on Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, November 20, 2007:http://www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=866&language=english
There are more resources online today than when the above list, culled from online, was compiled.
There are also more victims for the regime. In one of the above clips, Maryam Rajavi put the number of regime executed political martyrs at above 120,000, with 30,000 killed shortly after the taking of power in 1988.
The complaint against Mashaal was not directed at Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, but at alleged war crimes Hamas perpetrated against the Gazan population.
The complaint alleged that on August 22, 2014, Hamas “executed 18 so-called collaborators who had been convicted of no crime,” including “publicly execut[ing] seven of these ‘collaborators.’” Moreover, the complaint said that on July 28, 2014, Hamas summarily executed 20 Gazan civilians for engaging in anti-war protests against its rule in the Strip.
BackChannels 