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Top news photo of 2009. The image of Neda Soltan at the moment of death was criticized by some bloggers, Muslim and otherwise, but it’s currently ranking as the best news image of 2009 over at Huffpo in their readers’ opinion.
It will be interesting to watch how the professional journalism organizations rate the image.
Neda Agha Soltan’s family accuse Iran of her killing.
The family of a young woman shot dead at a protest following Iran’s disputed presidential election has accused the security forces of killing her.
It is the most strongly-worded statement the family of Neda Agha Soltan have made since her death.
The family’s accusation follows the spread of an Iranian government-proposed theory blaming a conspiracy of western governments for the killing.
Ahmadinejad was on Charlie Rose last night and the video should be on the site later today.
He related to Charlie Rose, towards the end of the interview that he has questions about who killed Neda Agha-Soltani. Why, he asked, was the woman killed on a sidestreet away from the main demonstration? Why did the cameras not focus on the killer but simply focused on Neda’s gruesome death? Ahmadinejad flat out calls it a plot. More of that here as well. Then MA invites Charlie to Iran. That should be interesting…
If it was Basij, shame on Ahmadinejad. If it was Israel or some other agent of a foreign country, what a revolting, sub-human PR move.
Remember this clarion call for (especially Western) silence and indifference in the name of privacy and respect toward the martyr Neda, and against those who would appropriate her as a “sign,” a symbol?
Here’s Neda’s mother in a BBC interview thanking the world for its attention:
I don’t want people to forget her. People – Iranians – have all been very supportive. They come to me and congratulate me for having had such a brave daughter.
And now I want you to do something for me. I want you, on my behalf, to thank everyone around the world, Iranians and non Iranians, people from every country and culture, people who in their own way, their own tradition, have mourned my child… everyone who lit a candle for her – every musician, who wrote songs for her, who wrote poems about her… you know, Neda loved the arts and music. I want to thank all of them.
I want to thank politicians and leaders, from every country, at all levels, who remembered my child.
Her death has been so painful – words can never describe my true feelings. But knowing that the world cried for her… that has comforted me.
I am proud of her. The world sees her as a symbol, and that makes me happy.
Muslims ‘not of the West’ need as much protection from Western Muslims who will colonize them as they do from any other oppressor.
Who among us will rush in and do the patroniz…err…protecting? 
A group called Voice of the Voiceless based in Southern California has produced an ad called, “I am Neda.”
Here’s the ad, and here’s the casting call for the ad:
Neda was the face of the faceless. She is just one of the thousands of unnamed people who simply vanish without a trace in Iran and around the world.
In Farsi, Neda means “voice”– so those of us who have been blessed with the freedom to use it, will communicate the words of those are unable to to. We will be taking the words of Iranians, their wants and desires, and we will become their voice.
Join us this Saturday anytime from 9:30 A.M.-2:00 P.M. to show your support and get their voices heard.
This project is meant to show universal support–we want to see all races, ages (18 & up) and genders. So pass this along to all your friends, family and coworkers.
Neda’s death inspires UC Irvine teach-in on Iran – more than 1,000 people attend 12-hour event.
It would be nice to have such a well-attended teach-in on the Palestinian issue, however the US media seems to have graciously decided to practice the adab we Muslims demand of them and protect the Palestinians ‘privacy’ and not show any images of what actual happens to Palestinians. Palestinians everywhere and the entire Muslim world breathe a collective sigh of relief…
A note about the teach-in: Many of the attendees expressed solidarity with the Iranians over shared values to protect human rights, which some of us have said there is “great wisdom hikma” in resisting…
Max Blumenthal praises the “courageous decision” of the US media for broadcasting Neda’s killing “vividly and repeatedly.” Wishes they would do the same for Palestinian victims.
The outpouring of American public sympathy for Iranian demonstrators might never have occurred had cable news outlets not made the courageous decision to broadcast Neda’s killing vividly and repeatedly.
Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources.
A pejorative comment about ‘what Western media manipulation has done’ to Neda:
Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime.
Some facts about who has acted to make Neda a sign of Iran’s repressive regime, and some facts about who has acted vigorously in defense of Neda’s ‘privacy.’ From Wikipedia:
* After being pronounced dead at Shariati hospital, Agha-Soltan was buried at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran; she was denied a proper funeral by government authorities.
* On June 23, it was reported that government authorities directed Agha-Soltan’s family to remove the black mourning banners that were hanging outside their residence in the Tehran neighborhood of Tehranpars in order to prevent the home from becoming a place of pilgrimage.
* On June 24, The Guardian reported the results of interviews of neighbours who claimed that Agha-Soltan’s family was forced to vacate their apartment some days after her death.
* The Iranian government has issued a ban on collective prayers in mosques for Agha-Soltan in the aftermath of the incident.
* Soona Samsami, the executive director of the Women’s Freedom Forum, who has been relaying information about the protests inside Iran to the international media, told the foreign press that Agha-Soltan’s immediate family were threatened by authorities if they permitted a gathering to mourn her. Samsami stated, “They were threatened that if people wanted to gather there the family would be charged and punished.”
* On June 22, Iranian riot police dispersed a crowd of between 200 and 1,000 protesters with live ammunition and tear gas who had gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e Tir Square after online calls for protesters to pay tribute to Agha-Soltan and others killed during the demonstrations.
* On that same day, about 70 mourners gathered outside Niloufar mosque in Abbas Abad, where the Agha-Soltan family attended services. A leaflet posted on the mosque’s door read, “There is no commemoration here for Neda Agha Soltan.” Many in the crowd wore black. Some recited poems. After about ten minutes, 20 Basij paramilitary arrived on motorcycles and dispersed the attendees.
Embedded in these various bullets points are reports of lots and lots of non-Western Muslims – real people, with real feelings and real rights trying to take control of their own destinies and identities, but some Western Muslims clearly seek to diminish or ignore them. Therefore ‘Muslim sources’ and ‘feminist sources’ should be deconstructed of the license these labels give them to speak with authority about non-Western and female perspectives.
Silence and invisibility for the sake of Neda:
Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime. Neda’s agency is denied, and in her passing we cannot afford her privacy but continually reproduce an image of her death which to me resembles a Warhol pop art print. Neva Mwiti writes a really strong analysis of Stolen and the controversy surrounding it. She asks whether or not “film producers, brand gurus and marketers from the West will realise and respect that the third world is not fodder for their notoriety, but actually made up real people, with real feelings and real rights over their own destinies and identities.” I think her comments can be applied to the majority (if not all) representations of women like Faitim and Neda. When will these women be given the respect they deserve?
Neda’s agency is denied by limiting the scope of her possible desires to one – “privacy,” a state of silence and invisibility.
Next we should examine what we know about Neda’s thoughts on the political behavior she was engaged in and was killed for. From Wikipedia:
* Her music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who was accompanying Agha-Soltan during the protest, told the media: “She couldn’t stand the injustice of it… All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted. She wanted to show with her presence that, ‘I’m here, I also voted, and my vote wasn’t counted’. It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence.”
* Caspian Makan (Agha-Soltan’s fiancé) told BBC: “Neda had said that even if she lost her life and got a bullet in her heart, she would carry on”.
She was engaged in an act of expression when she died, in a public place for all to know and see. She stepped out of anything that was part of her normal regular life to be public and to be heard. To then say that the highest respect we can pay her is “privacy” is to steal the agency – the meaning that she ascribed to the last few minutes of her life.
Speaking of non-Western perspectives, this commenter at Racialicious was fairly bursting with respect for them:
If I am not mistaken…it is the Iranian dissidents who are pimping Neda Soltani’s blood-ridden face all over the Internet. It is a certain political group of Iranians who are dying for attention from the Western corporate media.
Paraphrased thusly: “I just hate non-Westerners who won’t get with my program and let me colonize them…”
In Egypt, police shut down Iran solidarity march.
An attempt by Egyptians to march in solidarity with Iranian protesters and to honor Neda-Agha Soltan — whose death earlier this month made her the icon of Iran’s opposition movement — was halted by security forces in Cairo over the weekend.
The Cairo rally was called by democracy activist and opposition leader Ayman Nour and was scheduled to be held in Talaat Harb square in the Egyptian capital’s downtown. But dozens of security vehicles surrounded Nour and his fellow protesters upon their arrival at the square. Police arrested four protesters belonging to Nour’s party and prevented reporters from covering the event.
“It is very ironic how Egyptian authorities, who earlier expressed their dismay against the Iranian regime’s oppressive means of handling protesters, are now banning us from a march that shares the same perspective,” Nour said at a news conference at his party’s headquarters. “Such acts only prove one thing and it is that the Egyptian and Iranian regimes are quite the same when it comes to their autocratic path and rejection of democracy.”
I’ve been struck by the way images of Neda specifically and Iranian women in general have been panned by self-identified Western Muslim feminists. Carried to it’s absurd conclusion, images of Muslim women are so at risk of ‘exploitation’ ‘fetishization’ ‘confirmation of barbarity’ etc, etc. that a strong implicit argument is being made that says their images should be struck from the Western media milieux entirely – which, given the interest actual women show in places like Gaza and Iran for the world to know about them, the effect of such western Muslim feminist critique becomes another kind of forced veiling, this time on the part of western Muslim feminists over their non-Western ’sisters.’
From an American feminist, more on the images of Iranian women in the protests there:
In general, the images of Iranian women — young and old, clad in chadors and scant designer scarves — have been a valuable emotional bridge for men and women alike. They’re more sympathetic figures not only because, of course, many consider them to be the fairer sex, but also because of the way the Islamic regime has tirelessly targeted women.
Human rights activists “Iranbaan” reports that “Neda Agha Sultan’s father was brought on TV and her martyrdom was blamed on the ‘rioters.’”
Forced him to come out and lie about his daughter’s murder to protect the real murderer – Do the powers that be in Iran even believe in Judgment Day anymore?
The American people are developing a ‘crush’ on the Iranian people – the ‘indelible faces’ that we see on TV and the web which we are coming to admire and care about. These images will make it that much harder for warmongering right-wingers in the US to goad Americans into supporting violence on the part of their own government against Iran at any point in the near future.
If you want to kill with a clean conscience, the faces of the enemy had better be blank. Start to see them as human beings and it becomes harder to blockade and bomb them, to mine, and pollute, and “destabilize.” …
Shirin Ebadi, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner, has told Al Jazeera that she is prepared to represent the family of a young woman shot dead during a protest in Tehran.
Iranian government: It was all a put-on.
Iranian TV, quoting an unnamed source, said Neda was not shot by a bullet used by Iranian security forces. It said filming of the scene, and its swift broadcast to foreign media, suggested the incident was planned.
“We are all neocons now” — neocon
“We are all #Neda” — Iran
Woman is the radiance of God… and now her blood runs through the streets of Tehran.
Professo Patra writes:
The great Persian poet Rumi wrote, “Woman is the radiance of God, she is not created, she is your creator…” In the streets of Tehran for the last week, women are the radiance of the street. A’isha led her troops into battle over an election that was unjust in the eyes of those who looked to her for guidance after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
There is war in the streets of Tehran. A war between youth and the establishment. Democracy and Theocracy. Islam is compatible with democracy, but it is not compatible with despotism and the slaughter of the innocents. A hadith narrated on the authority of ‘Abdullah and Sahih Bukhari says:
It is narrated on the authority of ‘Abdullah that a woman was found killed in one of the battles fought by the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him). He disapproved of the killing of women and children.
….
If the world needed any further proof of the total bastardization of Islam by the Islamic Republic’s leaders and the slaughter of its citizens and the total disregard for human life, it can be found in Neda’s eyes. Neda’s eyes as she lay dying in the streets, an innocent victim of a regime awash in blood. Allahuakbar, God is great! Let the Iranian people reclaim Islam.
Karroubi calls for public mourning of Neda today. In a Facebook post, the reformist candidate who has been supporting Mousavi and appearing with him at rallies calls for people to gather at a central Tehran location at 4PM to mourn Neda.
(via)
IRAN: Footage of woman apparently shot in Tehran galvanizes opposition:
A copy of the video was also emailed to The Times. It seems to show a woman lying in the street with blood spurting from her chest. A man leans over, trying to stop the bleeding with his hands.
The footage, which can be viewed on YouTube, is extremely graphic. The identity of the woman could not be independently confirmed. But she is referred to on Twitter as Neda.
“#Neda: You are the VOICE of the people. You are a call to FREEDOM…..rip,” readd one of the many tweets about her apparent slaying.
CNN reports that pictures of the woman are appearing on posters in Tehran and she is being hailed as a martyr. The network broadcast an excerpt of the video with the face of the woman blurred out.
blurring the face removes a lot of the power. when i’ve seen people killed or shot in video on the news before they’re like ants in the distance. in the video you can see the woman dying by the change in her facial expressions. in fact there’s enough detail that you can probably pinpoint when neda dies because of her face.
