[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Boycott Ayatollah Ebadi]

Washington DC Iranian Community Boycotts Nobel Peace Prize's
SMCCDI (Information Service)
May 13, 2004

Thousands of Iranians residing in the Washington DC area boycotted, yesterday, the organized speech of Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize, in a show of rejection of her controversial stands. Many Iranians ignored the free invitations sent by controversial Iranian entities, such as, those promoting ties between the Mullahs regime and the US and other circles affiliated directly to the Islamic regime's Interest Section in the US.

Ebadi had to make her speech just for a selected audience of 5,000 individuals filing only half of the Maryland College University's conference hall while the WDC area's Iranian community is estimated to be strong of more than 100,000 souls. It's to note that many of the Iranian participants were transferred by the so-called Iranian or Iranian-American entities which are seeking to use Ebadi's speech as a propaganda tool in line with their policy of legitimizing the Islamic regime. Many curious Americans and especially Arabs and non Iranian Muslims were part of the participants.

Despite the selection, tens of participants used the occasion in order to show their opposition to the Islamic regime by singing the banned National Anthem, "Oh Iran..!" during Ebadi's speech while other asked loud questions about her true agenda. The protest was made in reaction to the policy of the organizers to avoid live oral questions from the one labeled as being the "voice of the Iranian people" but accused by many as being the "mouthpiece the Islamic republic's foreign policy".

Already last week, Ebadi had faced stiff opposition during her speech in Vancouver (Canada). Hundreds of Iranians gathered in front of her speech conference by protesting against her stands and shouting slogans. Loud slogans were heard by many of the 400 selected participants who were attending the speech and several of them waved the banned "Lion & Sun" flags which they had introduced in the conference room by concealing them under their cloths. Several of them rised up during the meeting and tried to question Ebadi as her Q&A was based only on favorable written questions.

More protests are planned, especially in Los Angeles where the most important part of Iranian Diaspora is residing and where Ebadi will make a speech on Sunday at the UCLA.

To better understand, one must remember that many Iranians first welcomed Ebadi’s sudden nomination for the Nobel Peace Price by believing that she could be a catalyst for change. Tired of nearly a quarter of a century of a dictatorial and theocratic rule by Iranian mullahs and deceived by seven years of empty promises on even small possibilities of "reforms within the frame of their current regime," many Iranians preferred to see her as a light glowing at the end of a dark tunnel by not discussing the strange conditions of her rushed nomination coinciding with a short three-day trip to France. Her nomination was all the more tarnished by Poland’s 1983 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Lech Walesa's critique and the Nobel Committee’s advanced excuses of not being able to reach her sooner, which were at first ignored by many Iranians.



Back from her short trip, thousands of Iranians sized the occasion by gathering at Tehran Airport and shouting slogans in favor of freedom and against Iran's current leadership including its "reformist" President. But deception soon took place when Iranians witnessed that their "Angel of Freedom" started to shift from many of her initial positions by becoming more of a governmental

speaker than a rights activist like the brave and courageous Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar. Many Iranians were shocked when Ms. Ebadi stated that "she kisses the hands of the Islamic Parliament members" and called for a "massive participation for their re-election of the very same MPs" that saw their mass rejection in the boycott of Iran's last elections by a majority of Iranians tired of such games. Ebadi's countrymen's deception reached its culmination when they heard her saying that "she would have voted for Mr. Khatami if he could have run again.” In their minds, their first Nobel peace prize recipient became the advocate of the very same rejected and incompetent President asked to resign by thousands of Iranian demonstrators defying his brutal and evil regime.



Worst, they saw her taking the defense of Taliban and Al-Qaeda members held at the afar Guantanamo Bay for mass murder and terror while she kept silent about the fate of hundreds of brave Iranians and students held at her nearby Evin and Qhasr prisons for the crime of aspiring for freedom and democracy. The only prisoners having benefited from Ms. Ebadi's public support were at a certain point part of the 1979 revolution or close to moderate religious circles. Held secularists or those calling, like many Iranians, for a Referendum were not able to benefit from her public support as they have put to question the existence of the regime in its totality. Maverick Iranian women also saw their hope in Ms. Ebadi dashed when she intervened on several occasions against the French law on the ban of the Islamic veil and any religious signs in France's traditional secular public schools. They were astonished at how she affirmed on several occasions her obeisance to her country’s repressive law of the mandatory wearing of the veil by women and her keeping her silence on the fate of thousands of her sisters killed, injured, arrested or fined for having chosen to defy the discriminatory and cruel law existing in Iran.



Most likely, knowing the deception she has caused among a young population aspiring for secularism and tired of seeing its genuine aspirations to be somehow labeled by foreign diplomats as variances of Religious Protestantism or Reformist Islamism, and especially the big possibility of a popular hostile demonstration were the main reasons behind the organization of her second return to Iran in a very silent and strange manner. This time, despite having officially received the Nobel award, she returned by one of the Tehran airport's small doors. The official invoked the reason was the fear for her life due to a tract attributed to one of the several hard-line Islamist groups which Iranian leaders and their strategists have shown so many times as their Savoir de faire in their sudden opportune creations.



Of course, it is of note that in any case Ms. Ebadi would not have risked her precious life if she would have only kept her initial word of staying afar from political issues instead of choosing to become an advocator of rejected factions of the current regime and Iran's minor soft opposition from within the Islamic republic.

[Guest]

GATHERING OUTSIDE THE SEMINAR AT UCLA: FRIDAY MAY 14TH ROICE CENTRE. 4-6 PM

BRING LION AND SUN FLAGS

LONG LIVE IRAN

[libertywillprevail]

Down with Shirin Ebadi and down with the bastard mullahs and the barbaric Islamic Republic - LONG LIVE A FREE AND STRONG IRAN!!!! AZADI!!!

[Spenta]

I posted this to another board in response to someone who attended and was very disappointed that Iranians were there cheering Ayatollah Ebadi.

Dear Azadi,

I hear you loud and clear. However, I have been giving this matter much thought lately. Lets face it, the Iranian opposition doesn't work the left, liberals and academia as much as the Mullah$ do. Granted, the left has been kinder to the anti US, anti Israel, anti Imperialist Mullah$, but still I think the left can also be very sensitive to the plight of women, liberals, students and intellectuals in IRI. They have to be worked!

The Iranian opposition has successfully won over the right, which is very important, this is a group whose support is essential. Now, its time to win the support of the left. Now many of you will claim ... impossible. Hold your horses, lets take Ayatollah Ebadi as an example shall we?

Here's Ayatollah Ebadi, a middle eastern woman, a supposed feminist, a muslim, from Iran where those 'fabulous festival winning films' come from, she has won the Noble Peace Prize, has denounced George Bush, has condemned Israel, opposes globalisation, pleads on behalf of the Palestinians and prisoners in Guantanamo, fights the hegemony of the west, promotes multicultural understanding of Islam ... and the list goes on. In order words she should be every leftists' wet dream, or atleast the Poster Girl for liberalism in the US. She should be adopted as the ultimate leftist cause celebre of the moment by every liberal in the west. Academic institutions should be bending over backwards to book her for speaking gigs. Yet none of this has been happening.

University of Maryland is not Yale, Columbia, Gergetown, Harvard etc. Important liberal writers have not taken the time to write about her, neither have important feminists. She has not been prominantly featured in any of the liberal, leftist or Progressive media. Mother Jones gave her a one paragraph mention, a lot less than what they gave Aghajari. Ultimately, the left has not adopted her. Why? I'm not sure why, but I'd say its a good sign.

It gives me hope. Her charade has not been mistaken for the real thing by those who really matter! Now if the Iranian opposition could win over the left the way they have the right, then the Mulah$ atrocities would be frontpage in much of the international media. This is what the opposition should focus on now. A strategy for winning over the left. Ebadi's cool reception by the elite liberal and leftist circles in the US, makes me realise that the left can be worked, they didn't fall for this Mullah charade!

Now lets get Iranian students on Air America! Lets get Al Franken to talk about whats happening! Lets get Hollywood as hot about the plight of women and liberals in IRI as they were about RAWA & Afghanistan!

[redemption]

Spenta, I think you make a very important point, one that unfortunately has yet to really take shape and is still only a concept. I agree with you, that many on the left will likely adopt the pro-freedom viewpoints - the reason I say that is because I am an American who believes that the concept of LEFT and RIGHT is complete horseshit and that many Americans differ on a variety of topics, but that if left to their own device, Americans will adopt a strategy and process of analyzing issue by issue instead of acting like puppet eating every word that a Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken type spits on the airwaves. Since it is likely the case that an overwhelming majority of Americans are actually moderate and support some issues on the right and some issues on the left - I don't see why the majority of Americans and the so-called "left" in this instance can't support the Iranian people. I don't know much about Kristof (NY Times) work, however I think it is damn good that the New York times has been printing the articles it has in recent weeks. For a long time they have looked like the mouth piece for IRI and at times they still do but an increase in the number of semi-good to xtremely positive article re: Iran most notably Kristof's may be a sign of something.

SO yes, you're right - it is mandatory to get the left on the side of the Iranian people.. Question is: how to go about it?

Infiltrate the Democracy Underground type groups and spit the Pro-Freedom propoganda and continue to do so despite all the accusations that we are Bush lovers and imperialists and we exiles don't know what's best for our country and don't represent the Iranian people.. you know the story..

It has to be done right.. and it has to be done in a systematic and efficient manner..
_________________
IRANIANS UNITE
PERSIA LIVES ON!!
FREE IRAN NOW!