Golbarg Bashi

Transcription

(music playing) Golbarg Bashi: When people ask me what is it that I do, I say my work concerns human rights in Iran, they say, oh, you've got to be very busy these days. Unfortunately, the human rights community that works on Iran specifically is very busy these days, especially since the post-electoral crisis of June, this year, 2009, there have been a lot of reports of systematic violations of human rights, executions of political prisoners. So, you have really horrendous reports coming out, and this has been very systematic of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the past 30 years, specifically during the 1980's, then more recently now, you've had, very gross violations of human rights in Iran. In May 2009, we saw a very vibrant dynamic, election process in Iran, starting with a very colorful, you know supporters of various candidates and so forth, especially of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the liberal presidential candidate, and he chose the color green as the color of his campaign. Green has significance in Persian literature and Iranian culture. It has religious significance, it's the color of shiism, of Islam. When you had the elections on 12th June 2009, with the results coming out fairly quickly afterwards, on the eve of the election day, with announcing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of the election, there were protest, peaceful protests in the streets. People, basically demanding a recount in the votes, so for one of the first times in Iranian history, you saw a non-violent, peaceful, mass sort of uprising in a way. You've had Iranians protesting in the streets throughout history, you've seen it in the constitutional period, you've seen it in the 1950's, you've seen it in the 1960's, and 1970's and so forth. But this time it was unprecedented in the numbers and with women, with young people at the very forefront, and people from various classes: rich people, poor people, all sorts of people. So, some historians have called it a civil rights movement . There was a way of thinking that, oh, twitter helped the Iranian cause, or Facebook helped. I think it's the other way around, that you know, before the June 2009 uprising, you had a lot of mundane things going on, you know, but afterwards, these tools were used in a way to spread information, vital information for example, addresses to foreign embassies in Tehran, who were providing medical services to people who were injured, when the police was cracking down on protestors, and a lot of really vital information for citizens inside Iran and also for observers outside Iran. Obviously the Islamic Republic owns its own media, controls its own media, and so forth, but people get their information from elsewhere, and when you had the shutting down of the internet inside Iran, people used their mobile phones to call and get the word out, or send their iReports to CNN or upload things somehow onto Youtube, I don't know how they do it, because it takes ages for me to upload a video on youtube, it takes hours, but they seem to be better at it. There's always these manuals that are spread on how to avoid the filter. Youth especially are very good at bypassing the censorial policies of the Islamic Republic, and to get the word out, because the world is watching, the world cares, and I think that's one of the most important things that people outside of Iran can do in order to help human rights defenders, the civil society, and the activists inside Iran. Here at the center for Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers, we teach all aspects of Middle Eastern studies, and also Iranian studies. Again, we've talked a lot about wars, and uprisings and so forth, but Iranian history, or Middle Eastern history isn't only about wars and major uprisings. You're dealing with a region which has a really rich culture, languages, literature, art, and so forth. (music playing)