8 - march 2010-Hannover
Tuesday 6 April 2010
First, I want to say that I I feel very honored today to be able to speak at the International Women's Day, on the Iranian women - Talk about the ongoing injustice they face and their tireless effort to escape this injustice.
I would like to describe some of my experiences, impressions and observations that have influenced me over the years and made a running mate in the Iranian women's movement.
My contribution consists of snapshots of the past few years, as the mosaic are next to each other and form a landscape in which the feminine life takes place in Iran, has been imprisoned, but also provides resistance.
I'll begin in the mid-80s than I slowly grew into a woman with the Library of Tehran Academy of Art where I studied. It was a large library of child wooden shelves all around, full of valuable books and brochures about the long history of our earth art. These books have been under Islamic rule as all other goods of the education system in the country during the Cultural Revolution. On each side of the many books the library images of the female body with black, bold strokes were Edding-coated. This means that even pictures can not escape the forced veiling!
It was the time of the killings, the fear of rigidity, the flight and the inner emigration. Since open protests were no longer possible, men and women strove for normality.
We, the women in the City of God, have our veil more or less worn as if it were a part of us. The black Edding-lines in the pictures were unadorned but the conditions of our existence, and made the attacks on the female body and human existence and mutilation visible. A few years later
and almost at the end of my studies, I was sitting one day in a darkened room during a lecture on the "history of modern art. The professor, who constantly strove for a balance between a liberal thinking on the one hand and Islamic law in the academy showed pictures from the era of the Expressionists. He said selected controlled and tamed with passion about the rebellion of the artists of this era and their example works projected onto the screen.
As a deformed shape in bright-yellow color and with long hair in a painting by Emile Nolde appeared on the screen, a male student struck with hands flat on the table and shouted several times aloud, you ashamed to show himself, so indecent images ! The professor turned off the projector. We sat in the dark and he tried in vain to contain the damage. The student but left the room, slammed the door and the professor was dismissed some time later.
The female body was a terrain which was regulated by the theocracy and monitored heavily. Large and small tablets in the public reminded us of this regulation: "sister," it said because, for example, "your Hedjab is my honor" or "my flag" or even "flag of Islam". The subject of these sentences was always male and faith.
early 90s and after graduation, I left Iran to continue to study and learn other life forms outside the boundaries of the theocracy.
the next few years featured my parents, both opposition politicians in Iran, the main link to my home country dar. Everything I loved about this country, the beautiful writing, the poetry of language, the security of memories, joined in a natural way with these two people. This relationship is not spared me from the reality of the country. My parents sent me on a regular basis such as by fax a forbidden news bulletin, which they published weekly in Iran. I read the narrow rows of short messages over the abuses in the country.
It was in 1994 when I click on one of these Faxblätter the news of the suicide of an old mate, my mother read: Professor Darabi, in spite of their irreplaceable expertise Psychology excluded from the professorship and research site was because they were opposed to strict Islamic rules. After her release she became depressed, lost her life purpose and then burned in public in the vicinity of their practice as the last character of their protest. Two days later, she succumbed to her injuries.
news of suicides by women who were in the dead end of theocracy can not find a way out accumulated, of course.
Influenced by this news, I drew a series of suicides, the suicide I Calendar - Fem. called. In this series I had as to how in a lot of my work, an ornamental and aesthetic surface, the Happening on the screen, the scenes of suicide, behind a harmonious beauty disguised or even hidden.
I posted this series of drawings in 1999 from Tehran in a gallery. Responsible for the censorship of the Culture Ministry officials were more lenient in this phase than the years before and the recipients who were trained in a closer look, it took the hidden content.
It was an ambivalent time for the Iranian society. On the one hand, a time of promises of reformists to more freedom, then had caused the population in many fragile hopes. On the other hand, a time more insidious Attacks on dissidents, a time of political murders, the bloody suppression of the student movement and the prohibition of the critical press.
My show was just a year after the murder of my parents. In a time when I began looking for the legal investigation of these political crimes, and therefore very often traveled to Tehran. Again and again I was sitting in the waiting rooms of the judicial system and was witness to the everyday struggles of people with the judiciary.
sat me on a summer against two veiled women in chador: A mother and her daughter. The mother repeatedly encouraged her silent daughter, to fight for their divorce. The daughter looked sad and exhausted at the smile his mother. The mother had come to the boss, a religious judge to speak, was in his hands the fate of their daughter.
what you wanted the son her daughter was abused repeatedly. She had medical records of the last injury. I was still sitting there when the women came out from the office of the conductor.
cried the mother upset that the judge would make her a murderer, that she would not stand by to see how their daughter is slowly driven to their death that they would kill this man, their son, rather that their beloved daughter killed. The daughter, however, looked only silent and exhausted on her mother.
In 2000 and in September I received a letter from the Tehran military court. In it they told me the end of the investigation into the murder of my parents Act.
The investigation had lasted two years. They were characterized by contradictory statements at the highest level. Until then, me and my lawyers on the ground that it affects the internal security of the country, insights denied to the file. I made another trip to Tehran, hoping to get into this delicate matter responses from a judge at the specially convened special court. 18 employees were accused of secret indeed. For the first time should be high-ranking officials of the Islamic state for the murder of dissidents brought to justice.
Accompanied by my lawyer who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I was representations to the judge. He began a long monologue in the name of Allah. He told us that this case was unnecessarily complicated, and that he would provide clarity. There are murders happened, the killers have confessed and convicted him of the Sharia accordingly. Political discussions are not appropriate in this case and absurd. Then he added a sentence that etched itself indelibly upon me like an eternal wound: Should I demand the execution of the murderer of my mother, I would have, according to Sharia law, pay half the blood money to the family of the murderer. The act reminded me painfully in mind that is only worth half that in my country, a woman's life as a man and it was the murderer of my mother.
Over the years that I began looking for clarification of the political murders of my parents and other political crimes of the regime, I have met many survivors of the victims learned. Very often it is women. Women who keep the memory of the victims who bear the whole burden of the tragedy and at the same time making the lives.
Once I was looking for a grandmother to granddaughter with her in my parents' house in Tehran. She hugged me warmly and told me quietly that she had her "girls" brought to me to show her that she was not alone in their fate. The girl's parents had been executed in the 80's in his early twenties. The bodies of the young couple was given along with the abandoned child of the grandmother's grandson. She looked at me expectantly so I ascribe her granddaughter courage and confidence and I did. I meet very often these requests, because I admire the brave patience of these women and share their fragile faith in justice. You remind me of my own mother and they represent for me the tedious sincerity that is necessary to resist the lies and calumnies, which have become the tools of the regime and continue to be used.
raised against this ongoing lie machine of the regime in the last summer the Iranian civil society. The whole world was witness to this uprising, witness a new image that Iran was on its own: a hopeful collection to achieve a great and simple goal: the right to determine their own future, the way to the rule of law, democracy and human rights more open.
Civic potential, which is in the Survey showed, filled us with great hope and admiration, prompting us to use our energies for the continuation of this chosen path.
But this promising movement was brutally overpowered by a system of religious domination and military and paramilitary violence.
was again the world has witnessed a brutality that is injured every conceivable measure passed, and Iran again - injured in the form of the bodies of many people who have been beaten, kidnapped and murdered were also treacherous.
injured but also to his young soul who had bet on a change but these hopes were betrayed.
image became a symbol for this violation of a young woman who had to leave before the camera and the eyes of the world lives. A proof of the time but big lies of the regime. A proof for the cold-blooded denial of the use of brute force, a testament also to the thousands of deaths over recent decades, for secret executions, for corpses which were buried in mass graves.
icon images are not only living person depicted in the self you always represent you with all the others, all pictures lots - all invisible.
There are image has become truths that are resistant be. The icon image for Iran was first female.
I was here in Hanover when I saw the scene of the dying Neda. Many Iranians had come from all over the world to Hanover to attend the annual conference of the IWSF. We looked in the hall of the conference to solidify many small monitors and were in our grief and anger.
When I returned home after the conference, I sat again on the screen of my computer and watched spellbound as the events in Iran. Images and videos that made the protests and showed visible impressions and feelings, hope and pain.
And between these thousands of images, there was a recording, which moved me deeply. Again it was a video recording of a woman.
We see in this video, the dark night, pierced by many small lights and hear from roofs scattered somewhere in the city of Tehran, many protest calls.
There is an encouraging and yet also sad mood. From the background you can hear an accusatory, tremulous voice of a young woman.
It represents their questions into the night:
Where is here where we sit innocently in the trap?
Where nobody helps us?
Where we can be heard only by our silence, in the world to our reputation for freedom?
This case is my and your native Iran! "
your words are not only action but also prosecution, our common accusation comes from the mouth of an unknown woman to the language.
An indictment against the trap of dictatorship in which our destinies are caught and where our loved one as a punishment for their honesty and moral courage, victims of political crimes of a regime were wrong.
Sometimes it seems like a de ja `vu: the history of the presence of a society that lived through the past again and tried to break the vicious circle of constant repetition. This repetition
worn and tired and above all - overwhelmed us, so we can find no effective approaches to break out of it and yet we all know that we need to break this vicious circle that we must persevere.
And maybe this is just will to perseverance but also the excessive demands in the search for better and effective approaches that determine our current situation and many educational, non-ending discussions cause.
On my last visit to Tehran two months ago I was there for many such discussions of activists from different backgrounds. Here I will mention three examples that occurred in women's circles.
The Women's Museum is to create a virtual database and at regular intervals through thematic exhibitions to be active. This idea wash, how many such projects that challenge the paranoia and the harassment of the enforcement of the regime, on the edge of feasibility. It's about the old principle known to form small cells in order to expand through continuity and innovation. Mansoureh closest friend and mate, was skeptical and impatient. Their attention was focused on the events on the streets, the capital of the protest, where the unexpected happened and valuable. The excitement they had drawn like a charm in her spell. All other activities against which lost its urgency. It would of course take part in the project of the Women's Museum, but would like to show and tell them. She said that she was overwhelmed at finding a balance between their daily and persistent struggle as a feminist and the stirring speed and power of the people's movement. In order to satisfy their hunger for activism, she had a new task made. She had bought a small camcorder to "citizen videos" to turn. A video film on every occasion, documentaries as a political survey. Three weeks later she turned one of its first "Citizen Videos" in my exhibition opening. We talked in this video about the political art of the rejection of violence and about the need for political education.
Although no specific women's issues were discussed, shows this recording, like many other documents also, the immense autonomy, presence and power of women in the opposition movement in Iran.
There were concerns about whether "our" potentials, which have been mobilized for resistance, would be abused again by the leading figures of the movement for the enforcement of its own objectives, whether you do not give everything again and would be disappointed in the end .
They told of her initial reservations, as "secular" to engage religious slogans, but that they must give up this subject in order to remain active in the movement. I felt again their argument on the claim, found between one's own attitude and that of the "green movement" to a balance and to formulate their own slogans as a strategy to undermine the claim of the regime alone for interpretation of religion.
I look at the overwhelming pain of the mothers who are trying to cope with their loss. I'm talking about our right to insist on truth and justice, without falling into the trap of revenge and violence inside. Although my position for them to understand is, I notice yet, what drives a strong need for revenge them. I know these feelings very well and know how they have become permanent and sabotaging companions of my mind.
This meeting was also important to think about how the peaceful attitude of the Greens movement against the brute force of the bat commands of the regime can withstand. Many of the women have gathered their families in the wave of executions of the 80's lost and know that tear off a large wave of protests, when the violence becomes too great.
But each of them tries to capture the peaceful approach - Perhaps to save the face of brutality, his own humanity. The renunciation of violence and the willingness to dialogue is an achievement of the current protest movement in Iranian society. An accomplishment that was achieved with difficulty and you do not want to relinquish that easy - even if the price goes for the limits of endurance.
The "Mothers for Peace" have given me a green scarf with a printed poem. This poem contains a message that women in Iran, who have the burden of tragedy and still make the life and determine the future and I want my speech with this message end: "On this earth! In this country! I will not plant and nothing but nothing but love "
painful her
8 - march 2010
Hannover - La Rosa
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