My Commentary on Aljazeera's "Listening Post"

Quoted from Listening Post program blog: 

Over the past couple of months, Iran has been in the news, and the news has not been good. There was the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat. Then came the International Atomic Agency's latest report on the country's nuclear programme. And in November, hundreds of Iranians stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Behind the headlines however, there has been another story - Iran's media conflict with the West, especially the UK.

Within Iran, BBC's Persian service is on the authorities' blacklist and the channel's signal into the country is regularly jammed. Journalists can be arrested on mere suspicion of working for the BBC. On the flip side, Iran claims that Britain inflicts unfair fines and regulations on its state-funded international news channel Press TV. The war between the countries and the broadcasters has a long history and is getting progressively more heated. In Our News Divide this week, we take a closer look at the media crossfire between London and Tehran. 

Fighting for Women’s Rights: An Interview with Mahnaz Afkhami

This interview was originally published on Arseh Sevom Civil Society Zine. 

Link: http://www.arsehsevom.net/zine/?p=151

Hooman Askary reports on his discussion with the former minister of women’s affairs in pre-revolution Iran, Mahnaz Afkhami. She links the century long struggle of Iranian women for equal protection under the law to the demonstrations that emerged in 2009 after the flawed presidential elections in Iran. Afkhami states, “The green movement in Iran is the continuation of what had been started nearly a century before and gone through ups and downs, changes and evolutionary and revolutionary transformations.”

For more than three decades, the rare images of women coming out of Iran primarily showed them in the required Islamic hijab, implying absolute compliance and complacency. Disparate accounts seldom raised doubts about the way women saw their role in society. Information and communication technologies altered that image once and for all. The world was able to see different images of Iranian women through the lens of netizens. It appeared that the imagined complacency had never even existed in the first place. In 2009, Iranian women really made the world stop and notice. They were the pioneers of the national opposition and demonstrations against the Islamic Republic which became known as the Green Movement. That movement soon became personified by a young woman who lost her life to a bullet from the Basiji militia. Unlike most of the national heroes of Iranian patriarchal society, a young woman, Neda, became the face of the nation. She was special because she was not special at all. She was the Iranian girl next door; one worlds apart from the image endorsed by the Islamic Republic.

To read the complete text, click on this link. 

Bridging the Gap in EU

 

click on the link below to listen to my radio commentary produced for EURANET

http://connect.euranet.eu/Connect/Debates/Youth-and-the-EU-institutions/A-commentary-Connecting-EU-policy-makers-to-European-citizens

Are You a Civil Society Activist? --My latest piece on Arseh Sevom

Pathology of the Iranian Change: How the Global Community Can Help

This article originally appeared on Iranian Progressive Youth (IPY) website. 

Pathology of the Iranian Change:

How the Global Community Can Help

Written by: Hooman Askary

April 10, 2011

IRANIAN PEOPLE’S post-presidential-election demonstrations of 2009 were by no means a new phenomenon in Iran. They had precedence and they proved to be ongoing. They were a link in the long chain of events that constitute the story of change in the contemporary history of Iran. The main difference between this time and past events was the role of social networking and citizen journalism which had both become available thanks to the internet. This time the world stopped to see, even partly, what happened within the borderlines of the Islamic Republic. Foreign governments and international personalities condemned the brutal attacks of the Basij militia and members of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC) on the defenseless people who were leading some of the most peaceful movements of modern times. They sought no vengeance, they bore no grudge and their aspirations were Earthly and “achievable”; that is, had they been backed by the international community. This article addresses one simple question: what can the international community do to help the Iranian people’s cause?

A picture is worth a thousand words

Had it not been for this awesome photo I wouldn't have started this new post at this time of night!

I found this picture by coincidence and have been fascinated by its magical grace eversince. It depicts an Iranian girl sadly dressed according to the Islamic republic's dress code wearing a scarf and mantaue standing in front of a Persepolis basrelief. The basrelief is of a Mede tribute bearer offering a gazelle fawn to the Persian Shah as tribute sometime around two and a half millenia ago! 

For me the photo conveys a message of a nation's survival amid the upheavals of its history. The girl's way of having worn the strictly enforced hijab is in itself typical of how Iranian women are resisting against the reactionary laws of the clerics who took power in Iran in 1979.

According to Mullahs in power, only a woman's face and hands can be seen in the public by non-related members of the oposite sex. Most recently a mullah in Tehran said during the Friday prayer's sermons on 27.05.2011 that women must cover their heads and necks with long veils. "Shawls are out of the question according to Islam as their hair would be visible." according to the mullah Ahmad Khatami (not Mohammad Khatami the ex-president). 

Me, Myself and Sweden!

I arrived in Sweden on an August day to follow a life-long dream of pursuing my education and turning into a full-time professional journalist/author in a free environment, somewhere I would not be forced to blabber things I don't subscribe to, to work where work is needed, to contribute and leave a lasting footprint in life long after I'm gone.

Eversince my arrival in the land of the Vikings every day has been like a dream, I still cannot believe that I managed to leave my secure zone and break out of the frame I had put around my "self".

It was not easy for me to take such a drastic step in life and leave my job, my home and all I had created bit by bit behind, but damn it, it was well worth it! Now I am actually taking the path I was I always meant to. I am creating my reality the way I always wanted it to be and here is the right place and the right time.

The last connection I had with my motherland was sadly the "Iran Air" flight that took me to this new phase in life which, in itself, was quite of an experience. Why you may ask? Well, let me go back and lecture a bit on Iranian history: first, as some of you might know, Iran Air (founded in 1946) was established, along many other good things we have today, during the Shah's era (i.e. prior to the 1979 revolution). At the time Iran enjoyed peaceful and friendly relations with the West and, in particular the US, which entitled the country to be the most significant customer of the Western technologies. You have to remember that during the same time the Soviets were still enjoying their rule over the vast awkward jigsaw puzzle of USSR and the Royal Iran was perceived by many in the West as a trustworthy ally against the communist threat. So, we purchased almost everything from the West, from shares of big Western companies, to the most modern military technologies, warfare and nuclear plants (in case you didn't know the current nuclear plant Iran is so desperately trying to launch was started decades ago) but after the revolution things were never the same. Not anymore.

The small group of people who took over Iran decided to play and the rest of the world was game! Iran was left on the one side and all others on the other, all the prestige and reputation created for my country was gone over night. The millenia-old-great-Persian-civilization was now synonymous with hostage taking, war, revolution, angry mobs and extremism. So the world decided to teach us a collective lesson in from of economic sanctions. In doing so what the global policy makers largely ignored was the fact that the vast majority of the Iranian nation had not even been born in 1979 let alone having a role in what brought the Islamic ochlocracy to power. Regretfully, these very sanctions which are supposed to be economic and political levers aimed to put pressure on the Iranian government don't actually impact Mr. Ahmadinejad, our cartoonish president, or his folks! They impact others: us, the youth, the women, the students - the majority!

These sanctions forbid the Iranian government from purchasing airplanes with more than %10 American parts, so when buying an Iran Air ticket one should bear in mind that he/she is going to have a flight with an aircraft which is 30 or 40+ years old at best and is, quite probably, an old Russian Topolov! I still remember that these Topolov airplanes were called flying coffins in Iran for their notorious history in sending my compatriots to the morgue. 

So that was how my small miscalculation in choosing Iran Air became my last memory of Iran. The flight was originally supposed to take five hours and something which took much longer and more enervating. The plane even stopped at one border point to refuel as much as it could since getting fuel was now banned for Iranian aircrafts in most international airports, including Sweden's Arlanda. All the long hours plus the million questions lingering in my mind of what it was going to be next, made me lose not only my nerves but also my senses; and the whole time during the flight I was blaming myself for having procrastinated becoming a father and leaving some descendants of mine! :)

Eventually it turned out that it was not my time to die yet; thus, my renaissance began on that late Summer day.