The Resistance of Iranian Women: We Are All a ‘Neda’ Now

From Family Security Matters:

March 9, 2010

Exclusive: The Resistance of Iranian Women: We Are All a ‘Neda’ Now

Sara Ahmadi

When it comes to Iran, it is important for one to understand many things, especially considering the events of the last few months. I always think that nobody will know what our people – especially women – have gone through here in Tehran, the heart of Iran.

The bitterest reality is the presence of the mullahs who have imposed their rules on us. I was lucky to see a few years less of the misery these mullahs have brought for us because I was born a few years after the beginning of their rule!

Iran has attracted the attention of the world after the righteous uprising of its people for freedom and democracy; the decisive right of the people.

What is most outstanding in this uprising is the presence of the women of my homeland – the uprising that introduced the innocence of Iranians, especially Iranian women, to the world by the name of Neda (Neda Aghasultan) and the last scenes of her life in this world.

Though my friends and I had gone to her grave for several times and cried over it, we still feel national pride for introducing such a symbol to the world because all of us, the Iranian women, are all a “Neda.”

You know that you are living under the rule of the mullahs if you [cannot] walk in the streets of Tehran the way you wish to walk. When you step outside of your home, you are forced to be something else. The eyes of these criminals watch you everywhere, watch all your moves, controlling everything from the way you dress to a sudden smile that forms on your lips. Your presence is like a dagger landing in their dirty minds; they cannot bear the free presence of even one woman on the street.

Before the years when I attended university, they only controlled the color of my dress, an extra band of my hair coming out of the compulsory veil and the length of my dress. Yet now they control everything – most of all, they wish to control my thoughts!...

There is much more, in graphic detail, from this courageous Iranian woman here. This woman speaks for all women of Iran as she describes the brutal repression they all live under, every single day. READ IT ALL!

Be sure to read the comments that follow, too. One in particular bears repeating here:

This story must be told friend to friend so that everyone in the world and all those millions who saw Neda's last moments of life should hear this. Neda did not die. She is alive in every human being who cares about other fellow human beings.
This is a moving story of resolve, determination, courage and most of all readiness to pay the price of freedom. With such women the brutal regime has no future and its place is, no doubt, in dustbin of history. The question remains what the western governments are willing to do to reduce the bloodshed...[...]

Hail to brave women of Iran.

Indeed. Go read every word.

Surely I am not the only reader of this gut-wrenching piece who sees the irony here? While the pampered women of the west celebrate International Women's Day, women like Sara here, and Neda; the women of Afghanistan; they ask if we will forget them and their plight. Young girls under the boots of barbaric regimes of the world who suffer horrific rituals; women regularly subjected to rape as a weapon of war; denied a decent education, where are the cries of outrage from the rest of the world?

I hear no raising of voices from the educated, 'enlightened' women of the west? Do they speak up for their sisters who can only dream of the luxury of freedom that we in the west take so much for granted?

The silence from the west in defence of - in solidarity with - these women is deafening.The Neda's of our world deserve so much better, and we say nothing, we do nothing. Nothing.

"And when they came for me, there was no-one left to speak."