Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)

 

Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)

Atefeh Rajavi Sahaaleh was a girl living in a small town, Neka, in Northern Iran. Her mother died when she was a small child and her father was an addict and neglected her. She was raised mostly by her grandparents. She was an isolated, lonely child and extremely vulnerable. At the age of twelve she was raped and prostituted by a taxi driver who was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Guard. She  - not her pimp/rapists - was imprisoned, numerous times and, when she threatened to go public, she was sentenced to death and hanged, on August 15th, aged sixteen, for 'crimes against chastity.' 

Even in Iran, it is illegal to execute a child so her documents were falsified. She is not the only one and Iran is not the only country that does this. The response in Iran was muted at first because the state owned and controlled media covered it up. Word go out though and women got increasingly angry. 

The criminalisation of underage girls and corresponding impunity of their abusers well be horribly familiar to sex trade survivors the world over but, in Iran, where the bodies of women and girls are used to symbolise the male (dis)/'honour' of the nation state, it takes on another dimension: in effect the state is the pimp. 

This pot was made with a group of Iranian friends, mostly refugees, both men and women, and was smashed in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, August 15th, 2011. I rebuilt it, leaving some pieces out so you can see the image of Atefeh inside. It remains the only image there is of her - it's from her ID card. 

The edges of the gaps are picked out in gold to honour her short life and her brave attempt to fight the injustices she faced, alone and hugely disadvantaged. 

Nasrine Sotoudeh, an extraordinarily courageous, Iranian human rights lawyer, made the following observation on Atefeh's case and countless others like hers: 

"The courts somehow deal much more rigorously with the women than with the men. The weakest point in our downfall is that this is happening right in front of our eyes but, sadly, we pretend that we just don't see it." 

Sotoudeh has herself been imprisoned and beaten on numerous occasions for standing up for girls like Atefeh and trying to represent and defend them in court. 

Today we remember Atefeh, as the Taliban secure their hold on Kabul and the whole of Afghanistan, and women's sex-based, human rights take another turn for the worse. These are not good times for women. 

Dinner With Svetlana, 2009

Dinner With Svetlana, 2009  Therein lies a tale which you can read about here:

Svetlana was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Esfahan, for the show set for April 2009 - cancelled due to uprising.

Comprising 7 large plates, (40cms wide appox) It tells a story so the set needs to be kept together.
thelab@claudiaclare.co.uk if you'd like to view this work

The Look and Migration Man, (2009)

 

Top: The Look 2009, from the show 'How to Eat a Pomegranate' 2010 and originally destined for the Museum of the Contemporary Art, Esfahan, April 2009. The show was cancelled because of the uprising, or rather because of 'sensitivities' according to the Iran Foreign Ministry.

The Look, 2009 (large plate 43cms width approx)

Thinking About Migration, 2009. From the same show.
(very large plate 55cms approx)

Contact: thelab@claudiaclare.co.uk

How to Make a Wedding Photo, Winter, 2009

From 2009, How to Make A Wedding Photo  SOLD

How to Make A Wedding Photo, Winter 2009, (four views, including one at the end showing scale) - Featuring me with a group of friends in Iran. We're looking at the wedding photos for one of the women on the pot. They're showing me how they photoshopped the event into an Austrian fairytale wedding complete with castle, white horse and snowy woodland. (They live in the central Iranian desert.)

In Your Name: The Inconvenient Politics Of Palestinian Handicrafts

On the face of it, the ‘Justice for Palestine’ flag laid out on a stall selling plants and handicrafts seemed out of place at the fourth annual Tottenham Flower and Produce Show, an urban ‘village’ show with big white tents, vegetable competitions for allotment holders, a home crafts section, a dog show and various ‘side shows.’ The plants were local but the handicrafts on this stall were made by Palestinian women from a town called Azaria, divided in two by the accursed Israeli wall. Embroidered, stitched and crocheted objects jostled for position with olive oil, fragrant seeds and herbs and hand made soap. They were being sold by Haringey Justice for Palestinians, (HJP), a small local charity which does income generating projects with the people of Azaria which is now twinned with Haringey. The purpose of the stall was both to raise consciousness and therefore more support in the area and also to raise money - desperately needed income for families living ‘behind the wall,’ cut off from their work and even from family members, under siege in effect, by the Israeli occupation.

So, what was it about this stall that was still producing a sense of doubt and discomfort chewing at the edges of the otherwise pleasant experience of looking at the pretty, embroidered objects set out before me? 

In the current political context, groups supporting the Palestinians, including this one, must deal with an additional, increasingly difficult and demanding problem. Put very simply, much of the Palestinian struggle is ‘supported’ by Lebanese Hezbollah, and by Hamas, both of whom are in hock to the current Iranian ruling regime. Like it or not, all of these  campaigns supporting the Palestinians, including eminently sensible, practical ones like HJP, have the territorial scent markings of Iran sprayed all over them. They are inextricably linked. The violent oppression of dissidents in Iran, the mass rapes of Iranian women and men in prisons, the torture, the executions and the shootings and beatings on the streets, are all done, in the name of the Islam and, in particular, in the name of the Qods and of Palestine. The Palestinian women stitching those small bags and crocheting the flowers didn’t ask for Iran's support and certainly not for their slaughter, but they’ve got it and now their supporters must deal with it.

The problem for the Palestinians is twofold. The first and, for them, the most urgent, is that the Iranian regime needs dead Palestinians, as many as possible, especially women and children, to prop up its ailing government. The only support it has left in Iran is the hard core of Iranian Hezbollah who will continue to support them as long as Palestinians are dying at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Hence the necessity to ensure that they do go on dying. Bluntly, a dead Palestinian is worth far more to the Iranian regime than a living one. A prosperous, cheerful, independent Palestinian is no help at all and a prosperous, independent Palestine would spell the end of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

Tehran 2009: Police attacking protesters after the 2009 election

The second problem is that much of the support structure, in Britain and elsewhere in the West, is cheerfully burying its collective head in the sand and ignoring what Iran is actually doing in Palestine and, even more, what the same regime is doing in Iran itself – namely murdering Iranians at a rate and with a degree of impunity which would make any Israeli government green with envy.

HJP is affiliated to Palestine Solidarity Campaign, both of which have laudable aims. While both organisations carefully state their affiliations, their links, their patrons and their sources of support and what they aim for and what they do not support, (the latter includes ‘all forms of racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia’), there is a howling silence on Iran.

Iranian Street Protester: Tehran 2009

They must now declare their independence and condemn, unequivocally, the atrocities meted out to Iranian dissidents by the ruling regime. This must be clearly stated on their websites and, wherever possible, on their publicity material. They can no longer ignore what is happening in Iran. No longer can they state that it may not really be so, that it is just an invention of the Western press, (or ‘Zionist’ as some prefer), they cannot afford to risk colluding with a hard-core proto-fascist regime which celebrates the deaths of Palestinians as much as it celebrates the rape and death of its own dissidents.

Tehran 2009: Police attacking protesters

It is time for all of these groups to adopt another ‘not in my name’ badge, a second one. This one might have an electric baton, an image of the Iranian basiji beating the life out of one of the women protesters or a crane with a dead Iranian protester hanging by the neck. They need to do this as a matter of urgency, because it is being done in their name.

The thought and care put into projects such as those of HJP is fatally undermined by this cavernous silence. Maintaining silence, in effect sacrificing one set of lives, (Iranian lives) in order protect Palestinian lives is manifestly absurd. And who wants to buy a lovingly embroidered oyster card-holder drenched in the blood of Iranian street protesters?

Reflections and Spectulations: The last 3 months and the next 3 days in Iran

These days I spend far too much time on facebook. I’ve come to rely on the constant flow of news from Iran, accompanied by comment and spontaneous calls for action in response to the most recent outrage. Last week the Iranian Green Movement and its supporters and friends were in action on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, (x2) and Sunday. Thursday saw some action at the Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, which hosted a dinner party for Iranian government officials, entitled, according to my source, ‘Standing Up To World Arrogance.’ Not a trace of irony was detected unless you count the presence of Yvonne Ridley, who always seems to be some kind of site-specific ironic self-parody. Friday was the 40th day after the deaths of the 8 people shot in the Ashura protests on December 28th. Saturday is the day people usually gather for an hour or so in Trafalgar Square in solidarity with the mothers of the murdered protesters. There were also people outside the Chinese Embassy protesting the continued support that the Chinese government gives to the regime. Sunday was a quiet gathering in front of the embassy, something which is now happening weekly again.

Countdown

One of my facebook contributors has been counting down to Thursday 11the February, with mounting excitement, as though expecting a sudden bang which will indicate, unmistakably, the sound the departing regime leaders and their stooges. Everyone expects that the end is nigh, but I’m still not clear what comes next. ‘Go on, what’s your best guess?’ asks an English friend but I’m useless in response. I mutter darkly with another Iranian friend at the Sunday demo – he like me has fears, ‘It’s just so dangerous at the moment.’ I do fear that Thursday 11th will result a blood bath. I do fear Tiananmen Square all over again. I don’t want any more ‘martyrs’ and I don’t want the gathering of mothers in mourning that takes place in Tehran and other Iranian cities weekly to grow any bigger. I don’t want any more mass graves, Iran has enough of them already, many dating from the early 1980s. 

Anyone doubting the organisational capacity of the Green Movement, should probably think again. Here is the film they have sent out to the Iranian armed forces. It’s bilingual. So they want you to know they’ve done it.

A Message from the Green Movement to the Armed Forces of Iran: 

The embedded video caught a nasty virus. Will upload again when the coast's clear. Apologies for irritating ommission. Claudia

Riding Authority
The tone and register of both the organisation of the protests and the reports on them by the Green Movement has changed markedly over the moths, which I’m going to look at in the next post and show various video footage I’ve been collecting. I think it’s getting more positive by degrees now. Time was when it seemed to be about working out how best to protest. As the opposition built, partly in response to the sheer brutality of the crackdown, the show trials, the reports of deaths, torture and, especially of the first hand accounts of rape, the people began to ‘ride’ authority, ‘piggy-backing’ on government approved demonstrations such as ‘Qods Day,’ ‘13 Aban,’ (the anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy by Iranian students in 1979; ‘Students Day,’ (anniversary of the shooting of 6 students on Tehran University campus by the Shah’s police force); and culminating in Ashura Day, 28th December 2009, when the gloves come off the current regime and they shot another 8 protesters including the nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi. This was followed by the execution of two political prisoners, one arrested before the elections for campaigning for Mousavi and one arrested during the post-election protests  - the latter was 19 years old. A further 9 have now been condemned. There is a great deal more to say about these but the government has now issued 3 entirely conflicting statements about the two who were executed. Initially, it announced, they were involved in the Ashura demonstrations, but both were in prison at the time, then it changed to a ‘monarchist group,’ until it was pointed out that no such group existed either in Iran or anywhere else, now they are part of the Mujahideen e Khalk, (who exist only outside Iran). We’ve had the ‘foreign powers’ story trotted out a couple of times as well. No doubt they’ll be Israeli agents next.

Constructing History In Advance

For the first time since the disputed elections of the 12the June 2009, the opposition leaders are actively encouraging the protesters to go out and confront the regime. The regime has demonstrated its willingness to shoot to kill whenever it pleases and shows no compunction. It has established that it is capable of conducting a ‘reign of terror,’ and, with the show-trials, the executions and now the announcement of the next 9 due to be executed, we could say that it has already begun. The Green Movement has also gathered considerable force and has the support of the much of the Iranian diaspora, but is not armed, unless the armed forces respond to that video. As far as I can tell, that’s pretty much it. I have no ‘best guess,’ and I’m not about to hazard one now. For now, I will just leave you with some of the calls to action and some of the imagery emerging in the last few days and weeks.

Movie trailer style, schmultzy accents:

Stirring stuff and Human Rights :

The last word in optimism:

The End:

Many Iranian Diplomats Seek Political Asylum

Many Iranian Diplomats Seek Political Asylum
Probably the shortest post I've ever written, but do click on the link and read the article - it's short, succinct and revealing. I was prompted to follow it up myself after news emerged that the Iranian diplomatic representative in Norway resigned his post and petitioned for asylum there.
The Persian 2 English site is an excellent way of getting additional information about the situation in Iran in English.

Some Notes From A Prolonged Absence - Getting Ready To Continue

This has been a pronged absence. I’ve been showing Shattered and nursing the most severe, vicious and unforgiving episode of sciatica I’ve ever had. It is this that has prevented me from writing. I couldn’t sit down long enough to write anything, still less concentrate on anything I might want to write.

So – how do I now squeeze everything into one small post in preparation for continuing? Well, firstly by providing two excellent links.

The first, Potkin Azarmehr’s blog, For a Democratic Secular Iran. For Peace and Prosperity in the Middle East has to be the best coverage in English of events in Iran at the moment, - so for readers interested in catching up on that check it out.

The Second is Sliponline; produced by
Eleanor Snare and Alexander Archer-Todde who are writing lucidly, comprehensively and robustly about ceramics and, in particular, have some excellent coverage of the first British Ceramics Biennale, (BCB), in Stoke on Trent.

I was going to write a post about Grayson Perry’s show at Victoria Miro, ‘The Walthamstow Tapestry,’ but pain prevented that and so too did the show itself. It just wasn’t up to his usual standard. It really lacked energy. Now this may just be a projection of mine. It was a huge effort to get there, and I’d hoped for something that’d make be glad to be alive, which his work usually does, but he seemed bored. Even the tapestry was predictable. A great idea, but the idea was better than the result, which looked like he was just going through the motions. True it’s not handmade so cant rely on the weird irregularities that occur when things are so produced, but that wasn’t the main problem – it was just too simple, nothing to surprise I suppose. Maybe this is the cost of fame – we get to know someone’s work and their way of working almost too well, so they couldn’t surprise even if they wanted to. I suspect another reason though. I think the pots were quite old and rejected in the past, just brought in for the show. I suspect that the tapestry is just a way of living up to the demands of the Perry Market. I have a hunch that the real Perry work occurred elsewhere, around the same time, at a fashion show he did at - I think it was St. Martin’s college, part of University of the Arts, London. I’d love to know what that was like because I think that’s where his spirit went. Hope so anyway. Otherwise I really will get depressed.

November 4th / 13th Aban

‘Huh,’ snorts Masoud, ‘I’m not staying here for a load of Rafsanjani’s goats,’ and stomps off into the gloom of the early November night.
The Green Movement of London, ‘Sabz e Landan,’ formed with such verve and tenacity in response to the electoral fraud in Summer 2009, has, shall we say, hit a deciduous patch. Bits of it a tumbling off, bits being peeled back, branches we didn’t even know existed laid bare, exposed to the merciless winds of autumn, festering wounds oozing all over the place and so it goes on.

All those differences I talked about – with so much optimism- back in August, well, they’ve all risen to the surface and bubbled and spat and spouted and burst into chaotic, recriminatory rankling argument. Superficially, it’s about reformists vs. revolutionaries, but, the reformists are fighting each other as much as or more than the revolutionaries. My feeling is that this is standard issue, grass-roots-movement, jostling for power, position, visibility, clout and attention. There’s that unmistakable autumnal sound of the clunking of antlers - male antlers in this case.

I’m advised: ‘we are learning about democracy;’ ‘we have grown up in a dictatorship;’ ‘Iran has never had a democracy,’ etc. Problem is, I’ve witnessed exactly the same processes in UK grass-roots movements for as long as I can remember, and we’ve had democracy or near enough, for several centuries. Nah – these are just competitive displays of posturing, parading and intermittent punch-ups – and this is just round one. There’ll be several more bouts yet.

Meanwhile, everyone put on a brave face and behaved themselves for an evening and gathered outside the embassy on November 4th, (13th Aban – Iranian month), and got stuck into their favourite slogans and lit candles and sang and chanted and shouted some more slogans, and disapproved of each other, but it worked. For a moment I caught a glimpse of what an Iranian democracy might look like. Mottled and no mistake. The Communists were there – looking like something straight out of the British Museum, - really classy though, and they’re always so amiable and good-natured and thoroughly well behaved. The Sabz – Mousavi were out in force, which was weird because they are the ones that turn up least often. The Sabz – general-purpose-liberal-democracy-go-with-the-flow, we-don’t-really-want-an-Islamic-Republic-but-we-don’t-want-to-upset-anyone – these are the majority who come to almost all the demonstrations and who I know well, they were all there but a bit drowned out by the more pious ‘allahu akabar’ lot. And then a bunch of lefty ex-revolutionaries brought up the rear –generally in good spirits- and they too are demo regulars.

Things were very different in Iran however. The official parading of 13th Aban commemorates the storming of the American Embassy by Iranian students, so, true to recently established form, (see Qods day demonstrations, 19th September), the Iranian green protestors took to the streets in their tens of thousands in numerous cities across Iran, and called for the death of the dictator and the freeing of the political prisoners. They were beaten ferociously by Basiji for their pains but even so, the subverting of an officially sanctioned, government parade provides them with a bit more cover than they had during the days after the electoral coup d’etat. There are many more days such as these to come. I’ll try to keep posting.

My thanks as always to Iman Nabavi who takes the pictures and makes them available to all. Thanks to all who turned out to demonstrate and, above all, thanks and immense respect to the brave women and men, young and old, able-bodied and disabled who fill the streets of their cities in Iran and continue the fight for democracy against colossal and brutal odds.

East & West: Cross-Cultural Encounters - The Conference

View of ST. Andrew's looking out over the harbour

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Art History. When I was still at school and also when I went to Art School and the early 1980s, Art History was about the lives of painters and about ‘brush strokes.’ ‘The Renaissance,’ meaning the one that took place in Western Europe, was deemed to be centred in Italy, specifically Florence; this Renaissance was the back-bone of the subject. All other parts of the History of Art were somehow attached to or related to this time, place and collection of work. I still love Florence and I love what I learned of that time, but I’m very happy indeed that History of Art has become something else entirely, as East &West: Cross-Cultural Encounters eloquently demonstrated.

Orientalist Painting In Poland
The papers in this conference took me into corners of the history of the art that I didn’t know existed. I had no idea, for example, that Polish artists in the 19th Century were producing Orientalism in paintings every bit as rhetorical and absurd as anywhere in France or Britain. However, the underlying narrative, according to Ana Chruscinska, was predicated on Poland’s political situation, particularly its loss of independence, which prompted artists at that time to deploy the Orientalist imagery as a metaphor to describe Poland’s own subjugation.



Ana Chruscinska: Myths about the inhabitants of the Arab World as depticted in 19th Century Polish Oriental paintings

Hungarian Ottoman Woodcuts And Mock Battles
Also examining a nuanced relationship to imperialism and its imagery, AnnMarie Perl discussed the relationship between Hungarian and Ottoman artists during the Ottoman period when Hungary formed part of that vast empire. Far from being divided along cultural and ethnic lines, she argued that there was a well developed cross-cultural transfer which substantially unsettled the idea of an ‘authentic’ Ottoman aesthetic and genre. All this was discussed through book illustrations – wood cuts - and mock battles – yes Mock Battles –the Reenactment Society is not, after all, one of the more outré and eccentric inventions of Middle England, but was a major source of entertainment in the Ottoman Empire and documented in woodcut illustrations. Marvellous!

This, I discovered, was what I loved about Art History. It’s the weird little details which seep through and which tell you so much about the period. I was envisaging Hungarian and Turkish or Armenian or Greek artists dining together in each others houses and swapping tabards and swords before gadding off the local tea house to get uproariously drunk and party it up a storm in the street staging a mock battles till dawn when they’d be rounded up by the district gendarme for being drunk and disorderly and sent home to sober up.



Dr. Seung Jung Kim: The Beginnings of the East-West Dialogue: An Examination of Dionysiac Representations in Gahdhara and Kushan-Mathuran Art

Original Copies
Authenticity, as you might expect, was a dominant theme of the conference and it waltzed into view with Princess Akiko’s paper on the gentle art of reproduction. Her focus was on the repros of Japanese artefacts in the British Museum. Konstanze Knittler talked about ‘Famille Noire’ - a very weird-looking kind of porcelain that I’d never heard of – with a very intriguing story attached. It seems that hundreds of wealthy collectors have collected thousands of pieces of black porcelain believing them to belong to a much appreciated part of Chinese porcelain history – the Kanxi period, (1622-1722), and that this ‘famille’ turns out to be the bastard progeny of another period entirely – late 19th Century – Perish the thought!! This, along with Princess Akiko’s paper, neatly encapsulates much of what the conference discussed, namely, who’s to say what’s authentic and what if the reproduction is really more interesting than the ‘original’ ?



Dr. Claudia Clare: The Artist and the Coup D'Etat: A User's Guide to Exhibiting Ceramics in Politically Unstable Situations

Seen Through The Lens
The lens – the fiendish camera – popped up every so often. It began the conference and ended it – in a way – and it appeared in the middle cleverly disguised as paintings by Jackson Pollock. This was about a group of Japanese artists - the Gutai group, based in Osaka in the 1950s. They are widely thought to be influenced - almost formed really – by Jackson Pollock and that their work sprang out of and responded to his as an homage. However Natalie Roncone’s paper showed that what they were responding to was not Pollock’s painting or his writing but to a collection of photographs by Hans Namuth of Pollock ‘in action,’ published in a 1951 issue of ‘Art News.’ In other words their ‘homage’ was predicated on someone else’s interpretation and mediation of Pollock’s work.



Dr. Luke Gartlan: Portraying China's 'Character': Baron von Stillfried's Portfolio of Shanghai Photographs

Confusing The Image
This first appearance of the camera was in the Keynote speech by Dr. Luke Gartlan, about a collection of 19th Century photographs of ‘life’ in China which failed to attract buyers and was quickly abandoned. Gartlan argued that the main reason for this was that this album of, let us say, ‘images of China’ did not meet or in any way match the image of that country that the Western consumer expected. He compared it to similar albums made by the same photographer, Baron von Stills, of Japan which sold in their thousands. They look remarkably similar. And that’s the rub. They weren’t supposed to. China was considered an, ‘unpaved, dirty, stinking,’ place, quite different from the elegant, stylish exotic Japan. The Western Consumer duly turned up its western nose and refused the offering.



Shirley Bahar: A War Within: The Westernized Performance of Israeli Artists

Had We But World Enough And Time…
This is such a tiny bite of what was really a feast of careful, passionate research and lovingly honed knowledge. There were papers on consumers of Manga, on queer masculinity and nationalism, (possibly), in Japanese / (American?) photography, on masculine self reflexivity in Israeli film, on 18th Century Chinese court paintings, on Graeco-Roman representations in Kushan Buddhist art, on contemporary Chinese calligraphy, on Orientalist bookcovers in contemporary Western publishing, and on a kiln maker and designer of production methods in the Leach pottery, by name of Matsubayashi Tsurunosuke, who’s immense contribution to that pottery and, by implication, to British studio pottery, has been largely written out of the history. All of this was served up with delicious food, sunshine and a fabulous beach in one of the most beautiful towns I’ve seen in years. My thanks to the organisers, to my fellow participants, and to Ana Chruscinska and, (again), the conference organisers, who made the final lens-based contributions by providing all of the photographs on this post.



Dr. Shinya Maezaki: A Legacy of Matsubayashi Tsurunosuke in St. Ives: Introduction of the Art of Japanese Ceramic Making to British Studio Pottery

East & West: Cross-Cultural Encounters, Introduction

School of Art History, St. Andrews University, 11th and 12th September, 2009.

The Railway Station In A Field
On the East cost of Scotland, sort of southernish by Scottish standards, there’s platform in the middle of a field with a metal bridge slung a bit carelessly over the top of it. That’s how you get from the train, which just about remembers to stop for a minute or two by the platform, to the road. Otherwise you’d just tumble straight into the field. This windswept, lonesome, soulful looking place, something between Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, is Leuchars. It’s where you get off to go to St. Andrews.

St. Andrews - The Town
St. Andrews, just five miles or so down the road couldn’t be more different. Home to one of the oldest universities in the world, - founded in 1413 – it is busy, thriving, wealthy beyond its modest size, and astounding beautiful. The town is the university and the university is the town. Shops, restaurants and hotels rely on the busy-ness of academia and on the achingly beautiful coastal landscape for their incomes - its other industry is tourism, especially tourism related to golf.

Chance Encounter
So, imagine my surprise, when stepping carefully off the train in Leuchars, and looking around at my fellow travellers, I spot a woman who, I decide, must also be coming to the conference, and accordingly invite her to share a taxi. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Forough’ she says. ‘Crikey,’ I’m thinking, ‘what are the chances of that?’ I spend all summer in London in the company of Iranians, I come to a very very small town in the east coast of Scotland, whose railway station is 10 miles away in the middle of a field, and the first person I meet is Iranian.

Dont Forget To Switch Off The Lights
Later that same day, I venture into town to the beating heart of the university, and find the New Arts Building where I plan to register for the conference. Almost every name on the conference list is Iranian. ‘What the hell’s going on? Is there anyone left in Iran?’ Then I read the title to the conference programme, ‘Historiography and Iran in Comparative Perspective.’ Ok, so I’m about to gate crash someone else’s conference. But seriously, is there anyone left in Iran? – they all seem to be in Scotland.



Filed Under History
But you see, it’s not so surprising. St. Andrews and its quaint medieval Scottish streets is also home to the Institute for Iranian Studies. It’s cunningly hidden in the History department, not, as I thought, in The School of International Relations – although there you will find the intriguing Centre for Syrian Studies. I have to say, a bit of Syria and a bit of Iran, a chunk of unusually interesting Art History mixed up with bits of Armenia, Georgia, The Caucasus – all based in Scotland, near Edinburgh, but in St. Andrews, sounds like my idea of Heaven. Surely I could squeeze myself in somewhere…

The Street Protests Continue

September the 18th, Qods Day, September 28th, Back to Uni and Any Other Day, the protests continue. Below are three film clips. Two are from Qods Day, the first shows two separate marches in two main roads in Tehran, on the left is the green movement rally, on the right is the government rally, the latter is sparsely attended compared to the the former. The second is a short clip of a qods day march in slow motion which is easier to look at than some of the more frenetic phone-filmed clips in the post below.





The third film shows an argument in the Tehran Tube. The young women in the foreground and some of the others on the tube are shouting slogans that compare the behaviour of the Basij, the pro -government militia group who are always dressed black and ride motorbikes, to that of Israeli soldiers in Palestine. The man shouting 'death to Israel / marg ba Israel' is becoming increasingly isolated. He appears to be only one calling this government approved slogan by the end of the clip.

Qods Day, September 18th 2009, UN meeting New York, September 24th 2009 and Back to Uni, 27th September 2009.

It seems important to provide some update on the Qods day protests in Iran and, if I can find pictures, on the protests here and especially in the US on the 24th September, when Ahmadinejaad addressed the United Nations in New York.

The press coverage here in the UK of events across Iran on Qods day was truly deplorable. Not because it was misrepresented as such, but because it was studiously ignored – another kind of misrepresentation.

Facetious remarks aside – what the hell is Qods Day?
Qods day is also called, ‘Jerusalem Day.’ Originally, it was intended as a day of support for Palestinians and for autonomy, liberation and self-determination for the people of that profoundly oppressed, beleaguered and abused nation. Long ago, however, that was forgotten. In Iran, since the dawn of the Islamic Republic, it has been used for the self-aggrandisement of the ruling theocratic regime which relies on the brutalisation of Palestine by Israel to justify its own existence.

Where Were The Press?
The wholesale debunking of Qods day by the people of Iran, from all classes, all age groups and all over the country is a matter of immense, incalculable significance. Why the BBC ignored it and, as far as I’m aware, all other British news channels and organisations, both print and broadcast too, is beyond comprehension. It is true we have no journalists there. It is also true that once ‘the moment’ has passed, news deadlines and the ‘sexiness’ of a story is deemed to have evaporated. Jim Muir in Lebanon said he hadn’t heard anything much, ‘certainly nothing like the mass demonstrations we saw earlier in the Summer.’ Ok, so he’s an Arabic speaker not a Farsi speaker and I’m not persuaded that he was ever really very interested in Iran even when he was there. John Lyne, the current correspondent, always sounded bored rigid and baffled by every aspect of Iran, until it all got a bit exciting which awakened his interest but, because he appears to have so little background knowledge and so little real interest, it is hard to sustain. It seems to me that the absence of any real analysis of this event, - which was absolutely momentous – was, for most part, owing to incompetence – an unedifying mix of ignorance, clumsiness and lack of interest.

What Happened?
Qods day in Tehran, Shiraaz and Esfahan saw the people of Iran turn out in their thousands, except in Tehran, where they numbered somewhere around two million – yes you did read that right – 2 million. As a strategic move, it was a stroke of genius. The opposition movement, the ‘green’ movement, used the Qods day marches as a cover for demonstrations all over Iran. Qods day in a national holiday and it is expected that all good Muslims, aka all good Iranians will march. For years it has been ignored by many with numbers dwindling. Not so this year. The people en masse took the streets and chanted ‘Death to the dictator,’ ‘Not Gaza, not Lebanon, for Iran I sacrifice my life,’ and much more.
Below is a selection of videos filmed in Tehran and Shiraaz, (Shiraazi vids coming when I've found them again,) just to give you an idea of what the demonstrations looked like. There are over 60 videos uploaded to You Tube that you can look at and doubtless many more will come. The first is filmed in Haft e Tir Underground station in Tehran, so great booming sounds!! The second is in Tehran from Haft e Tir to Valiasr - a distance of about 8 kms, then there's a view of the demo from the northern half of Valiasr - the whole road is about 20km long north to south, - so you're beginning to get an idea of size of this demonstration and the scale of the upheaval - hardly 'a couple of thousand at most.'










September 23rd, 2009 UN Building New York
The meeting of the United Nations in New York was well covered by press all over the world, not least the mass exodus of delegates from almost everywhere while Ahmadinejaad strutted his stuff. Magnificent demonstrations in New York and rather more modest ones here were well attended and covered by BBC Persian Service, various US channels, a Dutch channel but, of course, the UK new news outlets were conspicuous by their absence!

Below is a 14 minute video of the NY demos outside the UN building. It's well worth taking the time to see it in full. The voices are saying: ‘Ahmadinejaad is not my president / Ahmadinejaad raais jomhuri man nist’ and ‘marg ba dictator’ or ‘death to the dictator.' Note, about 9 minutes in, from 9-10mins 30sec approx, images of the murdered protestors, Sohraab, Taraaneh, and Nedaa, followed by very interesting commentary on Qods day demonstrations. (BBC Shame on you Shame on you!) The demonstrators in NY are wearing white and images and sound from inside Iran are being projected on to the assembled crowd.



Back To Uni, Back To Iran
Meanwhile, it’s the start of the new academic year in Iran’s universities. Still chanting, ‘marg ba dictator,’ and 'doulaat e coup d'etat estefa' estefa' / government of the coup d'etat, resign resign,' the students are on the march again – footage here.





Today, 28th September, I’m told that the authorities have already closed Tehran University – ‘swine flu’ is the reason given!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mini Post: About Qods Day - More Protests Planned In Iran

The images above are exceptionally well known and justifiably so since they depict so graphically and unequivocally the violence of the plain clothed police and the basij against the protesters.
This is a link to Global Voices Online saying more about planned protests in Iran on Qods Day, the 18th September.

The demonstration planned for 23rd September, to protest the visit of Not-President A'jad to the United Nations in New York, will be in front of the Iranian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London, 6-9pm
If you're in London, or if you're in New York, or nearby, or feel motivated to travel, United4Iran are highly organised. If you go to the website and follow the links they've got all sorts of stuff about transport from all over the USA, where to stay and so on - there's even a facebook site with an rsvp bit you can fill in.
If we ever get as organised as that - I'll let you know... till then, I'll just keep posting.
Payande Iran!

'Key to the Door... Now you can vote,' Protests Continued: Friday 18th and Wednesday 23rd September, 6-9pm Opposite The Iranian Embassy, London

The images above are all from the 5th September which was a procession in Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge in support of the mothers of the murdered, the tortured, the raped, the detained and the disappeared.

Coming Soon...
The next few days are your last opportunities to gather outside the Islamic Centre in Maida Vale - see right hand column for details. The days are: Thursday 17th and Sunday 20th September. If you've not been there yet, go this week and relish the splendour of the converted bingo hall that is the only shi'e mosque in London - oh yes! From gaming to god in one easy step. Just attach a few pretty tiles over the 'two fat ladies' and job's a good'un: Bingo Palace to Palace of Piety.

Not only can you marvel at the ready made satire in the building, you can reflect on upon sheer poetry and pathos of the bingo numbering system: as if it were planned in ancient bingo-gaming times, the call for 18 - the next big date I'm coming to - is, 'Key to the door,' 'Now you can vote.' Shame no one mentioned that the vote doesn't count.

So, Friday 18th September is, 'World Qods Day,' when the more vicious elements of the Islamic Rebublic and the hardest-core among Islamists everywhere, take to the streets and celebrate their savagery and well 'ard core.
Jonbesh Sabz will, accordingly, be gathering outside the Embassy in Knightsbridge, London, to show our disapproval and celebrate something more positive. This is planned from 6 - 9.00pm.

Wednesday 23rd September, 'A Duck and a Flea, 23' is the day Not-President Ahmadinejad will address the United Nations in New York. Demonstrations are planned in that city on the 23rd and 24th, and also here, in London, on the 23rd.