Photo by Steve Rhoads

By: Mandana (Touch Iran)

The Iranian People, notably women, have shown the world recently that they are FEARLESS.

Masih Alinejad, 33, is an Iranian journalist who has been relentless in her efforts to do her job- raise awareness of social & political issues and simply be the strong & passionate woman that she is. Masih Alinejad is bold and not afraid to push the envelope and travel outside of the regime that had held her back for so long.

Alinejad is notoriously known by conservative leaders, yet seen as a hero by Iranians everywhere for her brave criticism of Iranian authorities. She was a parliamentary reporter for ILNA and a journalist at Hambastegi Daily and Etemad Melli Daily, while living in Iran. Considering her boldness and honesty, several of her articles received harsh criticism from Iranian conservatives. In 2008, former Iranian head of parliament apologized after an article by Alinejad was published in Etemad Melli Daily on economic problems in Iran. Alinejad’s daring moves include unfiltered interviews with prominent Iranian officials to publishing the salaries of Iranian politicians, as she exposed their dishonesty regarding pay cuts that had been announced to the public. Masih Alinejad was a Parliamentary…

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In the world of Iranian journalism, Masih Alinejad, 33, may be considered a daredevil of sorts. In 2005, she published the salaries of top Iranian politicians, exposing that many had lied about having taken pay cuts. That same year, she got into a verbal fight with a Muslim cleric in the Iranian Parliament for not having her hair fully covered under her headscarf. A year later, she requested an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The title of her column: “Talk To Me, Mr. Ahmadinejad, If You Dare To.” He declined.

But her best stunt yet may have come last November, right after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency. Iranian journalists are not permitted by their government to interview American officials. In fact, when 11 journalists tried to come to the United States to cover the presidential elections, they were stopped by Iranian officials at the airport and their passports were confiscated.

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P.S. You can listen to Masih on NPR here.

By: Fatemeh Haghighatjou (a former member of the Iranian Parliament)

Masih Alinejad is a bold and independent Iranian journalist who does not shy away from criticizing the power brokers of the Islamic Republic of Iran. More importantly, she believes in improving the condition of her fellow Iranians. Her quest to interview President Barack Obama has inspired many courageous journalists nobly serving on the front lines in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran. A face-to-face meeting between the leader of the free world and a young, female Iranian journalist who has endured the hardship of prison for her writings would encourage scores of Iranian students, feminists, laborers, and other pro-democracy activists who risk their lives for the cause of liberty. President Obama now has the opportunity to reach out directly to the Iranian people, who have rallied under the banner of the Green Movement to reclaim their country. There can be no better way to do so than by agreeing to an interview conducted by one of Iran’s most dynamic journalists.

Fatemeh Haghighatjou, is a reformist and a former member of the Iranian Parliament. In 2005, Haghighatjou was a fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies. Before entering politics, she was a psychologist and head of the Student Psychological Consultant Center of Iran University of Science and Technology. She is now a visiting Scholar at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Haghighatjou holds a Ph.D. in Counseling.

By: Rod Sharif

Dear Mr. President Obama:

As an Iranian-American who found you to be the gem of all the US presidential candidates two years before your inauguration, as an active citizen critical of dark and war mongering policies of Mr. Bush, as a proud Iranian who had spent 17 years of my life growing up in that resourceful country, as a world citizen who wishes to see peace and tranquility established all over the globe, as a practicing Muslim, I wish to ask you Mr. President to grant an interview to Ms. Alinejad.

Masih Alinejad is one courageous woman from humble beginnings with a fire in her belly to speak the wishes of her generation and all Iranians living in Iran. I have had the opportunity to invite and introduce Masih to facebook, and to have witnessed her rise in popularity in that virtual space.

As I write this letter, I have been spending the last five months in my native country of Iran and have come to understand a little more about the complex political structure that is holding its citizens back! The current government does not speak for the people of Iran. We have all witnessed the events since the elections. Massive unemployment and high inflation rates together with a widespread suppression of freedoms of expression and assembly has only helped spread a dark shadow of uncertainty over this great nation.
The highly qualified youth in this country have retired to their satellite dishes and/or are working on improving their second language to find a way to get away from this environment. Many with college degrees have taken up taxi service jobs to make the ends meet. A country with so much natural resources, the third in the world in gas fields alone, a country with plenty of historical and natural sites, a country with so many different climates, a country with so many highly educated people is only trapped in bureaucratic games resulting from poor policies of a government unwilling to listen to her people. Iranians claim Mr. Bush to be a hero compared to the man who has just had his second term inauguration!

Such “only me and my friends” benefiting policies have excluded the majority of Iran’s working force from any real economic and social engagement. Only a very narrow segment of the society close to the government and its intelligence apparatus are involved in the economic growth of the country. The rest are just observers. During Mr. Khatami’s eight years in office, the country was moving toward establishment of a civil society that Masih Alinejad has first hand experience with. You could actually hear hope and encouragement in the voices of the people then. You could see a broader economic engagement. The artists and creative people were blossoming. Today, after one term of Ahamdinejad in office, the country has come to a standstill. A massive cloud of uncertainty is hanging over the country and the intelligent people that Masih represents seem to have no way out! Nobody on the street wishes to chant death to America or to any other country for that matter. People want to simply live and let others live. They want to take charge of their lives and their country.

Masih Alinejad is a good representative of these people. I am sure she has plenty of good questions to ask from you too. I always was a fan of Christian Amanpour. I believe Masih has similar potentials! Please give her a chance to have an interview with you, as you are not just the president of America, but the president of the hearts and minds of many people around the globe. You speak and breath hope! I trust that Mr. President, you will light up Masih Alinejad’s hope as well!

Truly Yours,

Rod Sharif

Photo source: thedailyvoice.com

Dear Mr. President Obama:

My name is Masih Alinejad, one of the controversial female journalists in Iran in recent years. I was the first ever journalist to be expelled from the Iranian parliament in 2005 due to my critical articles and analyses about the conservative Iranian parliament. During the judicial procedures that followed, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, represented me, and since then she has become one of my strongest supporters.

Iranian journalists have been banned from interviewing prominent individuals from the U.S. government for more than 30 years. You may be aware that, during your presidential election campaign, a visit by 10 Iranian journalists to the U.S. was banned by the Iranian government and their passports were confiscated. As one of the active Iranian journalists with a wide and diverse audience, inside and outside Iran, I decided to overcome these political limitations and contact you directly on behalf of the Iranian journalist community to request an interview with you as the President of the United States of America.

By conducting such an interview, I may risk my political and professional future in Iran. However, from the heart of the masses in Iran, I know that they will warmly welcome this gesture and will view it as an important break with the past. Sadly, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been the only person who had the right to travel to the U.S. to speak at the U.N. general assembly about the so-called “freedom of speech that the Iranian media enjoy”. I can tell you Mr. President, as an Iranian journalist who has worked for 9 years in the ‘corridors’ of Iranian power politics and media, that such a claim is not true. For one thing, my third book, entitled ‘I Am Free’, was banned from publication under the Ahmadinejad government (it has now been published in Berlin).

Although still a columnist for a reformist newspaper inside Iran, I am currently spending a short time in the U.K. to oversee the publication of my second book in English. Residing there gives me an incredible opportunity to travel to the U.S. for the purpose of that interview without the need for any governmental permission.

By accepting to take part in this interview, and by communicating with a true representative of the Iranian people rather than its conservative government, you will be taking the first and most important step towards breaking the artificially and politically-constructed barriers between the two great nations. The American people were highly regarded in the early 20th century in Iran, for supporting the educational and medical infrastructures of the country. It is regrettable that the relations between these two great groups of people have been so bitter over the last three decades. Despite all the hardships that the Iranian journalists face, I have never given up ‘hope’ that ‘change’ is possible in the Iranian political structure. I hope ‘we can’ bring peaceful democracy to Iran so that we can live and breathe in freedom.

Mr. President, with your message of ‘change’, you have sown the seeds of hope amongst the Iranian people. I hope an interview with an Iranian journalist becomes a defining moment in bringing about a cordial relationship between two great nations. I assure you that from this moment, the rest of the Iranian journalist community and I, eagerly await your response.

Sincerely yours,
Masih Alinejad

Photo by: Ehsan Nourozi

Laura Secor: The New Yorker

Iranian reporters may not cross certain red lines. They cannot insult the Supreme Leader, question the official version of Islam, or express doubts about the country’s nuclear program. And, according to Masih Alinejad, a thirty-three-year-old reporter for Iran Labor News Agency and a columnist for the reformist newspaper Etemad-e Melli, since the 1979 revolution Iranian journalists have been banned from interviewing American officials. This rule is not hard to enforce, as there is no official American presence in Iran—no Embassy, no visiting dignitaries—and therefore no one to avoid. But after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad courted the American media during his visit to New York in the fall of 2008, Alinejad started to wonder why she couldn’t interview the President of the United States.

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“Yes. I suspect President Ahmadinejad”, I answered, jokingly.

***

These days, my bitter joke has turned into a bitter reality in Iran. Almost anyone who voted for change and reform has suffered some personal damage or demolition and when asked whom they suspect, they reply, “I suspect President Ahmadinejad’s vote.”

It started when the televised debates in advance of the tenth presidential elections excited people, who poured into the streets in record numbers to support their favorite candidate by chanting slogans. Such images from the city were unprecedented.

At Tehran University, on one side of the street, on the sidewalk, a group of women, wearing hejab and other conservative attire, shouted slogans in support of Ahmadinejad’s agendas. On the other side, a seemingly more modern group of youths had their own slogans asking for a renewal of democracy and in defense of Mousavi. At times, the groups threw flowers at each other, but there was no sign of violence, anywhere. Such maturity, rationality and calmness were apparent in people’s faces.

The closer the election approached, the more controversial the color green – the color of Mousavi’s supporters – became. The Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement cautioning against green and its potential affiliation with other color revolutions, and saying that if reformists sought a velvet revolution in Iran, it had to be stopped and uprooted. This was where the violence first ignited, later to burst into flames when Ahmadinejad’s victory was announced prematurely. By the time Mir-Hossein Mousavi deemed the results suspect and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rushed to bless Ahmadinejad for winning the election, the Iranian society was in full flames.

This is not just fun and games anymore. Everyone is suspicious of Ahmadinejad, and no one is throwing flowers at each other anymore. The city is full of security forces. They first attacked Mousavi’s headquarters in Vali-Asr and Ghaytariyeh streets in Tehran and assaulted the staff. They then staged a mob attack on the reformist newspapers and sites and changed the headlines to reflect support of the government. Several newspapers have been shut down and several Internet sites are filtered. YouTube, Facebook, Blogfa system and a few other important websites that were used by Ahmadinejad’s rivals are also filtered.

The home offices of several parties have been attacked and the heads of the Participation Front (Jebheh Mosharekat) and the Mojahedin Organization (Mojahedin Enghelab Eslami) have been arrested, so they won’t organize and lead the protest marches. Armed guards are positioned in front of the homes of presidential candidates and anti-riot police beat up people all over the city.

Public anger has increased for the people who now have no access to the reformist leaders, and the anger is manifested in setting buses and banks on fire. Tear gases and rapid fire cannot keep the crowd at home.

This how the Iranian conservatives have responded to the doubt – of the nation and the candidates – that has been cast on the results of the election.

After the Supreme Leader approved the election results, the conservatives imposed their control over the capital before the protests and violence could transmit to other cities, such as Shiraz, Mashhad, Esfahan and to even smaller cities. However, Tehran is still bloody. The government’s goal is to keep the news imprisoned and send a calm and quiet picture of the country to the world – and wait for official congratulatory messages to be sent to Ahmadinejad by global leaders. Iranians, however, keep using their cell phones and other small devices to shoot videos and pictures from the demonstrations. They find ways around filtered sites and post these images – to tell the world what is going on in Iran today.

Now is the most bitter moment for me – to sit behind my computer and follow events by connecting to news sites, by connecting to the 3500 “friends” that I have on Facebook, and by publishing the news and the images that the Iranian government has worked to block. This way, maybe these images reach the world, and the world finally hears the voice of a nation that suspects Ahamadinejad and his vote.

And this is not a joke with the police anymore.

***

These days, while millions of Iranians have poured into the streets to protest the [allegedly] rigged reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, people overseas – on the sidewalks, subways and other public areas – are talking and speaking out about Iran. Iranians abroad have turned into ambassadors and stood in front of Iranian embassies worldwide to let the world know what the regime did to their votes.

Iranians have turned their attention to their embassies – their Iranian home away from home – to scream their defiance. Accused by the conservative camp of “opening the doors for foreign powers to meddle in Iran’s affairs,” the crowds have been large and unprecedented, but sadly, largely ignored by their official ambassadors.

Next to these two crowds – both at home in Iran and abroad – are uniformed men outfitted in police attire and gear. Iranians refer to these men as “baton carriers.” However, there is a significant difference between domestic baton carriers and foreign ones. Those in foreign countries are there to keep the peace and provide security for demonstrators, and people feel safe seeing them there. At home, our people are fearful of these large men – so much so that they pale and their legs shake, until they have to start running for their lives.

For half of the demonstrations I was in Iran; for the other half, I have been abroad. During demonstrations in Iran, carrying my camera and notebook, I have to run and hide so the baton carriers will not get to me. In the demonstrations abroad, when some old Iranian communists throw tomatoes at the demonstrators, I quickly reach the baton carriers in order to feel safe. At home, even in quiet demonstrations, baton carriers cannot wait to launch themselves at everyone. They beat people and sometimes even open fire. The approach is so violent that even the conservative speaker of the Iranian parliament speaks out against it. Each of us has at least a few bruises to remind us of our meeting with the baton carriers.

Away from home, in strange lands – as conservatives call Western countries – when Iranians shout and scream, the baton carrying police show patience and protect the protestors’ right to voice their dissent. The police react only when someone throws a rock or something else at demonstrators. That’s when they step in and charge – in defense of the protestors. This is strange and difficult for me to digest – to see police officers overseas surrounding Iranian protestors, where they do not understand what the crowd is shouting, but do not seem to mind the angry words.

At home the anti-riot forces attack the quiet assembly of citizens and the common language does not help. The crowd calls on them: “Security forces…support us…support us” or “My revolutionary brother…why are you killing your brother?” Fearful women ask the police to protect them, but they still are beaten by the armed militia.

These beatings take place while the parliament could easily interfere, take a stand and go further than just issuing statements. After all, in this Islamic country the citizens’ right to a peaceful assembly is guaranteed by Article 27 of the constitution, and they should be able to exercise that right without facing bloodshed.

Some people have lost their lives in demonstrations, right in front of the eyes of the police, while others have stood in prayer right on the same spot. In this Islamic country, why don’t the Muslim officials have mercy on these people and at a minimum see that Article 27 is enforced?

The Guardian Council has never approved a woman to run for president under its various interpretations of the Islamic Constitution. Therefore, the only way to have a female voice and presence in the executive is for the president to appoint a woman as a cabinet minister. However, no woman has yet been able to sit in cabinet meetings. Former president Mohammad Khatami did invite two women (Masoumeh Ebtekar and Zahra Shojaie) to join his administration as vice presidents, but not as ministers, and their duties concerned mainly environmental and women’s issues. Currently one woman, Fatemeh Javadi, serves as a vice president in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration.

These days, however, the presidential candidates are all promising to appoint women as government ministers. And while the position of “First Lady” is not defined as it is in some other countries, reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, at his side in campaign rallies and meetings. It is still not customary for couples to join hands on the stage and in public, but the mere presence of his wife on the campaign seems to excite young women and attract many of them to Mousavi’s camp.

Some women political activists believe these acts of “kindness” towards women – by the candidates and by the security forces – will end as soon as the election is over, just as they have in previous election seasons. As Fatemeh Karrubi, the head of the Organization of Iranian Women, said to reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi during one of his first campaign meetings: “Iranian women are tired of hearing slogans and they ask the next president to deliver executive positions to women.”

Having prominent women in the next president’s administration and cabinet could be beneficial to the women’s movement’s efforts to achieve equal rights. Iranians who suffer from sexual discrimination and unequal rights believe that by entering the political arena and occupying executive and decision-making posts, they would be better positioned to fight unjust laws. Leaders of the “One Million Signatures Campaign” for women’s equal rights, for example, have contacted women members of the parliament – even though women MPs are considered conservative – to stop the parliament from passing legislation allowing men to take a second wife without asking the permission of their first wife. Women went to the Majlis and let the male-dominated institution hear their protest.

Many women leaders are critical of Iranian elections, citing the presence and interference of the Guardian Council. However for the sake of women’s rights, they have no choice but to meet and negotiate with elected officials and their appointees to advocate for their cause. As such, prominent women activists have joined and campaigned for reformist candidates. Jamileh Kadivar, a reformist member of the sixth Majlis who had been rejected as a candidate by the Guardian Council in the past, is now the head of the women’s headquarters for Karroubi’s campaign.

Many traditional women, on the other hand, support Ahmadinejad, including several members of the Majlis. These are the same women who tried to pass legislation shortening the office hours of women, in an attempt to weaken the role of women in the workplace, or who tried to reduce the number of seats reserved for women in colleges and universities. These women have taken steps to reduce and eliminate the role of women in Iranian society, instead of strengthening it. Most of the support among women for Ahmadinejad and his parliamentary faction comes from the rural areas where they are concerned about the Revolution and its goals and values.

Iranian women have become a focus of the presidential candidates, and promises are made to gain their support. The consensus among women, however – especially young women – is that once the election is over, the State Security Forces will once again impose fines and arrest women for violations of dress codes. They fear that the promises of a woman minister will be forgotten and all the sweet talk and hope regarding equal rights will become empty campaign promises.

Iranians will just have to wait and see if women who are highly involved in the campaigns can hold their respective candidates accountable for their promises about women. Women continue to wonder if any of these candidates will, for the first time in contemporary Iranian history, select a woman for a cabinet position – and introduce her to the public before the election.

Note: This article was translated from Farsi. The opinions expressed reflect those of the author, and not necessarily those of the National Democratic Institute or The Century Foundation.