Choose Between Torture And Old Woman
Hossein Shariatmadari is ayatollah Khamenei’s representative at hardline Kayhan newspaper. Whenever he wants to “insult” anyone who opposes his Taliban-Mafia mentality - provided of course the person has not yet been arrested - he uses labels for the person that in fact indicate his own self-respect and state of mind. The latest example of this attitude is Shariatmadari’s insultingly using of the word “old woman” for Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner. I do not know whether Shariatmadari has ever seen a father or mother grow old, but I know of no person who feels ashamed because his or her mother is old or growing old. What I know is that a person feels ashamed because his father was a torturer.
Ms Ebadi’s children for many generations will proudly talk about their grandmother being a judge, a jurist, writer, human rights activist, winner of the Nobel Peace prize, etc.
But the offsprings of “brother” Shariatmadari will never tell anyone, “My father was an interrogator”. They will never tell anyone that the detainees of Iran’s Green Movement were sent to prison cells through a dirty plan devised by their grand father. They will deny that a close friend of their grand father’s - police commander Radan - was the commander of hooligans and rogues. They will burn the notes that Shariatmadari has sent to Saeed Mortezavi so that no one could see what betrayal and treachery are.
Ebadi’s children - all Ebadi-likes in Iran - will continue to proudly proclaim for years to come that their “grand mother transformed a building into a center for the defense of human rights.”
Shariatmadari’s children however will remain silent over the lies that “brother Shariatmadari” has said and that he fabricated lies to shut such centers.
What’s more, these will look pale in comparison to yet another crime they have committed. Their offsprings will die of shame because their grand father was the principal player in the prison cells where young girls and boys were raped in such prisons as Evin, Kahrizak, etc.
They will remain mortified for the rest of their life that while their grand father presented himself as the spokesperson for piousness and ethics, when behind scenes he was a member of the operational teams that planned the Islamic coup. He will be a grand father whose dossier will have these accomplishments:
- Fabricating cases against political and civil activists
- The arrest of these individuals (by plain clothes agents, without a warrant, but with beatings)
- Keeping them in individual confinement cells, subjecting them to torture, rape, interrogations, etc
And finally
- Forcing them to make false confessions, writing up indictments, holding show-case trials (along with Saeed Mortezavi)
And all of these are done so the “rule of the absolute cleric” (Vali Motlaghe Faghigh) strengthens the foundations of his despotic rule; so that the despot stays in power while a group of sexually sick individuals can rule over the mind and body of the nation under his blanket; so that they can instill fear and demonstrate their claims of being believers through the use of arms and the Basijees.
Yes, each of the children, grand-children and great grand-children of Shirin Ebadi too will have words to say. Descendants of Shariatmadaris, Ahmadinejads, Mortezavis, etc and the person who heads them all, will of course deny the categorizations that people will make regarding these “brothers.” And one day - which is really not too far away - the descendents of these people will wish that their ancestors were “old women” or “old men”, rather than torturers and rapists.