Oxford Scholarship in the name of Neda

After Guardian 11 Nov 2009
A demonstrator holds a photo of dead Iranian student Neda Agha-Soltan during a protest in New York
COURTESY Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Queen's College Oxford naming philosophy scholarship after young student Neda Agha-Soltan killed in Tehran.

The first holder of the scholarship, Arianne Shahvisi, is studying for a master's degree in the philosophy of physics. In a statement on the college's website, she said: "It is a great honour to be the first student to receive the scholarship in the memory of Neda Agha-Soltan, which is particularly meaningful to me, being a young woman of Iranian descent also studying philosophy."

BACKGROUND. Guardian informs that Queen's College announced the graduate scholarship in memory of Neda Agha-Soltan who died in June at the age of 27.

Her final moments were captured on a mobile phone and broadcast round the world, making her a symbol of Iranian resistance.

A donor contacted Queen's College after her death, to set up the scholarship in philosophy, the subject she had been studying, for Iranian students. The first recipient is now studying at Queen's.

The college said today that a letter it receieved from the Iranian embassy in London said Agha-Soltan's death had been staged by enemies of the regime. The letter accused the university of joining a "politically motivated" campaign in creating the scholarship.

Queen's replied that donors are allowed to decide what to call any scholarship they fund. The name of the donor of this scholarship has not been made public.

Professor Paul Madden, provost of college, said: "The college is keen to support graduate students and this scholarship will help Iranian students to study at Oxford, regardless of their financial background.

"Donors make their own decisions, within reason, on how to name scholarships that they fund.

"In this case, the donor who was instrumental in establishing the scholarship is a British citizen and is well known to the college."

ON NEDA AGHA-SOLTAN. See also another blog entry from this summer.

More on avatar Colonel Pessian

Here are some more tweats regarding the colonel Pessian, the avatar for Oxfordgirl, a voice twittering for people opposition in Iran:

oxfordgirl @OnefortheTable Colonel Mohammad Taghi Pessian, Iranian hero who was executed by Reza Shah 4 not accepting election crook PM #iranelection (about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck)

@OnefortheTable he started rebellion by ppl Khorasan and nearly defeated Shah. His head was cut off and displayed Tehran #iranelection

oxfordgirl @durk00 Great. That is Colonel Muhamad Taghi Pessian, a great Iranian hero who died for freedom #iranelection
1 day ago from TweetDeck

THE GREAT THING. I like to add this from today's twittering by oxfordgirl: "The great thing about freedom is that I can write what I want and others are free not to believe it or read it."

Oxfordgirl's avatar

Colonel Pessian
AA 1-441 First lieutenant Mohammad Taqi Khan Pessian
Courtesy: The Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS) Copyrigth © 2008 IICHS. All Rigths Reserved
The reproduction of articles is free by announcing the resource. Designed by RayanKaveh co. Source: http://www.iichs.org/index_en.asp?id=1680&img_cat=104&img_type=0

ON TWITTER and in the midst of the Iranian people's movements, there is an interesting communicator called @oxfordgirl. S/he is presenting her bio on twitter in this way: "I'm a writer, a literary agent and have a consultancy that helps writers with their books, plays and film scripts. In my spare time I dabble in politics."
Her picture (avatar) is an edited version of Colonel Pessian, this is not presented explicitly in the profile. However, reference to the Colonel has emerged but only a few places in the tweats and dialogues with others: "...There has never been a hero like the Colonel #IranElection" (about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to NN. (Accessed 11 July 2009.)

FOLLOWING. I have followed oxfordgirl (and also the persiankiwi and others) since the (flawed) election results were announced in June 2009. I was immediately struck by the particular gestalt, a personal voice mediated via the Colonel avatar and also the sometimes shifting aestetic background of this profile site hinting to literary and historic references and beauty of the Persian past.

A COLONEL FROM PERSIAN HISTORY. Who was this colonel, I've wondered. And why would this oxfordgirl choose a hero colonel for #Iranelection current twittering? I searched for various persian colonels but were not sure and did not find the right photo either. Today I eventually hit upon the right colonel since his name was used in a twitter dialogue, oxfordgirl with NN. Visiting NN I found the Colonel's name, at last:

"@oxfordgirl Amazing that you know Colonel Pessian. Our history is amazing indeed. Many ppl stood up against oppressors #IranElection"

According to Wikipedia, Colonel Mohammad Taqi-Khan Pessian (1892 - 3 October 1921) (also Colonel Pessian or Pesyan "Pesseyan"), born in Tabriz, was a popular military leader of Iran.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Pesian

According to an article in IICHS, "During world War one and invasion of Iran by other powers, his bravery in Mosalla battle became known to all. He went to Germany to attend a course of aviation. He returned to Iran and was sent to Khorassan as the head of Gendarmerie. Following Seyyed Zia's coup and the formation of the new government, he was on mission to arrest Ahmad Qavam. He confiscated his properties and sent him to Tehran under guard himself became the acting governor of Khorassan."
"Colonel Pessian was a brave man; at the time of death, he was only thirty years old. He was devoted to Persian literature and music. He has let some poems, translations and articles behind."

DOUBLE MAGIC. So there I guess are the roots of double inspiration - brave (& probably just) fighting for Persia and an art-maker including translating literature. A crossover figure familiar with several cultures and with believable personality.

However, it is more to this reuse of a historic figure, the colonel Pessian, as an avatar for a brave actor-networker in the current people opposition against the flawed election and for a more people-grounded governance. Notice the way oxfordgirl is twittering. What is interesting is for example that @oxfordgirl in fact do not defend violent opposition, s/he is recurrently speaking against violence... in spite of violent basij she insists on not using the same means back.

SOME TWITTER EXAMPLES (*reaccessed 11.7.2009):
1) @jim1010 he is an old dying man, nothing can be achieved by violence against him. Not sure he will survive much longer #iranelection (about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to jim1010).
2) The events of last few weeks have transformed image of Iran in the world, they have seen a noble & heroic ppl not terrorists.
#Iranelection (about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck).
3) @Bergen2 a wonderful generation of young ppl prepared to die for freedom and justice. #iranelection (about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to Bergen2).
3) This movement is such an example to the world. Calm and dignity and sacrifice #iranelection
4) Hate will not win this battle, only love of a country and its ppl #iranelection
5) We must learn from history, enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. #iranelection #iranelection Beware those wnt 2 use Green 2 grab power (about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck).
6) No 1 in Sea of Green has any intention of killing Mullahs or anyone . Pray that U nevr have 2 take the life of another human #Iranelection (about 15 hours ago from TweetDec).
7) @oxfordgirl recently shared this reflection: "RT @justtash71: Heroes are not born they are created in times of need #iranelection So true.! " (about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck).

One doctor who tried to save Neda when shot Saturday

"Why we protest"

Elegant slideshow, anonymous post, from "Why We Protest: Iran" http://bit.ly/11b4tr
Found it via Twitter@TimOBrienNYT

A reaction on Neda

Many people have shared their feelings about the killed Iranian woman Neda. A British blogger, Jenny, wrote the following as part of a longer post:

- Saturday night was an extraordinarily harrowing and humbling experience. I followed the events though the hashtag and regular ReTweets from @debaucherydean who did a great job filtering out some of the noise, and at one stage organised a phone campaign to the Foreign Office to ensure their Tehran embassy was open to the injured. At one point a video was posted showing the aftermath from the shooting of a young woman. She was being carried by a group of protesters and they laid her on the road as her father ran over. At first you could see no sign of a wound. As she lay their her eyes glazed and then blood started to seep out all over her face, from her eyes, from her nose, from her mouth… and then she died. It was the most stark and upsetting video I have ever seen and to know It had happened just moments earlier made it all the more real. This video brought home the plight of the Iranian protesters, with heavy heavy thud. We later found out that her name was Neda. Her face with live with me for a long time. I’m not sure whether to post the link to the video. If anyone wishes to see it then I guess you can track it down.

Other tweets that night were for information between protesters. Advice was given as to how to be protected from chemical attack. Information was posted as to which foreign embassies were taking in the injured. We also say great compassion from the protesters. One picture showing a fallen riot police motorcyclist being shielded by a protester was particularly humbling.
---
JENNY ends by also providing some info on Twitter:

- A Twitter week from the mundane to the vital. Twitter Terms Explained :

Tweet = a short message under 140 characters, can contain links to pictures or videos

@username = your twitterer username

Followers = the people / feeds that you follow and follow you

RT or ReTweet = a tweet passed on

Hashtag or #something = a webpage automatically created to elicit shared real time contributions on a topic

Posted by Jenny Harvey at 22:02 Source: http://jenny-vs-theworld.bl...

Neda - a victim of brutal action in Tehran

Courtesy: arta07
http://twitpic.com/817ft


According to Iranian sources via Twitter and elsewhere, Neda Soltani was a 27 year old philosophy student in Tehran. She was with her father when she was brutally killed on the street.

She has become a martyr, and a symbol, for the uprising for human rights and free election in Iran and she is becoming known for the supporting world.

Neda means voice in Farsi. Voicing is what many women and men are doing just now on the streets and thru all kinds of media.

Later on Sunday 21. June I found a reference on Twitter to a new Wikipedia article: RT @idrawhouses Neda (Iranian protester)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://bit.ly/8cDwu

An eyewitness from Iranian hospital

I post this eyewitness report I found on a blog, it seems authentic.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009

"What I have witnessed"
A powerful note from a female medical student in Iran, translated from Farsi by a trusty reader.


Hello,

It's painful to watch what's happening.

I don't want anything to do with what has been said this far, as I neither have the strength nor the resilience to face all these unfathomable events.

I only want to speak about what I have witnessed. I am a medical student. There was chaos last night at the trauma section in one of our main hospitals. Although by decree, all riot-related injuries were supposed to be sent to military hospitals, all other hospitals were filled to the rim. Last night, nine people died at our hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. They (government) removed the dead bodies on back of trucks, before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded or get any information from them. This morning the faculty and the students protested by gathering at the lobby of the hospital where they were confronted by plain cloths anti-riot militia, who in turn closed off the hospital and imprisoned the staff. The extent of injuries are so grave, that despite being one of the most staffed emergency rooms, they've asked everyone to stay and help--I'm sure it will even be worst tonight.

What can anyone say in face of all these atrocities? What can you say to the family of the 13 year old boy who died from gunshots and whose dead body then disappeared?

This issue is not about cheating(election) anymore. This is not about stealing votes anymore. The issue is about a vast injustice inflected on the people. They've put a baton in the hand of every 13-14 year old to smash the faces of "the bunches who are less than dirt" (government is calling the people who are uprising dried-up torn and weeds)

This is what sickens me from dealing with these issues. And from those who shut their eyes and close their ears and claim the riots are in opposition of the government and presidency!! No! The people's complaint is against the egregious injustices committed against the people.
POSTED BY EVERY IRANIAN AT 2:40 PM
LABELS: IRAN, IRANELECTION

Iran today: what is happening now?

I can only say, stop the killing. Respect the dignity of people, along the lines Obama said.

Mousavi yesterday, Sat 20.6.2009

http://different-ways.co.cc/?p=332

Mousavi message on Twitter:
- I am prepared For martyrdom, go on strike if I am arrested #IranElection
(about 17 hours ago from web)

Yet, there is much confusion now in Tehran. The big Q is, what happens next?

Now people asks, acc to twitter sources, where is Mousavi?

And 5 members of the Rafsanjani family (he was expresident) is said arrested. Worrying news.

What is happening behind the scenes?

People suffers in the streets.

Women in the forefront of Iran upraising

Women in the forefront (of the protests)... Says Azar Nasifi, author of Reading Lolita in Iran on CNN today.

This is noticed also when twittering, many women are very active and well linked with other protesters it seems. Cannot name them here as yet.

Retweat, do not know if confirmed
@IranRiggedElect: Zhila Baniyaghoob (journalist, women's rights activist) has been arrested (via @iranbaan) #iranelection

Do not know where Rafsanjani's daughter is at the moment, it seems she is still in Iran (she and a brother were probably stopped leaving Tehran, according to previous tweats).

Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of Mousavi stepped up today for the people's march 20.6.009.

Power play in Iran

The Independent reporter Robert Fisk suggests this thesis:

"...Because the fundamental conflict in Iran is being fought not on the streets of Tehran – a mere tragic, brutal sideshow that could soon become a bloodbath – but beneath the cupolas and minarets and pale blue tiles of the mosques of Qom."

http://tinyurl.com/nxsk3g

Robert Fisk on the difficulties to check what is truth in Iran

20. June 2009 The Independent correspondent Robert Fisk reflects on the challenges to know what is truth or fantasy in Tehran
Source: http://tinyurl.com/nqnj7o
"...So let's take a look at those Iranian elections. A fraud, we believe. And I have the darkest doubts about those election figures which gave Mousavi a paltry 33.75 per cent of the vote. Indeed, I and a few Iranian friends calculated that if the government's polling-night statistics were correct, the Iranian election committee would have had to have counted five million votes in just two hours. But our coverage of this poll has been deeply flawed. Most visiting Western journalists stay in hotels in the wealthy, north Tehran suburbs, where tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters live, where it's easy to find educated translators who love Mousavi, where interviewees speak fluent English and readily denounce the spiritual and cultural and social stagnation of Iran's – let us speak frankly – semi-dictatorship.

But few news organisations have the facilities or the time or the money to travel around this 659,278 square-mile country – seven times the size of Britain – and interview even the tiniest fraction of its 71 million people. When I visited the slums of south Tehran on Friday, for example, I found that the number of Ahmadinejad supporters grew as Mousavi's support dribbled away. And I wondered whether, across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iran, a similar phenomenon might be discovered. A Channel 4 television crew, to its great credit, went down to Isfahan and the villages around that beautiful city and came back with a suspicion – unprovable, of course, anecdotal, but real – that Ahmadinejad just might have won the election.

This is also my suspicion: that Ahmadinejad might have scraped in, but not with the huge majority he was awarded. For with their usual, clumsy, autocratic behaviour, the clerics behind the Islamic Republic may have decreed that only a greater majority for the winner could decisively annihilate the reputation of its secular opponents. Perhaps Ahmadinejad got 51 per cent or 52 per cent and this was preposterously increased to 63 per cent. Perhaps Mousavi picked up 44 per cent or 45 per cent. I don't know. The Iranians will never know, even though the Supreme Leader told us yesterday that the incredible 63 per cent was credible. That is Iran's tragedy.

Yes, Ahmadinejad remains for me an outrageous president, one of those cracked political leaders – like Colonel Ghaddafi or Lebanon's General Michel Aoun – which this region sadly throws up, to the curses of its friends and to the delight of its enemies in the West. And the Islamic Republic itself – while it has understandable historical roots in the savagery of the Shah's regime which preceded it, not to mention the bravery of its people – is a dangerously contrived and inherently unfree state which was locked into immobility by an unworldly and now long-dead ayatollah.

And those nuclear arms? How many of us reported a blunt statement which the Supreme Leader and the man who ultimately controls all nuclear development in Iran made on 4 June, just eight days before the elections? "Nuclear weapons," he said in a speech in which he encouraged Iranians to vote, "are religiously forbidden (haram) in Islam and the Iranian people do not have such a weapon. But the Western countries and the US in particular, through false propaganda, claim that Iran seeks to build nuclear bombs – which is totally false..."

There are few provable assurances in the Middle East, often few facts and a lot of lies. Dangers are as thick as snakes in the desert. As I write, I have just received another call from Lebanon. "Mr Fisk, a girl has been shot in Iran. I have a video from the internet. You can see her body..." And you know what? I think he might be right."

Mirriaam's hand raised for freedom in Tehran

http://img.piqlet.com/img0623.jpg
18 june. Imam sq. my hand :)

The world is watching and twittering...

Oxfordgirl twittered this afternoon:

"I went for a cup of coffee and there were more than 5000 new tweets on #iranelection #tehran #gr88. The world is truely watching."

The Independent today: Cockburn commenting on Iranian uprising

Courtesy: GETTY and the Independent (see link)
Protesters hold up a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini during a demonstration against the Shah on 1 January 1979
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/history-suggests-the-coup-will-fail-1708996.html#

History suggests the coup will fail, according to Patrick Cockburn, who reported from Iran during the 1979 revolution. In an article today he reflects on the fall of the Shah and explains why the current uprising is very different

Friday, 19 June 2009
"At first sight, what is happening in Tehran today looks very like the extraordinary events of the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. But how deep do the similarities go? On 2 December 1978, two million Iranians filled the streets of central Tehran to demand an end to the rule of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the most popular revolution in history. At night, people gathered on rooftops to chant "Allahu Akbar – God is Great". In the daytime, mass rallies commemorated as martyrs the protesters who had been killed by the security forces.

The methods of protest are very similar."
-"The spectacle, the symbols, and the language in Iran in 2009 are similar to those present in 1978-9, but the political forces at work could not be more different. The protesters then were much stronger than they looked; those of today have the odds heavily stacked against them."

18 June 2009: Sea of Green in Tehran

18 June,Imam sq rally

Courtesy: Mirriaam,
http://twitpic.com/7q5l6

Zan's editor Faezeh Hashemi

Because of the current situation in Iran, it may be interesting to learn more about some potentially key figures. Here is an old interview with Faezeb Hashemi, former Parliament member, former editor of Zan (Woman) and daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Meeting Faezeh
The rise and fall of a talented woman

By Massoume Price
October 5, 2000
The Iranian

The first time I met Faezeh Hashemi was in December 1998, a day after my arrival in Tehran after 15 years of absence. We had never met but corresponded, exchanged gifts and knew about each other's private life. After the first Muslim Women's Olympics in Tehran in 1993, she sent me a copy of her book with a memo. Later on, being sarcastic, I sent her a see-through chiffon blouse and to my amazement I received word that she loved it. I still wonder where she might wear a blouse like that?

http://www.iranian.com/Features/2000/October/Faezeh/index.html

BBC News covering Iran protests

Today in Tehran

Source: Twitter today via @mirriaam