But my interest in music explains the title of this blog. "Death and the Maiden" is a famous and beautiful string quartet written by Franz Schubert, in turn based on a theme from his song of the same name, a setting of a German poet. I have sung the song myself in the past, though probably not that well.
This is all by way of an intro to the real subject of this blog, the death of a young Iranian woman, in disturbances in Iran, shot by a member of the security forces of a repressive government. As our local paper, The Domimion Post, stated yesterday, in copying an article from The Times, without bothering to attribute the writer, Martin Fletcher.
I will copy it here as it isn't too long and internet references often go missing. The article below is copied from The Dominion Post which slightly edits the original in The Times (The Times article is here.)
World touched by Neda's death
She was invoked by President Obama in the White House. The exiled son of Iran's late Shah said that he carried her picture in his left breast pocket alongside those of his daughters. She was extolled in newspapers and on television bulletins from Australia to America, from Russia to Dubai.
The extraordinarily potent story of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman shot dead during Saturday's demonstrations in Tehran, continued to wash around the world yesterday ‹ touching everyone except the rulers of her own country, who did their level best to suppress it.
They oredered her family not to speak about her in public, and reportedly even told them to remove the black mourning ribbons outside their house. The state-controlled media mentioned Miss Soltan only to suggest that her death was staged.
She was the daughter of a government worker from Tehran, the second of three children. She loved music and travelling and hoped to be a tour guide. Though loyal to the Islamic Republic she was outraged by the apparent rigging of the presidential election. She started going to the demonstrations. Ignoring the entreaties of friends, she went to Saturday's protests with her music teacher and two others but got stuck in traffic.
She stepped out of the car for some air, a gunshot rang out and Miss Soltan collapsed. Blood bubbled up through her mouth from the wound in her chest. Her last words were: "I'm burning." Her body was put into a passing car which fought its way through the traffic. By the time she reached Shariati hospital it was too late.
Hamid Panahi, the music teacher, defied the regime's gagging order. "They know me. They know where I am. They can come and get me whenever they want," he told the Los Angeles Times. "When they kill an innocent child this is not justice. This is not religion. In no way is this acceptable."
He called Miss Soltan a "beam of light" who "couldn't stand the injustice of it all. All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."
Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, told BBC Persian TV: "Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her, Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest. "We worked so hard to get the authorities to release her body. She was taken to a morgue outside Tehran. The officials from the morgue asked if they could use parts of her corpse for body transplants for medical patients.
Millions of Iranians have seen the video of Soltan's death. Mohamad, who owns a Tehran hardware store, told The Times: "I voted for Ahmadinejad because I believed he was closer to my morality and piety. But this is not what we voted for. Life is the most divine thing in Islam. You don't take it away like that."
A posting in medialens pointed me to an article in Uruknet, an Arabic site, based in occupied Iraq. A page in this site contrasts two videos, both picturing the final moments of peaceful protesters, one in Palestine and one in Iran. (You can find the original here) I wrote in medialens in response:
What you have posted, Mike, is exactly the reason I keep returning to medialens, it is my main source for "news". A wonderful resource of interested citizens collating and collecting material from around the world which would otherwise pass us by.
Both videos nominally are the same, a tragic and futile death by violence arising from misapplied and amoral power. Yet the power of this post comes about because it makes the contrast between how they are portrayed such a wonderful example of another misuse of power, that of the West's main stream media.
Like many stories posted here, it became the subject of a letter to my local paper, the Dominion Post, here in Wellington, a world away, but in fact, as close a companion to the rest of the wold's media as is possible to get. An article entitled "World touched by Neda's death" appeared this morning.
The Editor, The Dominion Post.
Dear Sir / Madam
Neda Salehi Agha Soltan died a tragic and public death, and "the World is touched". What about the equally tragic death of Bassem Abu Rameh? You don't know him? He's the young Palestinian, shot while peacefully protesting at the dividing wall that Israel has installed in his community in Bil'in, his death filmed on video this April, viewable on the internet, the Israeli soldier who likely murdered him easily recognisable. Shouldn't we be equally touched? But the death of a yet another young Palestinian male is no match in touching power to a young, beautiful and now equally dead Iranian girl, and don't the world's media, including the Dominion Post, know it. We do indeed live in a world of amoral relativism. The very day that President Obama called the Iranian government to account for the safety of Iranians, an American remotely controlled aircraft killed over fifty mourners at funeral in Pakistan, adding to a list of well over 300 people, most of them civilians, similarly killed in Afghanistan. This article about Neda is propaganda, a nominal truth disguising a lie about Iran, disguising an even deeper lie about America and ourselves. Pravda, circa 1950, would have been proud.
Yours faithfully,
