Remember – Episode Thirteen: Women as Architects of a Better Tomorrow; A Look at Women's Achievements, Life, Freedom

The multimedia series "Remember" was launched on the first anniversary of the killing of Khodamour Lajahi, a plaster worker and dancer from Sistan and Baluchestan, who lost his life during the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests after being shot by Islamic Republic forces. The series begins with the narration of Sanobar, Khodamour's grieving and mourning mother, who urged us not to forget her son. In her first exclusive interview with the media in "Remember," she said: "Don't forget. It has been a year now. Don't forget my child. May God bless you. Don't forget my child... Whoever killed my child, may God not forgive them; whoever killed my child, may God take them, God... May God take my child's right..." In the first season of "Remember," we sat down with grieving mothers. We asked them to narrate their stories. From Gohar Eshghi, the mother of Iranian justice seeker Sattar Beheshti, who is not only seeking justice for her son but also mourns and seeks justice for Mohammad Hosseini and other victims of the Islamic Republic. She stated in "Remember" that she will never give up: "I cannot separate Sattar from myself for a moment; not for a moment. There is not a moment when Sattar is not there. I cannot forget Sattar at all. I think Sattar was taken just an hour ago. I have been wearing this black dress for eleven years. I cannot separate from Sattar for a moment. I have said many times that as long as they do not provide me with a fair court, I will not remain silent. They cannot silence me. I am not afraid of anything." These mothers, these heart-wrenching mothers, these mothers against forgetting, have been advancing the mothers' justice movement in Iran for years in "Remember," inviting us to remember and not forget. Sholeh Pakrovan, the mother of Reyhaneh Jabbari, was another of these mothers who spoke with us: "The mother of Siavash Mahmoudi once said something very beautiful. After her child was killed, she came into the neighborhood by a supermarket and shouted: 'Hey people, they killed my child! I thought it wouldn't happen to me. I thought I was safe. I thought these events only happen to others.' We, the people, must think that in the 60s, only political prisoners inside prisons were executed, those who had ideals and had fought. In the 80s, they killed those who went to vote and protested silently, and in the 90s, they killed those who protested for their livelihood, for gasoline, for the hardships of prison, for the lack of water in Khuzestan, for the lack of work and bread and life and air in Baluchestan, for the lack of any basic facilities in Kurdistan... They attacked ordinary people, killed children! You tell me, what was Kian Pirfalak? He was a ten-year-old child! What were those small children killed in Baluchestan doing? We are all in danger! The Islamic Republic pushes people back ten steps for every step they take back! Was Mahsa Amini a fighter? Wasn't she an ordinary girl? Didn't Mahsa's mother say she wore my hijab that was too long for her? And we all saw what this girl was wearing. I am not saying you should go sympathize with others. You must determine for yourself whether your heart and humanity tell you to become a balm for the hearts of others who have been wounded or not! But I say think of yourselves. Think about sending your child to school, sending girls to elementary, middle, and high school, and your child getting poisoned with chemical gas. Fight for your ordinary life. I am not saying fight for others or seek ideals. Fight for an ordinary life where you can have a roof over your head for three years in a row, not where every year inflation and prices rise so much that you cannot even rent a house. Every year that the Islamic Republic remains, the livelihood and ordinary life of the people become harder. People! Fight for yourselves, not for me, not for Khodamour's mother or Nika's mother or Mahsa or the mothers of others. The Islamic Republic and the fate it has in store for the people is a camel that sleeps in everyone's house, but we do not know when our turn will come." In "Remember," protesting schoolgirls from Iran spoke. They found a platform to speak, to be heard, and to express their demands: "One request I have from parents is to set aside some fear and stand behind the students. I don't mean they must participate in protests. Being supportive can mean not being too strict in these circumstances or, for example, shouting slogans at 9 PM. It is not just about going to the streets alongside your child, but it is important to let the children be free and help them. Our parents, as people who witnessed the events of the 50s and 60s, can help us continue with the same determination we have started with until the day we can reclaim our rights." Citizens whose eyes, hands, and other limbs were targeted by the bullets of the Islamic Republic spoke in the "Remember" series: "This courage comes from a love of freedom. This spirit is an inheritance that our martyrs have left for us, and the greatest betrayal to the blood of our martyrs is to lose hope; that the Islamic Republic can take hope from us, which it will never be able to do. As long as our dreams are alive, this struggle continues, and the Islamic Republic remains fearful and anxious." In "Remember," we became the voice of protesters who spoke from the depths of prisons, from the depths of darkness and physical and psychological torture. Those whom the government forcibly transferred to psychiatric hospitals like Aminabad to take revenge on them, to break and destroy them. We remembered people like Behnam Mahjoubi, a protesting dervish who lost his life due to the torture of Islamic Republic agents, and in this recorded call from Evin prison, he says he witnessed the decline of humanity in Aminabad: "I really saw the decline of humanity in Aminabad. I saw the nullification of humanity; it was the extinction of humanity... They say you must die like a dog." "Remember" became the voice of protesting women who faced assault and abuse in the prisons and detention centers of the Islamic Republic. They recounted painful memories in "Remember": "I thought a female guard was going to come in. I had no clothes on. I had handed my clothes to that woman. I saw several men with masks on their faces enter. I recognized the person who always interrogated me by his voice. He was the last to enter... Unfortunately, they were touching my genitalia. They were molesting me... I was really in shock. I didn't know if these events were real? Am I dreaming? I didn't even realize the passage of time and where I was. I felt very bad. The interrogator said with filthy and disgusting words, 'Stretch this out!' I didn't even know how many of these people there were. The interrogator said when these five get tired, I will bring five more... You had to confess. Why didn't you listen to me? I started begging there. I said please. I made a mistake... I will do whatever you say. Unfortunately, this happened to me and... I am very sorry, I can't explain until the end..." The Baluch embroiderers. Where is their voice heard? What do we know of their suffering? In "Remember," we tried to convey their suffering to you. We asked them to take the podium and narrate. This is one of the narratives: "My aunt was embroidering until the last moments of her life. She had become very old. She had to wear two pairs of glasses to see the threads and fabric. Her hands had become crooked. Imagine someone embroidering at the age of eighty or ninety. With those crooked hands and a neck that could never straighten, she was embroidering until her last days; with that half-finished embroidery she was working on until her last days; with those crooked hands and the pain she felt with every stitch she made on that fabric." The Baluch fuel carriers and Kurdish porters, what do we know about them? About their families. In "Remember," we heard their voices speaking from the zero border point, narrating their suffering and oppression. This is the voice of a young Kurdish girl. A girl whose porter father was shot dead by the Revolutionary Guards at the Kurdistan border: "My father had been a porter for about four or five years since 2013-2014. At that time, we were kids and really didn't understand much about the world. He would go portering, and several times we heard news that there had been shootings, and it was unclear where my father was. Just this summer, they shot at two of our young men, and out of fear for their lives, they jumped into the Hengehshal dam in Baneh, and unfortunately, their bodies were found after about two or three weeks. The government didn't allow them to search much for them or go deep because many political prisoners are tied up and thrown into dams. They tie heavy stones to them so they sink to the bottom and die... Then my father would always take a bottle of water with him. Sometimes they would stay there for one or two days and nights in that cold and snow. They would take three or four pieces of bread and cheese and simple things. They were porters, and they couldn't buy anything substantial to take with them. Sometimes they would say it would take a few hours and we would return, but there were times they stayed there for two days without food and water and had nothing, and they would wait until the way was clear or until they could escape from the bullets and return." And although we recalled the sufferings and spoke against forgetting the pains and atrocities, we also spoke of inspiration and hope. About the parallel city that citizens build against oppression and tyranny. Baha'i citizens who did not accept oppression, rose against the deprivation of education, and realized their dreams despite the injustice. Erfan Sabati, in this episode of "Remember," spoke in praise of not sitting idly: "Those few Baha'i professors - men and women - who came in 1987 and established the Baha'i University could have sat idly and said, 'Well, we have a dream of building a better world, but now because of the Islamic Republic and this situation, we cannot realize it.' But they did not say that. They said it is true that we cannot see that dream today or tomorrow or in four days, but we will lay the foundation for it starting today. If we Baha'is have a specific image and vision of a university, let’s start it today. Let’s not wait until the Islamic Republic is gone! Now there is a stable and dynamic institution because they did not sit idly back then." We talked about the courage that multiplies among the people against oppression and despite the injustices, in conversations with citizens who chose not to submit and to stand up, against forgetting. Women like Mitra Hejazi Pour, who recalled Vida Mohammadi: "Well, at that time, in 2018, when I was still in Iran, it was very strange for me to see a woman in the street without a hijab, standing on an electric pole with that white scarf! It was very strange for me that she did this because I was afraid and didn't have the courage to do it. The reactions were really surprising to me. She became a legend for me. That someone did this. Why hadn't it occurred to me? How was it that no one had done this until now? It really impressed me, and then I saw girls who followed her without a hijab in the streets and how brutally they were beaten and dragged down from the poles, and this made me very angry and it was a beginning for me to say why I hadn’t done this all these years. All the whys we talked about at the beginning of the program came to me at that moment. The saying that courage multiplies, I imagined for a moment what an incredible feeling of liberation and freedom it has, and even the thought of it was liberating and amazing for me." The end of "Remember" focuses on achievements. In the last episode of "Remember," after hearing the narratives of resistance and steadfastness despite oppression, arrest, imprisonment, torture, abuse, execution, and massacre, we look at the achievements of this resistance. What has the citizens' steadfastness against the Islamic Republic yielded after all the irreparable costs that Iranian society has incurred? In this program, I have spoken with three journalists, analysts, and social observers. I ask Moloud Hajizadeh, a journalist in Norway. How does she view what happened in the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement? Moloud Hajizadeh: "Essentially, the nature of the 'Women, Life, Freedom' movement and the protests that began after the state murder of Mahsa Amini cannot be examined without considering the struggles of women that have existed over the past four decades. When this movement gained an international dimension, it became associated with women, and it cannot be imagined that a women’s movement with these progressive and freedom-seeking demands emerged overnight in Iranian society. These are in continuation of struggles that have been pursued by women for many years. Therefore, perhaps one of the achievements of this movement is that the efforts and struggles that have been pursued for years in the field of women, which were sometimes even overlooked in society and were continuously suppressed by the government, and even on an international level. These protests have existed over the years in different periods, but it has never been like this.