DEDICATION

I have never been a person

I have never been a person who would stoop to self-censoring and will never be," wrote young Iranian blogger Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi on his blog in 2006. "I'd rather not write at all if I have to stop being frank and honest in my words."

Mir-Sayafi died on Wednesday in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, where he was serving a two and a half year sentence for allegedly "insulting Imam Khomeini and the Supreme Leader Khamenei" and posting "seditious" materials on his blog.

The young man's doctor, Dr. Hesam Firouzi (who is jailed in the same prison for allegedly "propagating against the state") described his condition as "not at all fit for confinement." Mir-Sayafi should have been hospitalized right away, according to Dr Firouzi. "All they did was to refer him to the prison's psychiatrist, who gave him some medication with which Omid-Reza finally took his own life."

Dr. Firouzi blames prison officials for the blogger's death. "Despite all my pleas they did not take him to a hospital," he explained while describing the scene after Mir-Sayafi passed out. "They did not even do anything in the prison's infirmary. And I had to wash his stomach and inject the ampules myself. But it was too late."

Mir-Sayafi's blog, like its author, is no longer accessible. But with some searching one can find an archive containing the blogposts that led to his imprisonment. Browsing the archive reveals that Mir-Sayafi's main area of expertise was traditional Persian music. But he also wrote poetry and penned articles for Farsi electronic art journals. He was apparently well known in Iranian intelligentsia circles.

I never knew or met the deceased. But discovering his writings has, for me, brought him to life. There is a poetic melancholy haunting his postings, as in this excerpt: "I feel like a stranger in my own house...Is it really the ancient Persia I am living in? Is it the land of Cyrus the Great?... It must be a nightmare I am having. This is not Persia. This is the Islamic Republic."

In one of his blogposts, he describes a turning point in his life where he stopped being a passive bystander and instead became an active participant in the struggle against repression, a "second birth" as he puts it himself. That birth was only a prelude to the tragedy which ensued.

It happened in February 2000. He had been walking up a street which ran along a famous park in Tehran when he encountered hundreds of people scuffling with the police forces: one of those demonstrations common to the reformers' era.

I was standing around one of the gates beside a young couple when a 17 or 18 year-old Hezbollah boy approached us in spiteful steps.

Beat it! Disperse!" he spat.

As we didn't pay any attention, the boy raced towards the young couple addressing the young man: "Didn't you hear me, Zan-Jendeh ["husband of a whore"]? Didn't I just tell you to get the fuck out of here?"

The young man was too shocked to give even the smallest hint of a reaction. Obviously he could not simply ignore the insult - yet if he did anything he was sure to get arrested. Having witnessed the scene up close, and without any second thought, I ran at the Basiji boy and shoved him aside.

Of course he was beat up severely by the boy and his compadres with their batons.

He ended up in the Evin prison.

His anagnorisis--when the protagonist realizes the true identities of those surrounding him along with his own--took place in the solitary cell of Evin prison where he spent twenty days. The degree of injustice our protagonist had suffered was devastating enough to radically change his outlook: "I came out of the prison another Omid-Reza."

***
Mir-Sayafi clearly had too heroic a spirit to survive long. While the regime tried its best to keep him silent in life, in a magical, sad irony his voice still resonates even after his death when reading his July 2006 post on Akbar Mohammadi, a political prisoner who died in Evin Prison. In advance, Mir-Sayafi - though writing about another young man - penned his own eulogy:

Whether he died a natural death or was killed under torture, does not matter. He is no longer among us...Dear Akbar! I Wish you a peaceful journey...trust me, you won't be missing many things in here...We are sorry that all we did for you were just writing letters, chanting slogans or shedding a few tears...Forgive me!

Today the Persian new year started. Although we all know that axiomatic phrase that, hope never dies, ["Omid" in Farsi means hope.] if you hear my voice, Omid, know that we will miss you in the new year and all the years to come, and as you yourself said it about Akbar, your "fame shall never fade."

I end this all too short a tragedy by one of our hero's soliloquies:

Sooner or later, we have to leave our keys and check out. But the question is: Go where?...

The writer, who uses a pseudonym for his own safety, is a university student in Iran
//www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/20/mir-sayaf...

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Can someone translate his

Can someone translate his words?

زندگی در مملکتی که سید علی خامنه ای رهبرش باشد تهوع آور است .
زندگی در مملکتی که محمود احمدی احمدی نژاد رئیس دولتش باشد شرم آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که حداد عادل رئیس خانه ملتش باشد عذاب آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که محسنی اژه ای وزیر اطلاعات و امنیتش باشد وحشت آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که ستون نظامش هاشمی رفسنجانی باشد خجالت آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که نظریه پرداز و روشنفکرش محمد خاتمی باشد خنده آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که نظام حاکمش جمهوری اسلامی باشد ننگ آور است.
با تمام این موارد که خواندید ، هفتاد میلیون نفر در این مملکت زندگی می کنند و جز عده ای محدود صدا از کسی در نمی آید و انگار نه انگار که سرانجام این کاروان ، دره مرگ و تباهی است. تا کی می خواهیم با جملاتی نظیر "ما از نسل کوروش و داریوش هستیم" خودمان را فریب بدهیم ؟ اگر ما واقعا از نسل کوروش و داریوش بودیم امروز محمود احمدی نژاد نماینده ما در جامعه جهانی شناخته نمی شد و سید علی خامنه ای مالک جان و مال و ناموس ما (بنا بر نص صریح قانون اساسی جمهوری اسلامی) نبود . این وضعیتی که من میبینم من حتی شک دارم از نسل شاه عباس صفوی هم باشیم چه رسد به بزرگ مردی چون کوروش . آیا نباید به این جمله اعتقاد و ایمان داشت که "هر ملتی لایق همان حکومتی است که بر آن حکومت می کند؟"

He was you, He was us!

Amir-Hossein Saran Dies in Prison
Another Prisoner’s Family Mourns a Death - 2009.03.08

//www.roozonline.com/english/archives/2009/03...

He spoke truth to power.

He spoke truth to power. Profoundly moving. This is what he wrote:

"Instead of bending and unbending in prayers for a God dwelling cozily in the seventh heaven I learned to be an insignificant meek person who for the entire world would not take a whit worth of dirty money. I learned that I am the creator and the created. I learned that the salvation is not achieved by wandering through the primrose path of sticking to the dogmas and the preordained codes. But it is in having faith in the dignity, nobility and liberty of the human beings. I learned that humans are not a bunch of weak slaves or debilitated beings, but they are commanding and free agents who can create whatever they wish. I learned that I have to learn in order to set myself free. I learned to unlearn whatever I had learned earlier in my life and found my thoughts on a firm and correct base from the scratch. I learned I had been moving on the wrong track for 20 years. I learned I could be born again in any way I'd want to.
//www.huffingtonpost.com/jillian-york/in-memo...

Hold Iranian government responsible for this death

This is one of the saddest things that could happen.  We must not let the Iranian government get away with this.  If people make a big deal over Omidreza's death, we can raise the price of such criminal and inhumane treatment of prisoners for IRI.  Please follow human rights groups and sign petitions calling for arrest and trial of prison authorities responsible for Omidreza's death.

//www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=4657&c=Resource+Centre+News

"Iran: Deaths in custody highlight utter disregard for life by prison authorities

Prison authorities in Iran are further punishing prisoners by denying them medical treatment, Amnesty International said today following the second death in custody in less than two weeks as a result of being denied treatment.

“It is shameful that the health of prisoners is disregarded to such an extent that they are denied potentially life-saving treatment and allowed to die while in the care of the state. We fear that refusal of timely medical care is being used as another tactic in the arsenal of repression of dissent in Iran,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

"The Iranian authorities must open an investigation into this and other deaths in custody and ensure that any officials responsible are brought to justice."

Omid Reza Mirsayafi, an internet blogger aged around 25, died on 18 March at Tehran's Evin Prison less than six weeks after he is said to have began serving a 30-month prison sentence. He was convicted of "insulting the Supreme Leader" and "propaganda against the system" in relation to articles he had written on his blog, Rooznegaar; he denied the charges. Prior to his detention, Omid Reza Mirsayafi told the NGO Reporters without Borders, ”I am a cultural blogger, not a political blogger. Of all the articles I have posted online, only two or three were satirical. I did not mean to insult anyone.”

Background:
Other political prisoners have died in custody in suspicious circumstances in recent years. They include Abdolreza Rajabi, a member of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, died unexpectedly in Reja'i Shahr Prison on 30 October 2008, a day after he had been transferred there from Evin Prison. In 2006, Akbar Mohammadi, a student, died in Evin Prison, and Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi, a PMOI member under sentence of death, died in Reja’i Shahr Prison after hunger strikes in which they were apparently denied adequate medical attention (see //www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/099/2006/en). Amnesty International is not aware of any independent investigations into these deaths. Instead, Khalil Bahramian, the lawyer for Akbar Mohammadi’s family, found himself under investigation after he lodged a complaint over Akbar Mohammadi’s death.

Amnesty International has previously documented a pattern of denial of medical treatment to political prisoners, possibly as an extra punishment for their perceived crimes, or their behaviour in prison (see //www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/010/2006).

Convicted prisoners in Iran are held in prisons run by the State Prisons and Security and Corrective Measures Organization, which is under the control of the Head of the Judiciary.

*********************************

For further information, please contact:
Beth Berton-Hunter, Media Relations
416-363-9933, ext. 32

Thank you for this striking dedication, dear Nazy

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,

I am the softly falling snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain,

I am the fields of ripening grain.

I am in the morning hush,

I am in the graceful rush

Of beautiful birds in circling flight,

I am the starshine of the night.

I am in the flowers that bloom,

I am in a quiet room.

I am in the birds that sing,

I am in each lovely thing

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there. I do not die.

~ Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004)

You said it

Nazy I'm letting the warmth of my tears get me out of the numbness that I feel about Omidreza's death and many like him. A piece by Gluck that I just found through JD on MPD's blog, helps. I hope you get to listen to it as well.

on huffington post

An American blogger wrote a blog in his memory:

//www.huffingtonpost.com/jillian-york/in-memo...

In Farsi

آه، فرزندمن
ستایشگر موسیقی
پرستشگر شعر
هوشیاروروشن
متین وزبیا
شوریده وپرمهر

از گوانتانامو چیزها شنیده بودم
از ابوغریب نیز
اما اوین را می دانستم
می دانستم

چرا خطررا ندیدم،
که درپی ات به بند دویست ونه روان بود؟
چرا هیچ نگفتم؟
چرا هیچ ننوشتم؟
چرا فریاد نزدم؟
پیش از آنکه خبرت را بیاورند؟

آیا می شد صدایم به تو برسد؟
آیا کلمات من می توانست ترا نجات بخشد؟
آیا دستم به تو می رسید و می توانست بندت بگشاید؟
آیا می توانستم درنوروز ترا به مادرت برگردانم؟

دیگران چه؟
آیا منتظرمن هستند؟
آیا قراراست کاری برایشان بکنم؟
هیچ به من نمیگویی؟
نمیگویی چگونه؟

آه، فرزند من
بارگرانی بردوشم گذاشته ای
بار آگاهی
باردانستن
بارحقیقت

ودرنوروز
بابارتوبردوش
به پیش می روم

تقدیم به یاد امیدرضا میرصیافی، بلاگر ایرانی 1981-2009
شعر از نازی کاویانی
ترجمه نق نقو

//www.neghneghoo.com/

گفته می شود که

گفته می شود که به سبب این نوشته ایشان را محکوم کردند، ما هم این نوشته را تکرار می کنم تا بدانند که تفکرش زنده است و کشتنی نیست:

"زندگی در مملکتی که سید علی خامنه ای رهبرش باشد تهوع آور است .
زندگی در مملکتی که محمود احمدی احمدی نژاد رئیس دولتش باشد شرم آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که حداد عادل رئیس خانه ملتش باشد عذاب آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که محسنی اژه ای وزیر اطلاعات و امنیتش باشد وحشت آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که ستون نظامش هاشمی رفسنجانی باشد خجالت آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که نظریه پرداز و روشنفکرش محمد خاتمی باشد خنده آور است.
زندگی در مملکتی که نظام حاکمش جمهوری اسلامی باشد ننگ آور است.
با تمام این موارد که خواندید ، هفتاد میلیون نفر در این مملکت زندگی می کنند و جز عده ای محدود صدا از کسی در نمی آید و انگار نه انگار که سرانجام این کاروان ، دره مرگ و تباهی است. تا کی می خواهیم با جملاتی نظیر "ما از نسل کوروش و داریوش هستیم" خودمان را فریب بدهیم ؟ اگر ما واقعا از نسل کوروش و داریوش بودیم امروز محمود احمدی نژاد نماینده ما در جامعه جهانی شناخته نمی شد و سید علی خامنه ای مالک جان و مال و ناموس ما (بنا بر نص صریح قانون اساسی جمهوری اسلامی) نبود . این وضعیتی که من میبینم من حتی شک دارم از نسل شاه عباس صفوی هم باشیم چه رسد به بزرگ مردی چون کوروش . آیا نباید به این جمله اعتقاد و ایمان داشت که "هر ملتی لایق همان حکومتی است که بر آن حکومت می کند؟"

Source://canwethink.blogspot.com

The Burden

The burden is ours, indeed. Well said...

So sad

Thanks for sharing ur thoughts and emotions. Touching and sad.

Nowruz without Omid

Ms Kaviani

As a mother and a sister I cannot begin to describe how devastated must one be to lose a son or a brother. Hearing Omid's sister sobing so bitterly on the VOA's "zan emrooz was heart wrenching.

Thank you for your fitting dedication to a fallen star.

Appeal to savea prisoner of conscience

Write to Iranian leaders to stop the execution of Farzad Kamangar, a 32 year old Kurdish teacher and social activist, sentenced to death following an unfair trial.

Go here:  //www.iranhumanrights.org/themes/far-right-page/petition-to-protest-death-penalty-for-journalist.html

Prisoners of Conscience

The following university students, labor activists, and writers are some of the known prisoners of conscience in Iran at this time, according to International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. //www.iranhumanrights.org/

Keep an eye on them and demand their release by signing petitions circulating or by contacting the above link.

Yaser Torkman

Mehdi Mashayekhi

Ronak Safazadeh

Mansoor Osanloo

Alieh Eghdamdoust

Ahmad Ghasaban

Majid Tavakoli

Esmael Samanpour

Nariman Mostafavi

Mohammad Pourabdollah

Mohammad Sadiq Kaboudvand

Ayatollah Kazemini Boroujerdi

Shabnam Madadzadeh

Hossein Torkashvand

Abbas Khorsandi

Sanaz Allahyari

Kourosh Daneshvar

Abbas Hakimzadeh

Mehdi Noori

Massoud Samavatyan

Alireza Montazer

Habib Ghovati

Majid Alasti

Mehrdad Soori

Mohammad Reza Sediqi

Hasan Harischian

For what crime?

For what crime did this young man die? I am so sad.

Iranian nation shame on

Iranian nation shame on you.
Mullas or Shah are too much for you.
You suck.
You suck.
You have lost your dignity and decency long long time ago.
I spit on you my nation and for everything that you stand for You:
From the past and present.
My nation will not do anything no matter how hard the decency is attacked.
To my nation decency means only money and self interest.
I spit on you my nation.
You suck.
If they mascare everybody in Evin, still my nation will not care.
My nation suck.
I spit on my nation and on evrything they stand for: from past and present.

Bachehtehran

Child of mine

Nazi JAn,
Thanks for the moving piece. I will put a translation of it in my blog (BA (bi) ejAzeh)
Parviz Forghani

Nazy Khanoom

Thanks for your poem.

Ramin.

It's so sad...

It's so sad that this young handsome man never saw this beautiful first day of Spring...

Thank you Nazy Jan for your moving poem! Azarin

I hear you, Nazy

Amen.

Oh Nazy jan, this is so

Oh Nazy jan, this is so sad but it is so telling. My heart is aching with pain for the loss of so many of our brave brothers and sisters in Iran. Payandeh Iran

ta hengami ke aazadi

ta hengami ke aazadi nabasheh Omidreza ha par par mishan! sokhtam va baz nefrineshoon kardam. zendeh bad aazadi!