Congratulations, Saddam is Gone

...Well actually I’ve never liked the idea of someone getting hanged. I have always been against the death penalty, so when they sms-ed me, emailed me or called me to say "congratulations, another Hitler is gone!" I didn’t get in a festive mood or get the need to go out and celebrate. Mohammad and Khalil and lots of other friends did.

How embittered can you become?! It's a human being, I thought. No matter what huge mistakes he made, no matter how harsh he was, how many pure souls he took, or how many lives he ruined. He is a human being. I couldn’t even bear to see the scenes of his execution.
"He should have paid." Pay? Who is better off now? Does anybody gain anything by his death? He could have paid by living the rest of his life in the prison. "In one of those luxury prisons where he get desserts after dinner?" Yes in one of those. He is a living human being and to take that, you become some one like Saddam as well. What is the difference between we: the modern civilized and him: the barbarian dictator?

"Don't you understand why I’m happy?" Of course I do. He was the one who took a lot's of mums and dads away, the person who was behind a lots of wars and deaths and genocides. But can you understand why I’m not happy? "But maybe you can't feel what he did, as good as I feel."

Believe me I do... He was the one who attacked Iran and took so many precious brave lives of my land mates for eight years. How can I say... I won't even feel happy if they hanged *Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who has a lot of blood on his hands, blood of my sisters and brothers... No I wont be happy...

But do you know why? Do YOU understand where I'm coming from?
I think, death sentence, torturing and these kind of things are just human vendetta's. People want to get even, so they take revenge like this. Won't it be much humanly if we forgive? We don't need to forget! No let's remember and learn. And I by forgiving I didn't mean letting these people free. Because by doing that, we will endanger the society. That is the whole concept of putting people in jail. But this jail-sentence turns in to torturing and then we go so far with our vindictive feelings, that we even want to execute a human being.
Now, do you understand why I just won't be happy?!

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*Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Hashemi Bahramani born on August 25, 1934, is an influential Iranian politician, and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran.
He served as President of Iran from 1989 to 1997, losing on the second ballot to Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 Iranian presidential election in his attempt at a third term in office.
The criminal court of Berlin issued an international warrant for Rafsanjani’s arrest after he was found to be a key member of a four-man committee that made the decisions for assassination of Iranian dissidents abroad. Rafsanjani’s past is heavily tainted with involvement in international terrorism; as President he personally oversaw much of the activities of VEVAK, Iran’s dreaded secret police, and dozens of terrorist attacks abroad were carried out under his command, including the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen, and the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994. More than 80 people died in that attack.

To Kianoosh Sanjari

Dear Kianoosh*,

In less than 45 minutes, the Human Rights Day, will be shining for 24 hours, here. I don't know whether you will be able to breath it's oxygen in the individual cell which you are being held in, or feel it's radiations under the tortures you are being put through. No... You are right, the Human Rights Day won't shine in political prisons, it won't shine to the people who pay for these rights with their bloods, and it certainly won't shine for the ones who died under inhumane whiplashes...
You have been arrested for no reason, just because of taking a look at a gathering seen near Boroojerdi's house. You were there just to come back and write it on your blog so people would notice another in humane thing going on in our country, Iran. You have been held without them having formed an official crime-file for you, without giving you the permission to have a lawyer. They have tortured you for two months now...
Every minute that I was in my warm house, close to my beloved family, hear my friends make a joke, sleep in my cozy bed, eating a home made meal, you were in pain... And I feel helpless even though I'm doing all I can to make people listen, to take their attention for 5 minutes so they can just put their name on a piece of paper for you to become free... People are busy these days you know... They are caught up in their own lives. Their relationships and work and bills they have to pay. Who cares about a young boy fighting for his life in a far far country which has a strange president calling Holocaust a myth or wanting to wipe off countries from the map. Who cares about a young dissident fighting for the freedom and the democracy which is taken from his country.
But I will scream your name, for every whip you take. I will cry out as long as there is a voice inside me, there is a heart beating in me, and will make them listen... Even if it is for five minutes.


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*Mehdy (Kianoosh) Sanjari is a student activist and blogger in Iran who was arrested on 7 October whilst reporting on clashes between security forces and supporters of Shi'a cleric Ayatollah Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi..