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Jamshid Chalangi:
In tonight’s edition of Behind the Headlines our guests, human rights activists Hossein Etemadi and Hassan Nayeb Hashem will be sharing with us the latest news of human rights abuses in Iran, including the ban on women to enter sport stadiums; the latest human rights sanctions on the Iranian regime by the US Congress, and the public protest against Iran’s national broadcasting organization for its biased reports on the protest movement of people plundered by bogus banks and credit companies run by the regime’s associates.
But first we will watch a video clip in which one of these protesting people vents her angst and frustrations.
Hassan Nayeb Hashem:
This decent woman is obviously complaining about the lack of action on the part of the authorities to care for her grievances. She is one of millions of Iranians who belong to the hard working people of the country who have lost all their saving and now has nothing to lose by confronting the government so openly in public. Listening to her, you would think that she is even prepared to see US enters into a war with Iran so the Iranian people are liberated from this regime, although the experience of what has happened in our neighboring countries has proved otherwise.
So, her demand is out of her desperation. We do not want a war for Iran to get rid of this regime. If we just continue with a civil movement and push back the regime gradually from its positions of power in a peaceful manner and use new tactics in our struggle, we will eventually overcome it.
Hossein Etemadi:
I do not think this regime will voluntarily give in. However, we can use the tactics of mass protests just like what the farmers in Isfahan did recently and join these protests with people like this woman and the striking workers at the Haftapeh Sugar Factory and Foolad Ahwaz Steel to oust the regime.
Hassan Nayeb Hashem:
What we are witnessing in Iran today is that all the disgruntled sections of the society are converging and targeting the regime as the main source of their economic problems. They must continue this undeclared unity of purpose and push back the regime, similar to what has now happened in North Korea and years ago in South Africa.
Jamshid Chalangi:
Why do you think the regime has been silent about the discovery of Reza Shah’s body?
Hossein Etemadi:
Reza Shah is the symbol of progress and Iranian nationalism, the very values that the Iranian people feel have been taken away from them by this regime over the last forty years.
We all witnessed how the young Iranian protestors shouted the name of Reza Shah during the mass demonstrations of last December. Reza Shah is now more popular among the Iranian people than any time before in our recent history and the young Iranians have concluded that he was a patriot who built a modern country.
Hassan Nayeb Hashem:
Many countries have had a revolution in their history but none have demolished the national heritage that came before these revolutions. In Iran we still have what they call Courts of Revolution, forty years after that revolution. It means that the country is still embroiled in violence and retribution.
Reza Shah is an undeniable part of our history and his legacy must be respected but this regime wants to annihilate everything that Iran has had in its history before they came to power.
Jamshid Chalangi:
What lies behind the growth of the business of selling newly born babies to rich foreign buyers?
Hossein Etemadi:
This is happening in public hospitals of Iran and it would be naïve to think that the authorities are not aware of it. Or more precisely, the authorities are actually behind this business themselves. There are regime-linked gangs who operate in these hospitals and they are the same people who run the prostitution rings and drug smuggling, with direct links to the commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.
I believe the US has now shown that it will not leave the Iranian people alone in their struggle against all these miseries, injustice and corruption that the Islamic republic regime has brought onto our nation.
As for the Israeli attack on the Iranian bases in Syria, the Iranian regime deceitfully claims that these bases and the forces that it has stationed in them are to fight the Daesh, which is a sheer lie. These bases are there to threaten the Israelis and as such they attack them for their own security.
Jamshid Chalangi:
Stay with us for this edition of Behind the Headlines and share it with your family and friends.
