[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Forbidden IRAN!!!!]

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FRONTLINE/World: Forbidden Iran

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iran/index.html
January 08, 2004 9:00pm
In July 2003, Canadian journalist Zara Kazemi was beaten to death in an Iranian prison for attempting to report a story that Iran's hard-line, theocratic government didn't want told.

In this edition of FRONTLINE/World, Canadian journalist Jane Kokan goes undercover in Iran to pick up the trail where Kazemi left off.

"The story I am after is the story Zara Kazemi died trying to tell," Kokan says, "the underground student movement that's taking on the mullahs."

In "Forbidden Iran" -one of three segments in this edition of PBS's international newsmagazine-Kokan risks her own safety to piece together evidence of a government-sponsored reign of terror against students calling for democratic reform. Traveling undercover as an archaeologist interested in ancient Iranian ruins, Kokan escapes the constant surveillance of the Iranian authorities to record exclusive interviews with students and activists who have been victims of the regime's repression.

"Iran is a country violently split in two," Kokan says. "It's a harsh fundamentalist Islamic republic, but it's also a young country: 70 percent of Iranians are under age 30. And they've had enough of the mullahs."

Kokan takes viewers inside Iran, where she secretly makes contact with students opposed to the repressive regime. Dodging the watchful eyes of her Iranian minder-and fearing that her hotel room is bugged-Kokan slips away at night to send coded emails from local Internet cafŽs.

Kokan's secret planning leads to several meetings with student leaders who share their personal tales of imprisonment and torture at the hands of Iran's government.

"When you are first arrested, you are put in solitary for months, in these solitary cells which are 1 meter by 2 meters," says an Iranian student, who tells Kokan that he has been arrested four times, the first time when he was seventeen.

"One is left alone for months, and there they force you to make false confessions."

Another student, identified as "Ismael," also reports being arrested numerous times.

"To tell you the truth, we don't live as such here-we just pretend we live," he says. "Even the ordinary people who are not political and go about their daily business are not really living. Everyone just lives from day to day."

"Forbidden Iran" reveals how the Iranian authorities ruthlessly responded to June 2003 demonstrations by disillusioned students calling for governmental reform. Viewers see photographs taken of a raid on a student dormitory, in which Islamic militants controlled by the mullahs attacked the sleeping students with machetes, butcher knives and chains. The exact death toll is unknown.

Viewers also witness videotaped footage of a July 2003 student demonstration. The footage, shot by the wife of a student protestor before she fled the country, shows police and bearded, black-clad, bicycle-riding Islamic vigilantes known as "basiji" attacking the students.

"The guards were riding on the pavement and beating up people with batons," the woman says. "They were all over the place, so if anything happened they could put the protestors down."

Correspondent Kokan's underground contacts also help her gain access to Amir Fakhravar. Considered to be one of the student movement's key leaders, Fakhravar is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence for writing a book that advocated democracy and free speech. He is also credited with smuggling a letter out of his jail cell in which he exhorted Iranians to boycott the nation's March 2003 elections, which he claimed were a sham. Voter turnout in the election plummeted to just 12 percent.

Speaking on a cell phone smuggled into his prison cell, Fakhravar tells Kokan that he witnessed the deaths of 19 students "with his own eyes" and claims that thousands of other students have been imprisoned in secret, unofficial prisons throughout Iran.

His statements are later corroborated by a former leader of Ansar-e-Hizbollah, an extreme fundamentalist group tied to the mullahs.

"There are many who are kept in the unofficial prisons, with names such as 59, Tohid, and 66," says "Ibrahimi," who later was imprisoned himself and subsequently fled Iran. "There are many. Autonomous forces associated with the conservatives treat prisoners there most savagely."

Ibrahimi claims that his vigilante gang took their orders from Iran's Supreme Leader himself, the Ayatollah Khameini.

"Mr. Khameini had ordered me to somehow silence the student movement in Iran," he says.

Kokan's interviews with student demonstrators reveal a group that is eager for help from the West-provided that help does not come in the form of an Iraq-style invasion.

"The free world including America can put pressure on the ruling clerics so that they accept holding a referendum to decide the future democratic structure of Iran," an Iranian student says, "But they cannot interfere militarily. We are not after their military intervention."

Also featured in this edition of FRONTLINE/World: a report from Spain on the Prestige oil tanker disaster and a world music feature from Belize.

[Spenta]

This is most excellent! We were all talking about how we'd love to see this Channel 4 documentary in the US, and now we have a chance.

Also, Frontline World Magazine, uses a pieces of music in the beginning and the end for list of their sponsors which is a really nice piece of Santoor (Persian musical instrument) music , or they were using it all of last year.

And as many of you already know, I have repeatedly criticised much of the western Press coverage on Iran, but one organisation stands out which I applaud and that is NPR and PBS (with NPR at the number One position, IMO). Their Iran dissent coverage and student protests have been truly excellent in the last 3 years. They have done pieces on Reformists and Reza Pahlavi, very fair and objective. They (PBS McNeil News Hour) are also the only News media oultet in the west that hosted a political roundtable on Iran which included Monarchists, Republicans, and even Islamic Reformists. I was most impressed with that, very balanced, fair, unbiased and thorough coverage.

Frontline in the 1980s was the first to air a thorough investigative report on the Iran Contra scandel with an in-depth documentary showing the relationship between the Reagan White House and Khomeini's regime.

The last Frontline documentary on Iran about a year or two ago, was typically biased in favor of Reformists. I can't recall who produced the documentary, but I found it as typically biased in the way that some western liberal media worships the Islamic Reformists, I remember being deeply disappointed in Frontline for airing that documentary, but I know they try to be fair and air any documentary produced by anyone that is politically investigative, and back then there was almost nothing on Iran.

I also recall the Frontline Magazine piece shortly before the invasion of Iraq which was prodcued by a famous British war correspondeant who managed to do the last piece from inside of Iraq before the invasion. That piece was really horrifying in its depiction of Saddam's barbaric and inhuman brutality and the paralysing trauma of the Iraqi population. I found that also to be a very unique investigative report, which many others were ignoring. It was not the typical angle that the liberal media was taking, but Frontline once again went for good investigative journalism as opposed to liberal bias.

On the minus side of course, PBS also hosts Charlie Rose, royal Ass kisser par excellence and groupie of of the rich, powerful, beautiful, famous and unshaven Reformist Islamists. Now that is a disappointemnt, and I stopped watching Khatami's Number One western male groupie Charlie Rose, years ago since I found it as a waste of time. Khatami's female western groupies of course are good Charlie Rose friends and guests Elaine Scolioni, Robin Wright, and Genvience Abdo.

So NPR, PBS and Frontine continue to impress me. I may not agree with everything they air, but I truly appreciate the diversity, balance, and range! I would like to porpose that a future secular democratic Iran, establish NPR/PBS style public media, independant of government and business/corporations. This is a uniquely wonderful American media phenomenon dating back to the early FCC Golden era (which truly was a Golden era prior to its total deregulation/destruction under Reagan) which is a necessity in a democracy IMO.

[redemption]

[Khorshid]

Thank you for this notice. I look forward to watching it.

Wright and someone in London's "Independent" were the first, while the last breaths of the victims of Bam, including a hundred or so university students, had not left their bodies to use this tragedy as an opportunity to further their EVIL (I know no other word for it, though I'm not religious) agenda of normalizing US-Islamist Republic relations.

I can't think of any one single journalist as hated by the Iranian community as Robin Wright.

[WrightsRight]

Speaking of Robin Wright.. it blew my mind today.. well not exactly blew my mind, but sort was suprised that she totally neglected to talk about the most important demand of the three demands made by President Bush yesterday. She mentioned end Nuclear Program and Release Bin Laden Network but didn't say anything about Freedom and the Iranian people - and she constantly tried to lump the Iranians and Regime together.. amazing..



i think you should do you research and see what kind of person wright is. wright is a liberal. so of course she is going to have what she thinks in her article, and its definately not support for nationalism in Iran. She has written several books on Iran, and she constantly writes about Iranian agendas too. So, if you dont like her don't read her junk. It's her story and its her story, so it will come out the way she wants it too. I love bush because he is not going to invade Iran again and install a puppet regime, like the one going on in Afghanistan right now.

Again, its up to the people living in Iran what to do. The whole world knows about it, what can they do,nothing but support them. So, okay, we support those students...now what....

[redemption]

[Jessica]

Hi,
I'm the outreach coordinator for FRONTLINE/World and was pleased to stumble upon this plug for our upcoming broadcast of "Forbidden Iran."

For those of you who miss(ed) the broadcast, you can watch the whole report via streaming video on our web site beginning Monday, January 12.

Watch it here: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iran/index.html , then click on "react" to share your thoughts.

Best,
Jessica Smith

[mina]

[shamshiri]

[soudabeh]

[redemption]

Aside from Kokan's difficulties with Zahra's name pronounciation, I thought it was pretty good. Nothing that activists don't already know, however it was very good for opening up the eyes of the American public. It's definitely a plus for the movement! --- GOOD JOB JANE!

-redemption=-
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IRANIANS UNITE
PERSIA LIVES ON!!
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[LatinoAmerican]

Great program tonight.. Thank you for the notification.

[cyrus]

She has done a great Job exposing Islamic Clerical Regime, show the world how easy the Mafia regime kill oppositions and remind the world regarding Ms. Kazemi case.

[UNIWorld]

I just wanted to say that I was disgusted by Shirin Ebadi's cooments and how she was protrayed on the program.

[fineice]