Inaction & Iran

Suu Kyi, HH 13th Dalai Lama, Tank Man, Neda

Of the many ways in which one can succeed in harming oneself, inaction is the deadliest. The human consciousness dwells on the various activities one takes responsibility for, and who we are and what we are capable of doing is determined by what we are prepared to do and what we are prepared to resist. To be gifted with the resources one requires in order to execute an act and then to be deprived of the opportunity to do so is simply not freedom at all; in fact, under such circumstances, freedom is meaningless. Just as power comes only with responsibility, freedom to think must come with freedom to act. When the elections culminated in Iran with the declaration of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as being the continued president of the nation, Mir Hossein Moussavi, one of his opponents, alleged that the results were rigged. The tumult that soon followed completely overshadowed the debate as to whether Mr. Moussavi’s claims were true or false and, today, the tumult has shown no signs of abating. As I write this, I read on Twitter that an Iranian woman told CNN News that “it was Hitler” after she reportedly witnessed local security forces quell a protest in Tehran by throwing protestors off a bridge. And now, when I realise my inaction, my heart bleeds.

Democracy has always taken its toll in history. The people’s power has never been easy to establish, especially when it comes in after a monarchy or even an oligarchy. It has never been a question of trusting people with the votes – they are yet still purchased in many countries in large numbers – but only of sharing the power that comes with being the one man who leads a whole nation. As Jimi Hendrix summed it up, “when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Leaders seem to require a constant dose of reminders. Symbols need to be dug out of the monotony of one’s daily life. There was Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, the 13th Dalai Lama in Tibet, the Tank Man during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacres. And now, Neda Agha Soltan, a young student in Iran who was shot in her heart (June 20) by security personnel. Her dying moments were captured by at least two bystanders, subsequently plummetting her into posthumous stardom and also a “much needed” symbol depicting the need for democracy. For the people in Iran, for the people in Tibet, for the people in Chechnya, for the people in Myanmar, for the people in need of that freedom that permits them to think and act freely, the symbol of democracy is indeed much needed. I only hope they hold on to the emotions her martyrdom has spurred.

A free media is a true democracy

There has been a surge in media reports detailing the emergence of social media as a powerful tool when it comes to updates on events. Recently, in the wake of the Iranian elections and opposition leader Mousavi claiming them to be the results of widespread rigging, hundreds of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in protest as well as support. Once the local administration banned the internation media from reporting on their streets, quick developments on the issues raging therein were hidden behind a fog.

Enter Twitter. The social media tool kickstarted as an enterprise by Jack Dorsey in 2006 soon proved to be handy when it came to posting quick updates that could be followed by millions. Iranians tweeting from their homes began to send in minute-by-minute updates which seemed like what more than anyone could ask for. News now came not from middlemen who had to carry cameras and mikes, but from those who were experiencing the issues at a very personal and emotional level. In other words, the tumult on the streets of Teheran were being transcribed onto the reader’s browser, surrendering the freedom of interpretation to ourselves. Instead of being hailed as just a political crisis, to many the issue now has assumed the stark form of a humanitarian crisis as well.

In the process, a trend has emerged indicating a shift amongst the people in favour of a reporting service that does not concern information that comes at a price. At a higher level, what social media has done is downplayed the importance of a third party when it comes to locating sources of trouble and highlighting them in the media while encouraging the outcome that is being able to access information that is firsthand and mostly untouched. Now, for example, with Google opening up the source code for its Reader API, programmers can now easily develop software that enables the user to efficiently filter through tons of such pure information. If only more and more people by the day had access to the internet, the right to information in most nations could be a redundant statement of the freedom that technology is capable of delivering as well as how simple ideas can be magnified through it to change thousands of lives.