Omid

Foram 444 dias que os 52 reféns passaram em cativeiro, na embaixada americana em Teerão. No dia 20 de Janeiro de 1981, faz hoje vinte e cinco anos, foram libertados.

Um quarto de século depois, a tirania dos ayatollahs persiste, brutal, assassina e perigosa. Mas há quem tenha a coragem de resistir — as irmãs Ladan e Roya Boroumand, por exemplo:

The Boroumands are sisters, both with French PhDs, both with other (now abandoned) careers, both daughters of Abdorrahman Boroumand, an anti-Shah, anti-Islamicist Iranian democrat. Boroumand was murdered by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Paris on April 18, 1991, and the sisters know they could meet the same fate: the Iranian regime has a record of killing its opponents outside the country, usually with impunity.

[Fonte: Anne Applebaum, A Web Witness to Iranian Brutality, Washington Post, 20-01-2006].

Hoje e para assinalar o vigésimo quinto aniversário da libertação dos reféns de Teerão, lançam um novo site, http://www.abfiran.org/, uma mistura de base de dados e memorial das vítimas do terror iraniano:

Enter the Web site: http://www.abfiran.org/ . Click on "Omid: A Memorial," and then "Search." Enter a name — or a religion, a nationality, an alleged crime. One by one, the stories will transfix you.

Atefeh Rajabi , a 16-year-old schoolgirl: Executed by hanging in Neka, Aug. 15, 2004, for "acts incompatible with chastity."

Azizullah Gulshani: Executed by the state in Mashad , April 29, 1982, for "promoting the dirty, non-Islamic sect of Bahaism."

Ali Akbar Tabatabai: Executed by extrajudicial shooting in Maryland, July 23, 1980, for an "unknown revolutionary offense."

Many of the entries are frustrating. There is "no information on this case," or else the information — from official sources, exile groups, human rights groups — is sparse. Dates are missing, photographs are missing, and although the site has English and Farsi links to nearly 10,000 political victims of the Islamic Republic of Iran, thousands more haven't even been entered yet.

But this, say Ladan and Roya Boroumand, is only the beginning: their "Omid" Web site, named for the word "hope" in Farsi, is a living project that will expand as relatives of the victims of the Iranian Islamic regime add to it, correct it, change it.

[Fonte: Anne Applebaum, artigo citado]

Já consegui visitar o site e deixo um desafio a todos os bloggers portugueses: coloquem a ligação para este site em lugar de destaque nas respectivas páginas, visitem-no assim que possível, divulguem os registos da violência assassina do regime dos ayatollahs.

Ao fazê-lo estarão a dar a melhor ajuda possível aos que, como as irmãs Bouromand, arriscam a vida para resistir à tirania.

Se parecer pouco, recordem-se da frase de Edmund Burke: "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."