Persian People Power III

Fire of Liberty

While the Europeans and others have caught a case of cold feet when it comes to reporting Iran to the UN Security Council and recommending harsh sanctions on the mullahs' efforts to develop "the bomb," there are brave Iranians at this very moment trying the best to tear down the foundations of the regime by revealing the horrific nature of the masters in Tehran. Two individuals who are taking the pick-axe to the mullahs are Ladan and Roya Boroumand who established The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, after their late father, who was killed by the regime. Not only is ABF a tribute to their father's fight for freedom and human rights in Iran but it's also a database of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, attacked and inprisoned by the regime because they also chose to walk in the path of freedom and democracy. I have to say that the Washington Post's columnist Anne Applebaum pretty much summed up the efforts and the reasoning behind the daughters of Abdorrahman Boroumand compiling such a massive database in her January 20, 2006 column "A Web Witness to Iranian Brutality" when she wrote the following:

In their more optimistic moments, the Boroumands also hope that the mere act of participating in the project will remind Iranians that even in a totalitarian society, people are not entirely powerless. They can remember crimes, they can name the perpetrators and they can try to hold them to account. For that reason, the site also links to an extensive library of human rights documents, some translated into Farsi for the first time. Too many Iranians, the sisters say, feel that the terrible things that have occurred since the Islamic revolution of 1979 are "not their fault." But if you take responsibility for remembering the regime's crimes, soon you might also want to take responsibility for halting them. And that, of course, is the truly revolutionary thought behind the Boroumands' project.

Even if they don't achieve quite so much -- even if the regime successfully blocks access in Iran, or if Iranians remain too afraid to contribute -- the sisters are betting that their online archive will embarrass those members of the Iranian regime who still try to hide the true nature of their revolution from the outside world. At least until last week, when the Iranian president announced his intention to start enriching uranium, many in the United States and especially Europe were still arguing that Iran's government had mellowed, that Iran should be treated as a normal trading partner and a normal member of the international community. If nothing else, http://www.abfiran.org/ should make outsiders forever wary of that claim.

"At the minimum," Ladan says, "we are creating a database which academics and scholars will find useful. At the maximum, we start a real public debate about the regime's crimes in Iran -- and ultimately about accountability, due process and democracy." It is, she says, "a gamble." In more ways than one, she is right.

What's even more enlightening about ABF is that it adds more emphasis on the fact that the regime should not be in the possession of nuclear weapons because if they are willing to do this to their own people just think what horrific terror could be unleashed on Berlin, Tel Aviv or Los Angeles via one nuke. If their efforts are able to prevent the regime from building a nuke by opening up the door to a crumbling of the regime's foundation via a internal revolution then I say "carry on." No matter how you put it these brave souls are definately manning one of the many fires of liberty that shine a little light on the darkened "Outposts of Tyranny" thus giving us some greater insight on what evils a regime can truly commit.