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January 21, 2006
US: Women Create Database Of Islamist Regime's Forgotten Victims
Two women now living in Washington DC, US, have unveiled an online database of victims of the Iranian Islamic revolution, which began in 1979 and still has not finished.
The women, Ladan and Roya Boroumand, as reported by AP in Newsday and other sources such as the Toronto Star, have so far compiled 9400 cases of individuals executed by the Muslim despots who rule Iran.
The women have dedicated the site to one of its victims, Abdorrahman Boroumand, who was stabbed to death in 1991, in his apartment building in Paris, where he was living in exile. A leader of the Iranian Resistance, his murderers are believed to have been Iranian government agents.
Ten years after their father's murder they decided to begin compiling the database. They employed the services of individuals in various countries, contributing information, and scouring news reports and records. The site where the database can be found bears the name of their enterprise, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation.
They do not judge the victims, or decide if a person is guilty or innocent. For the sisters, all are victims.
45 year old Roya states: "We cannot replace an official investigation. That's why we always insist that what we're doing is symbolic. We just want to initiate a debate. This is the first step to encourage a truth and reconciliation commission."
"In the Third World and Iran we really have not had a democracy — we are used to just going ahead and pushing the dirt under the rug and not looking at it. If we want to have a real transition to democracy, we need to look at what has happened to us and what we have done," she said.
"No one really cared about the due process of law. No one cared about the prostitute being killed or the homosexual being killed. Everyone was really busy politicking," Roya Boroumand observed.
The database's public unveiling is timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the release of 52 US embassy staff, who were held hostage by students (including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now the President of Iran) for 444 days.
Roya's sister, 48-year old Ladan, stated that at the beginning of the revolution, while the sisters were studying in France, they had great hopes for the new regime. But when they went to Iran their optimism turned to disillusionment, when they heard of rushed trials and mass executions.
"A sense of shame and guilt overwhelmed me," she said. She knows that currently the 9,400 individuals whose lives are commemorated mark the beginnings of a larger work. "We are really at the beginning of our work," she said.
The website database can be found here. With text in Farsi and English, the site is well designed. They call the database of victims Omid, the Iranian word for hope:
Omid: a Memorial in Defense of Human Rights is an electronic database of human rights violations in Iran. The Memorial is dedicated to the victims of the Islamic Republic since it was established in 1979. Omid's ultimate goal however is to be an impartial historical record that includes victims of human rights violations since December 10, 1948.The two sisters have done a magnificent job. There are one or two link problems on the introductory pages, but the database, which utilises the open source program Analyser, is very effective. The sisters have my respect, and their father would be proud of what they have achieved.Omid is solely concerned with the impartial protection of human rights. It includes the names of the individuals whose human rights were violated in the process leading to their death, regardless of their deeds. Omid neither supports nor opposes the political views of the victims whose stories it records.
A project of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), this virtual memorial provides an individual file for every victim, which details the human rights violations in his or her particular case. Visitors to the website may search the list in English or Farsi by using several criteria: the victim's name, gender, nationality, or religion; the date, place, or mode of execution; or the charges made against the victim.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 21, 2006 5:15 PM
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