A young Iranian woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was killed this past Saturday at a demonstration in Tehran in protest of the allegedly fraudulent election results. Her death has sparked further outrage by citizen protesters and she has quickly become a martyr of the movement. A video of the 26-year-old’s tragic and bloody death, caused by a bullet from a rooftop sniper, has been rapidly circulating within Iran and throughout the world. While the Iranian government has attempted to curb distribution of the video and ban public memorial services in her honor, its efforts have been mainly ineffective due to the video’s widespread circulation and her rapid rise to martyrdom. Neda – whose name means “voice” in Persian – is now being commonly referred to as the “voice of Iran” by members of the antigovernment movement. While Ms. Agha-Soltan has been embraced as a symbol of sacrifice and protest by the entire opposition movement, she is particularly iconic of the women who have been, according to The New York Times, “at the Vanguard of many of the protests throughout Iran.”[1] Women participating in the recent demonstrations have been powerful in their protest against the legal and social oppression of women under the current regime. The primary opposition candidate, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has campaigned on a platform of ending gender discrimination in Iranian law and government and is widely supported by Iranian women.
Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran. She was a student of philosophy, and she took singing lessons illegally, as women are not permitted to sing under current Iranian law. Her friends and relatives contend that she was not a political activist, but a supporter of freedom. She participated in the demonstrations, not in support of a particular candidate, but against election fraud and government deception.[2]
For more information, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23neda.html?ref=todayspaper
[1] Ibid.
[2] Borzou Daragahi, “Slain Woman becomes Face of Iran Protest Movement,” Chicago Tribune (June 23, 2009), p. 12
