Dolf's Blog
Integral thoughts about development, humanity, spirituality
Revolution?
22 June
All over the world, the news about Iran is
hitting the headlines. The tragedies of protesters being killed
every day are being spread foremost across the Internet, in the
absence of foreign reporters in the country itself. Among Iranians
abroad, there is a mixture of shock and hope: shock about the
regime's brutal reaction to peaceful protests, hope for the
possibility of a change in the country's regime.
It is thirty years ago now that the Islamic revolution made an end
to a different despotic regime in Iran, that of the last Shah,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The excesses of that regime became too much
to carry for the people and they found a strong movement for change
in Khomeini's Islamic organisation. However, once the dust of the
revolution settled, this turned out to be an equally oppressive
regime that turned the people into prisoners of extremely
fundamentalist values.
Now, thirty years later, there is a whole generation that does not
know what freedom was like, except for the sparse information that
they can grab from the Internet, as far as it is not blocked by the
government. What they do know is that they are sick of being
oppressed, being forced into a way of living that is not theirs,
being cheated at supposedly democratic elections.
So here is another uprising, similar to a couple of years ago, but
again with more force. Would the people succeed this time in their
struggle for freedom or is a real strong movement still missing, so
that the uprising will eventually be smothered again? Time will tell.
May the sacrifices needed for change not become too high a toll to
pay for freedom.
