Iranians Worldwide Roll Out Green Scroll Against Ahmadinejad (SLIDESHOW)

July 13, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Sarahpalin

"Once in a while, someone doing the same things you are doing will get in trouble, and it creates an atmosphere of fear. In Iran, you never know who will be handpicked as an example," explained expat Banafsheh Madaninejad, who lives in Austin. Nevertheless, she helped create the website austinforiran.org, and this past weekend was one of thousands of Iranians around the world who bravely signed Green Scroll petitions proclaiming Ahmadinejad is not Iran's president.

p> When a reporter asked Vaclav Havel to comment on the election protests in Iran, the former Czech president said, "Expressions of solidarity with those who are defending human rights, with students and others, are important."

Havel spoke from hard-won experience. He led the Velvet Revolution that peacefully overthrew a totalitarian regime. However, Iranians abroad who support the demonstrators know they walk a fine line between being perceived as supporters or as outside agitators, and they take care not to cross it.

All of the international signatures will be sewn together and unfurled later this month, ideally before the inauguration of Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on July 27th. Plan A is to hang the scroll from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Plan B is to unfurl the petition from atop Toronto's CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in North America.

I met Madaninejad, a University of Texas doctoral student, last Friday. We both happened to be standing on the Congress Avenue Bridge, which is home to America's largest urban bat colony. At dusk, when more than a million bats flew out from under this overpass, the scene resembled an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Although bats are Austin's #1 tourist attraction, most of the people on the bat bridge were there to support friends and family in Iran by signing the long piece of fabric nicknamed the Green Scroll.

The primary goal of the Green Scroll campaign is to reassure Iranians inside Iran that they are not alone in their struggle. The organizers have taken pains to support rather than agitate. "Not for political reasons, but for the safety of students who will be returning to Iran, we've diluted our protests. We've been careful to stay one step behind the protesters inside Iran. For example, if they introduce a particular slogan today, we will wait until tomorrow to use it. We let them set the agenda," said Madaninejad.

Dozens of cities around the world hosted peaceful Green Scroll gatherings July 9 -12. I received this note from an organizer in Bangalore, India, where the process was more difficult:

Hi. I am mailing you from India. Here we don't have the government's support. If the Iran consulate finds out, we could be deported to Iran and admitted to prison. What we are doing is circulating the scroll, so we don't have any gathering. I will take a picture of the scroll after everyone has signed. Thank you.

In Dubai, police stopped the Green Scroll petition from circulating among the 100 Iranian demonstrators:

"The police came and asked me to stop the signing and the sending of the cloth outside of the UAE because there are still important relations between the UAE and Iran," said Farhad, a 44-year-old Iranian who attended with his family.

Madaninejad admits the demonstrations in Iran caught most expats by surprise. At first there were misunderstandings, particularly among the generations. For example, students were using the flag of the Islamic Republic, while older Iranians preferred a flag from the Shah of Iran's time. "One of the first things we did was to have several meetings so that the students, the older generation, the lefties, the monarchists, pretty much everyone could come together in one bloc to support a new election, the freeing of political prisoners, and the arrest of people opening fire on the protesters. We're all heartbroken by the violence inflicted upon the demonstrators, but also tremendously proud of their non-violent presence in the streets demanding justice."