Why the Death of Canadian Photo-Journalist is not Making Headlines

 By Potkin Azarmehr

When I heard about the 54 year old Canadian photo-journalist going into a coma after repeatedly being beaten while in detention in Iran, I said to myself, this is it, this will break the British press' silence on the harsh religious dictatorship in Iran. Zahra Kazemi was in a coma for a week and I saw nothing on TV and nothing in the British newspapers. 

When she died on Saturday, I thought this is it, they are bound to report it now and for once let the world know what kind of thugs the Iranian youth have to deal with. I switched on the TV, to my amazement the top news was whether George Best had started drinking again or not! No mention of Zahra Kazemi. For heaven's sake she is after all a journalist colleague, I said to myself who had a lot more courage to cover real news than a servile "let's not rock the boat' BBC correspondent like Jim Muire. Why the silence??? I mean if she had been killed while in detention in Zimbabwe you would have all had a field day about it, right? It would be all over the front page, on TV, Zimbabwe opposition politicians would have been interviewed, The evil Mugabe would have been portrayed as even more evil... but this is Islamic Republic of Iran run by the Mullahs. They may issue a fatwa and the Muslims in UK will come after you. Then I saw Dan De Luce's report and put aside my Iranian conspiracy theory instincts. 

However when I read Dan De Luce' report I just blew into a rage. Once again the cunning Khatami is fooling the world. He has ordered an enquiry and rather than the Islamic Republic being condemned, everyone is singing the praises of the "reformist" president. 

But my Iranian memory remembers his same appeasing tricks with the serial murders of Iranian dissidents, when Khatami in the same fashion tried to contain the anger the Iranian population was feeling at the time. Just like now, he ordered an enquiry, lots of committees and bodies were formed and the theatre went on for a while until the tempers cooled down. At the end, none of the main culprits and orchestrates of the murders were jailed, the families of victims felt let down and their defense lawyers ended up in jail! 

So once again Dan De Luce goes on about the "reformist" president this and that and finishes the article by saying: "...hardline clergy closed another newspaper yesterday and arrested two more journalists and student activists as part of a intensifying crackdown on dissent following pro-democracy protests last month. " 

Please for once allow an Iranian to set the record straight. Once the power of the clergy in Iran is threatened there is no reformist and hardliner section, they all get down together and crackdown. After all do you not forget when Geneive Abdo your own correspondent

in Iran at the time along with her husband were expelled from Iran. She was pulling her hair out saying the ones behind our expulsion are the ones that are known as the "reformists" and not the "hardliners". 

A mullah is a mullah from humble souls dependent on handouts they have reached a position where they are ruling Iran, influencing the region and threatening the democratic values of the free world. They will not give up easily. There should be a global front against their global threat of fundamentalist terror.