A group of students from the Teheran University writes to the Nobel Prize winner Harold Printer

  2005/11/05 

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for literature for this year (2005). In his speeches that he delivered at various places, including Turin University , he lashed out at the American foreign policy. He gave those speeches after he had undergone a major operation for cancer. If we do not take his speech as delirium of a sick man still under the influence of medications, then it should be considered as a show of human indecency and deceitfulness. Afraid of seeing the truth, Printer tries not to look at it. It seems that for some people, as long as their lives are cushy, the rest don’t matter.

Mr. Pinter blamed America for the London bombings of 7/7. He believes that the attacks were the consequence of American foreign policy. His argument is that if America had not attacked the Taleban, Al-Qaida would not have bombed London .  

The crux of the speech of Mr. Pinter was: Why should we be concerned about the plight of people in other countries? Who cares if some thugs in other parts of the world slaughter other people? It is none of our business if a mad man like Saddam Hussein kills millions of his own people, invades his neighbours, gasses multiple villages, and massacres thousands of innocent children. What does it have to do with us if the Taleban maim the fingers of an eight year old girl for the crime of decorating them with dahlia flowers? Why should we give a damn if in 1986 thousands of political prisoners in Iran were executed during a single night? Should we do anything when the Iranian authors and artists are kidnapped in the streets and a few days later their mutilated corpses are found dumped in the outskirts of Tehran ? Why should the Europeans care if millions of Iranians leave behind their loved ones, risk their lives and escape the country to seek refuge in other countries because their lives are threatened? Why should it be important to us if the Islamic police (guards) rape underage girls before they execute them the next morning? It is probably their custom! The important issue here is that London should not be bombed.  

Mr. Printer’s rationale is that if people are dissatisfied of their rulers; let them overthrow them [the tyrannical rulers]. No other nation has the right to intervene in the “internal affairs” of another “sovereign” nation.  

Isn’t this statement hypocrisy when Mr. Printer knows that had it not been for the American intervention, Europeans could not have defeated Nazism on their own? He is well aware of the fact that Europeans owe their freedom to America . It was America who sacrificed her sons and daughters to liberate Europe from the Nazis. If Americans had to think like Mr. H. Pinter, Europe , most likely would have had a different destiny.  

Today, we the people of Iran are under the yoke of a regime no less brutal than the Nazis. Just like the Nazis, the Islamists are motivated by an ideology of hate. They have destroyed our country that they conquered through terror. They are as ruthless as the Nazis. Can Mr. Printer tell us, how can we fight them back with our bare hands? They have shown that they have no qualm killing any number of us. They have already killed hundreds of thousands, they can kill millions more. How many more of us should die, Mr. Printer for your sense of humanity to awaken, assuming you have any?  

These are a people who have divided the world between the “faithful” and the “infidel” and believe to have divine mandate to cleanse the Earth from the infidels. As far as they are concerned, we the infidels do not have even the right to live on the Earth that is given only to the faithful of Allah.  

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