The extraordinarily potent story of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman shot dead during Saturday's demonstrations in Tehran.
by Martin FletcherShe was invoked by President Obama in the White House. The exiled son of Iran’s late Shah said that he carried her picture in his left breast pocket alongside those of his daughters. She was extolled in newspapers and on television bulletins from Australia to America, from Russia to Dubai.
The extraordinarily potent story of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman shot dead during Saturday’s demonstrations in Tehran, continued to wash around the world yesterday — touching everyone except the rulers of her own country, who did their level best to suppress it.
They forbade her family from holding a wake in a Tehran mosque. They ordered them to bury her without fanfare or eulogy. They ordered them not to speak about her in public, and reportedly even told them to remove the black mourning ribbons outside their house. The state-controlled media mentioned Miss Soltan only to suggest that her death was staged.
She was the daughter of a government worker from Tehran, the second of three children. She loved music and travelling and hoped to be a tour guide.
Though loyal to the Islamic Republic she was outraged by the apparent rigging of the presidential election. She started going to the demonstrations. Ignoring the entreaties of friends, she went to Saturday’s protests with her music teacher and two others but got stuck in traffic.
She stepped out of the car for some air, a gunshot rang out and Miss Soltan collapsed. Blood bubbled up through her mouth from the wound in her chest. Her last words were: “I’m burning.” Her body was put into a passing car which fought its way through the traffic. By the time she reached Shariati hospital it was too late.
Hamid Panahi, the music teacher, defied the regime’s gagging order. “They know me. They know where I am. They can come and get me whenever they want,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “When they kill an innocent child this is not justice. This is not religion. In no way is this acceptable.”
He called Miss Soltan a “beam of light” who “couldn’t stand the injustice of it all. All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted.”
Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, told BBC Persian TV: “Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her, Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.
“We worked so hard to get the authorities to release her body. She was taken to a morgue outside Tehran. The officials from the morgue asked if they could use parts of her corpse for body transplants for medical patients.
“We buried her in the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran. They asked us to bury her in this section where it seemed the authorities had set aside spaces for graves for those killed during the violent clashes in Tehran last week.
“On Monday afternoon we had planned to hold a memorial service at the mosque. But the authorities there and the paramilitary group, the Basij, wouldn’t allow it.
“They were afraid that lots of people could turn up at the event. So as things stand now, we are not allowed to hold any gatherings to remember Neda.”
Mohamad, who owns a Tehran hardware store, told The Times: “I voted for Ahmadinejad because I believed he was closer to my morality and piety. But this is not what we voted for. Life is the most divine thing in Islam. You don’t take it away like that.”
To read the original Times-Online article, please click here.