THE TELEGRAPH: YouTube, Facebook and other websites have brought down a virtual wall between Iran and the West, writes Leyla Ferani.
Earlier this year I spent a month living in Tehran. I’m a 21 year-old British-Iranian from London, and it was my first time back to the Islamic Republic since my twelfth birthday. By day, I dutifully donned a shawl and an overcoat, in public playing the part – like all Iranian girls my age – of the respectful and obedient woman.
But at night, and in private, the shawls were off. The same girls – with their brothers and cousins – joined me in underground raves, fuelled by smuggled alcohol and copious amounts of cannabis. Among the city’s youth, the elections hardly entered conversation. When I asked Mazyiar, a twenty-six year-old, if he would vote, he shrugged, saying, “All the candidates are approved by the Ayatollah, what’s the point?”
In the space of two months, all that has changed. “Where is my vote?”, thousands of young Iranians are chanting in the streets and posting on their supposedly banned Facebook profiles. One look at my own feed tells me how cheated the young people of Iran feel, now that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected for another four years. “Shout out on the street: ‘Death to the dictator’”, one status tells me, adding cautiously , “but remember not to protest in groups, you must stay dispersed.” Another one says simply, “Supporters of Mousavi protest from Vali-Aser square to Tajrish wearing green cloth”.
All the young Iranians who told me they wouldn’t vote surged behind Mir-Hossein Mousavi; maybe they saw him as the lesser of two evils, the only candidate able to oust the hardliner. One thing is certain: for young middle class Iranians the strained veneer of the Islamist regime is crumbling. They are sick of leading double lives, and having a President they consider to be a global embarrassment.
“I have a good life, I party harder than you guys do”, a twenty-four year old student told me at a party in downtown Tehran, just managing to lift his voice above the music (the lyrics ‘I wanna make love’ blared out). He went on, with typical Persian hyperbole: “I feel a heaviness in my heart, because I know that I’m not living the way I want to.” Judging by the events of the last few days, this heaviness has turned to anger, as young Iranians battled with riot police in the streets, setting fire to cars and fleeing the stun grenades.
If it ever happens, young Iranians believe they will be the ones to dismantle Iran’s Islamist regime. There is some irony in this – after all, a generation ago it was the students who began the 1979 revolution. That year, on November 4, a fresh-faced Ahmadinejad was among those who stormed the US embassy, beginning the Iran hostage crisis.
Those events confirmed fears that the newly formed Islamic republic was to be a pariah to the West. Yet it was only around 500 students who volunteered to be the vessel for the 1979 change. Now in Islamic garb, they are running the country. But is their time running out?
The recent protests have a new dimension: they were organised – and publicised – online. Iranians intent on change are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other blogging sites as a loudspeaker to amplify their anger towards the regime. Iran can no longer suppress its youth >>> Leyla Ferani | Monday, June 15, 2009
