Video of 18 Tir Protests of Iranian Students and speeches by Manouchehr Mohammadi

These are videos and pictures of the large student protests in Iran on 18 Tir, 1999, speeches and TV interviews by Manouchehr Mohammadi in Germany and America. These speeches resulted in Manouchehr's imprisonment upon his return to Iran:

Video of Akbar Mohammadi's funeral

I would like to share with you a video of my brother Akbar Mohammadi's funeral and burial procession:


Here is part 2:

Speech at Library of Congress with Vaclav Havel

To see video click here:

TITLE: Vaclav Havel: Dissidents and Freedom
SPEAKER: Vaclav Havel, Min Zin, Ramon Humberto Colas, Ales Mihalevic, Reybia Kadeer, Kim Seung Min, Ali Afshari, Manouchehr Mohammadi, Paula Dobriansky
EVENT DATE: 02/20/2007
RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes

DESCRIPTION:
Vaclav Havel conducts a forum on "Dissidents and Freedom," featuring eight dissidents and activists from around the world in a program sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center. The event included a short speech from each of the featured guests followed by a question-and-answer session. Havel also received awards from both the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

Speaker Biography: Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, is a playwright and human rights advocate. He currently holds the Chair of Modern Culture at the Library's John W. Kluge Center.

Speaker Biography: Manouchehr Mohammadi is a democracy activist in Iran.

A Summary of the Political Struggle of Akbar and Manouchehr Mohammadi

A Summary of the Political Struggle of Akbar and Manouchehr Mohammadi

The Mohammadis, Manouchehr and Akbar, are from a family that hails from the verdant province of Mazandaran in northern Iran. The names of all the members of this family are well-known among the Iranian people. Every member of this family—from the parents to the sisters and brothers—has either lost his or her employment, been arrested, suffered long-term imprisonment, been tortured, or killed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This family is renowned among the people for its dignity, integrity, and honesty. The family has not ceased its peaceful struggle for democracy in Iran for even one moment.

After receiving his high school diploma, Manouchehr Mohammadi—who is this family’s second born—first chose the teaching profession. He was dismissed from his teaching position due to his political activities. After taking the extremely rigorous general university entrance exam, he enrolled in both the Theoretical Economics Program at the Tehran Governmental University (Daneshgah-e Dowlati-ye Tehran) and the Law Program at the Central Payam-e Nour University (Daneshgah-e Payam-e Nour-e Markazi). Beginning in 1994, he founded the first independent and secular intellectual student political organization in the Islamic Republic at Tehran University, and then gradually expanded this organization to operate at other Iranian universities as well. Alongside these activities, he also founded a university student human rights organization entitled “University Students’ Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners.” Time and again, he succeeded in organizing political and trade union gatherings and meetings for thousands of participants at universities and making substantive speeches. By doing so, he was able to transform the conditions at the country’s universities to a large degree, and expand and improve the independence of the university student movement, despite the horrific political conditions and suppression. Before his last arrest, from his hiding place inside Iran, he gave hundreds of interviews to foreign-based radio programs, which broadcast them for Iranians in Iran. These interviews had a great effect on the people and university students inside the country.

In the course of his struggles as a university student, Manouchehr Mohammadi was forced to be on the run, and then was arrested, and incarcerated many times. During the last phase of his incarceration, he was imprisoned for seven years and two months, the last 13 months of which were spent in solitary confinement. His brother, Akbar Mohammadi, who was arrested at the same time as—but separately from—him, spent 25 months of the seven years and two months of his imprisonment in solitary confinement.

In the course of their imprisonment, Manouchehr and his brother suffered the worst types of medieval torture. The physical tortures included: the lashing of their bodies and soles of their feet with cables; being suspended from the ceiling with their arms bound behind their backs by shackles or handcuffs (with the intention of having their limbs pop from their sockets); having cold water thrown on their naked bodies; having their heads dunked in toilet bowls; being exposed for hours every day to noises so deafening as to rupture their eardrums, while being incarcerated in small, closed-off rooms; and being deprived of sleep for periods of at least three 24-hour periods, etc. Their guards resorted to torturing them psychologically as well. When the guards observed that these two brothers tolerated physical torture and did not break, the guards then tortured the brothers physically in from of each other in order to break their spirit. In an effort to take the psychological torture of the brothers further, and in order to give the appearance of the brothers’ death sentences, many times the guards took them to fake places of execution and performed mock executions, but did not execute them and returned them to prison. When the Ministry of Information and Security saw that threats were of no avail for the two brothers, it resorted to other means. That is, the Ministry promised the brothers that if they would abandon political activities and remain silent, they would be immediately freed from jail and each would be paid a million dollars. But Manouchehr Mohammadi reacted very strongly to this offer and spat on it. This angered the officers of the Islamic Republic very much, and they reacted by hanging him from a cross in solitary confinement for 24 hours and beat him with an iron rod on the two sides of his body, which caused fractures in some of his vertebrae. He is still suffering from these fractures.

In 1998, at the invitation of political, cultural, and university organizations connected with Iranians residing in the United States and Europe, Manouchehr Mohammadi traveled for several months to the United States and Germany. Among others, he met with the directors of the Heinrich Boell Foundation and with the leaders and representatives of the Green Party in the German Parliament. During this historic trip, he delivered dozens of substantive talks on the political history and student movement of Iran. These speeches attracted much coverage and attention in the media outside Iran.

Approximately nine months after his return to Iran, the well-known student uprising which culminated in the July 9, 1999 protests at the student dormitories at the University of Tehran took place. Following this event, Manouchehr Mohammadi and his brother Akbar Mohammadi—who gave his life fighting for democracy—were arrested. As the main leaders and top two suspects in this uprising, they were arrested, tried and convicted in the courts of the Islamic Republic. Initially, they were sentenced to death. However, their sentences were later commuted to 15-year prison sentences.

For weeks on end, in their news and analytical programs, all the television networks in the Islamic Republic introduced Manouchehr Mohammadi as an anti-revolutionary who, while traveling to the United States and European countries, received guidance from the governments of those countries, and returned to Iran, set in his decision to overthrow the Velayat-e Faqhih regime (or the regime known as the “Rule of the Jurisprudent”) and establish a Western-style democracy in its place.

After tolerating seven years and two months of imprisonment, finally, Akbar Mohammadi was murdered at Evin prison by the suppressive military regime. Following his death, in order to escape the relentless pressure from the media, the press, political organizations, and human rights groups, the judicial authorities of the Revolutionary Court gave Manouchehr Mohammadi a 20-day leave from prison so that he could attend his brother’s funeral, on the condition that he would not give any interviews to the media and the press.

On the 18th day of his leave, he fled the country under the cover of night, and with the help of members of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, he traversed the extremely difficult mountain terrains of Iran and entered Iraq. After passing through the mountainous area of Iraq, he then entered Turkey. After receiving a visa and before boarding the plane for a flight from Istanbul Airport to the United States, he was arrested by the airport police and turned over to Turkish security forces. He spent 11 days in a Turkish security detention center.

According to the order of the Turkish Prosecutor, Manouchehr Mohammadi should have been extradited to Iran. However, on the basis of the agreements reached between the U.S. Department of State through its embassy in Turkey with the Turkish Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry, instead of being extradited to Iran, at Sulaymaniyah Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, Manouchehr Mohammadi was handed over to the U.S. military. Afterwards, he was flown by a U.S. military plane to a U.S. air base in Germany. From there, he was transferred again, this time to a military air base in the United States.

Manouchehr Mohammadi says: “The Iranian people desire the support of the international community in their struggle for freedom. They especially seek the support of the United States, which can be their most important supporter in their quest for democracy. The Iranian people wish for European countries to pay attention to their long-term interests in connection with the Iranians’ just demands, instead of focusing on their short-term economic interests. The people of Iran wish to be effective members of the international community and desire friendship with all countries, including the United States and Israel.”

In the path of struggle for attaining democracy and freedom for the country and nation of Iran, Manouchehr Mohammadi extends his hand in cooperation to all Iranian political opposition groups—whether left, right, or middle, whether monarchist or republican. He asks them to temporarily set aside their partisan concerns and group politics and to consider the strategic interests of the Iranian people. They must pay attention to the fact that, regardless of the form its government takes—be it a republic or constitutional monarchy, etc.—the future political regime governing Iran must possess and respect the three main principles of freedom, democracy, and justice. The Iranian people are our biggest source of strength and are capable of reaching this goal. Proper care must be taken so that, along this path, they are supported completely. In his view, this support must be provided to an extensive front that encompasses all the various groups and independent personalities, so that they may witness the birth of an Iran that enjoys democracy and freedom, and thus, takes its rightful place in the international community.

For Manouchehr Mohammadi democracy is the ultimate goal. As an Iranian, his plan is to make contact with political and cultural leaders and representatives of every hue, international organizations, as well as other Iranians political activists, so that he can find the way to accomplish this goal.

In the course of his four-month stay in the United States, Manouchehr Mohammadi has been honored in various ways by numerous organizations. Among these honors are:

1) A fellowship from the National Endowment for Democracy, one of the largest and most reputable American organizations. This fellowship will allow him to continue his activities in seeking democracy for Iran and to pursue his efforts in turning the Iranian people’s dreams in this regard into reality; and

2) The 2006 Academic Freedom Award from the Middle East Studies Association (known as “MESA”), one of the worlds largest associations of scholars and researchers dealing with the Middle East. Since 2001, MESA has presented its Academic Freedom Award on appropriate occasions in recognition of sustained contributions in support of academic freedom in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2006, this award was given jointly to Akbar (posthumously) and Manouchehr Mohammadi of Iran; “Iranians who have sacrificed their freedom and even their lives in the struggle to exercise basic freedoms such as the freedom of expression and association” (Source: www.mesa.arizona.edu/excellence/academic.htm).

The Mohammadi brothers, Manouchehr and Akbar, have always believed in a peaceful struggle for democracy. However, in the course of their incarceration by the Islamic Republic, while in solitary confinement they underwent the worst types of physical and psychological tortures imaginable. While undergoing torture at that time, the late Akbar Mohammadi was the only one who did not stop—even for one moment—calling out the slogans “Long Live Freedom and Democracy,” and for this reason, he came to be known as a legendary figure within the national resistance movement of the university students for democracy. After seven years’ imprisonment, in his honor, university students and student groups named the day of Akbar’s death “National University Students’ Resistance Day for Democracy.” Before his martyrdom, university students and political prisoners had given him the title, “Messenger of Morality and Humanity.” During a leave for jail treatment, there were two attempts on the life of Akbar Mohammadi by agents of the Ministry of Information and Security. The first time was when he drove from Amol to the hospital in Babol to receive the results of his tests. On the way back, he was followed by two cars belonging to government terrorist agents. After being chased for four minutes, the agents successfully drove Akbar’s car off the road. The agents wanted to convince the public that he died because of swerving off the road. Fortunately, while his car was totally demolished, he was taken to the hospital by farmers and was saved. The second time was when his family was gathered at his father’s house, when suddenly an object was thrown through the window into the room, which was engulfed in flames in an instant. The entire second floor and a third of the first floor burned in the fire, but Akbar and the rest of the family survived.

During his seven years in prison, Akbar was subjected to many medieval tortures. As a result, he suffered severe injuries and illnesses in his ears, lower back, and kidneys. Judiciary doctors asked that his treatment be continued abroad. They also announced that, because of his many illnesses, he would no longer be physically capable of staying in prison.

But Akbar was granted only a short leave from prison in order to seek medical care. It was during this leave that he was able to write his political memoirs, entitled “Ideas and Lashes,” in Persian. These memoirs have been translated into English and will be on bookstands soon. Unfortunately, despite Akbar’s various illnesses, upon finding out about the publication of this book, the Velayat-e Faghih regime arrested him at his home and took him back to Evin prison. After his return to prison, the prison officials refused to allow him access to his medications, which he needed very badly. To object to this matter, and to reveal and draw attention to his inhumane treatment at the hands of these officials, he went on a hunger strike. After five days, he was transferred to the prison clinic where, at the order of the prison head, for three days his hands and feet were, again, forcefully chained to his bed. During each of these three days, while suffering from hunger, he was beaten severely for hours.

During these beatings, he was gagged with bandages and tape, so that his cries could not be heard by Iranian members of Parliament who had come for a visit to inspect Evin Prison. However, members of Parliament, such as Mr. A’lami, who were aware of Akbar Mohammadi’s hunger strike, let the matter pass and did not follow it up in the Parliament.

In the course of his seven years and two months of imprisonment, Akbar Mohammadi went on hunger strike more than ten times. During his last hunger strike (the first one during the presidency of Ahmadinejad), according to prison officials and Iranian Judiciary’s Spokesperson, he suffered a heard attack. Although, given his condition, he should have been taken to and kept in the Intensive Care Unit, he was taken on a stretcher to a general prison ward, where he died within 20 minutes.

Now, the question on the minds of the Iranian people is whether Akbar Mohammadi died as a result of his ongoing hunger strike or whether he was yet another victim of the infamous serial murders. Perhaps they had even caused his death by administering certain drugs or chemicals to him—a practice that is among the prevalent methods of the Ministry of Information and Security.

After Akbar was killed in prison, his mother and father requested from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security that Akbar be buried in Tehran or Omol, the family’s home town. The government agreed to bury him in Omol cemetery, and on the day of the burial, the Mohammadi’s and hundreds others gathered in the Omol cemetery for the funeral.

However, the Iranian government had no intention of keeping their word. The regime had taken Akbar’s body to a remote village far away from Omol in order to prevent Akbar’s funeral from becoming a vigil for students in Iran that are struggling for freedom. While Akbar’s parents were waiting at the site of the funeral service for the body to arrive, the government called and said, “your son’s body will not be buried in Omol. If you want to see him one last time, you must come to the village of Changemian right now.”

Akbar Mohammadi was one of the independent and secular leaders of the Iranian University Student Movement who wittingly and willingly gave his life for the cause of freedom, human dignity, and his country and people. Now, his brother Manouchehr Mohammadi, having escaped Iran, has come to the United States to bring his brother’s message to the world and to tell everyone about him so that his struggle and death will not have been in vain.

Manouchehr has some evidence on the details of Akbar Mohammadi’s death, as well as on Akbar and his own tortures, which he will present when he follows this matter up in international courts. Manouchehr believes that, in this way, arresting the Islamic Republic’s political, military, and security leaders—who are covered with the blood of the Iranian people up to the crowns of their heads—will be made somewhat less difficult. This will embolden the people and seekers of democracy who demand fundamental changes in the structure of power in Iran and believe that the Islamic Republic will never be capable of being reformed. These people believe that, in order to ensure its survival and stability, through playing political games, this regime buys time from the world and, at the same time, continues its criminal activities, such as murdering its own people and the people of the world.

He considers all the political, military, and security authorities—such as the Supreme Leader himself, Mr. Khamenei, the president, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the Minister of Information and Security, Mr. Mohseni Ejeyi—as well as the officials at the Evin prison, responsible for his brother’s death. Manouchehr Mohammadi asks all governmental and non-governmental human rights organizations to assist him in this quest. He also invites well-known and expert Iranian and American attorneys—who, for reasons of conscience or humanitarian reasons, would be willing to represent him free of charge—to assist him.

The mother of the Mohammadi family is very popular among Iranians both inside and outside Iran. Each one of her Persian-language interviews on every television or radio program, whether inside Iran or abroad, brings tears to the eyes of millions of Iranians. Every Iranian who meets this woman is impressed by her dignity in the face of her tremendous suffering and is uncontrollably reduced to tears. This woman, who is the mother of Mr. Manouchehr Mohammadi and the late Mr. Akbar Mohammadi, two of the most resilient fighters in the secular student movement for democracy, lives and speaks very plainly and wears simple national Iranian clothing. Similar to their mother, the Mohammadi’s father, too, enjoys great popularity among Iranians. The Mohammadis have two younger sisters, who have graduated from Iranian universities. After being freedom from jail, due to threats and the continuous danger they were exposed to, had no other alternative but to leave their homeland and come to the United States. Living in Europe was not possible for the Mohammadi family. Manouchehr’s sister, Nasrin, lived in Germany for four years, and during that time there were two attempts on her life. Fortunately, she survived both times. After having learned English, the sisters are preparing themselves for graduate studies at UCLA.