Author's illustrations
convey lost love, death
By Regis Behe
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
November 19, 2006
Marjane Satrapi doesn't want to be
viewed as representative of Iran, her native country. She resists
being labeled as an emblematic voice for Iranian women, dissidents or the
citizenry at large. "Being responsible for myself is already too much for
me," she says. "Being responsible for a whole nation, even for a
generation, is really too much." And yet,
Satrapi, by way of her "Persepolis" books and the
recently published "Chicken With Plums," has come to embody a segment
of the Iranian population that does not spout fundamentalist rhetoric or shout
"Death to America" in public
squares. Those cliched perceptions are dispelled in her graphic novels, which
have become bestsellers around the world, especially in the United States, France and Japan. For Satrapi, who was
born in 1969, the books are the observations of one person, and nothing more.
"I am not a politician, I am not a sociologist," she says, "but
I am born in a certain place, in a certain time and can be completely unsure
about everything else except what I have seen with my own eyes. ... That's why
I wrote it in my own name; not so much that this is an autobiography, because
normally, an autobiography is a book in which you solve problems with people
that you don't like. That is not my book; I just used my book to talk about
everything that happened." "Persepolis: The Story of a
Childhood," detailed Satrapi's experiences as a child growing up during
the Iranian revolution in 1979. Its sequel, "Persepolis II: The Story of a
Return," follows her to Austria, where she was sent by her parents to
continue her education after she became increasingly resistant to the Islamic
fundamentalism taught in her Iranian school, and her subsequent return to Iran.
"…
Satrapi's success in the graphic
novel genre is all the more unusual, because she grew up almost unaware of the
form. She had just read two books -- one notably was Art Spiegelman's
"Maus" -- when she started writing and drawing "Persepolis," comics and graphic novels
not readily available to her in Iran.
Instead, Satrapi drew inspiration from filmmakers, especially "The
Bicycle Thief," the 1948 Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It's
about a man whose means to work -- his bicycle -- is stolen. Satrapi thinks the
plot exemplifies how a simple incident can stand for larger themes. "It describes the whole post-war drama of Italy in the late '40s and
the beginning of the '50s," she says. "And from that I learned the
importance of the anecdote; the things that look like nothing but in reality
are stories of the everyday, of things people can relate to. It makes the story
become universal, even if you are talking about something precise." That
inspiration has come full circle; next year, a film version of "Persepolis," featuring the
voice of Catherine Deneuve -- a fan of Satrapi's books -- is slated to be
released. It will be different from most animated films in that no computer
animation is being used; all the images are being hand drawn, requiring 9,100
animators. "Things that are made with computers, today they look good, but
two years from now, they will look dated," Satrapi says. "But an
animation like 'Snow White,' -- which is far from the style that we are doing
-- was made in 1937, almost 70 years ago, and still it's not dated. The human
hand does the same thing all the time." Satrapi has not been back to her
homeland for a few years. Although she has not been banned, she is wary of the
consequences of her return. While her parents, who still live Iran, have not been
harassed, she prefers to meet them a few times a year in Paris, where she lives now.
Her situation, she thinks, is indicative of the tacit repression of women in Iran. Even though two out of
three university students are women, they lag far behind in many areas.
"The biggest enemy of a democracy is a patriarchal culture," Satrapi
says. "As in a family where a father has the last word, the dictator is
the father of a nation. It's good that they study and are instructed and they
will work, and when half of the society is not repressed by the other half of
the society, the society is moderate. "So we have a government that
doesn't represent the people, and that's why it's a dictatorship. Even in a
democracy, the president often doesn't represent all the people, so you can
imagine how it is in a dictatorship."
Iran's Fundamentalists Push for
Segregation on Campus
November 20, 2006
The Guardian
Robert Tait in Tehran
Religious fundamentalists in Iran are demanding separate university
classes for men and women in a drive to impose puritanical Islamic values on
the country's campuses. The call -
backed by senior figures close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -
comes as new statistics show female students outnumbering their male
counterparts in a sharp reversal of traditionally masculine-dominated
trends. It is being spearheaded by
Hojatoleslam Mohammad Mohamadian, a cleric heading the state body representing
Mr Khamenei in the nation's universities. Mr Mohamadian warned in a speech that
universities were descending into "fashion shows" and urged
chancellors to punish students who breached Islamic rules on dress code and
gender-mingling. He demanded segregated classes and the evaluation of faculty
members on religious and moral grounds to transform the culture. "At present the public environment of
universities is free and the moral situation is offensive," Mr Mohamadian
told a gathering of university administrators. "University chancellors are
responsible not just for education and research, but for the religion, beliefs
and ideas of students. If one or two out of the minority who deface
universities are confronted and severely disciplined, the rest will be warned
and change their ways." The demand
is in line with a clampdown that has seen CCTV surveillance cameras installed
on some campuses. Politically active students have been denied access to
courses and large numbers of lecturers forced to retire. Two months ago,
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded a purge of liberal and secular
lecturers.
Iran's Islamic laws already require men
and women to sit in different rows in classes and lecture halls. Campus
libraries, reading rooms, refectories and halls of residences are also
segregated. The higher education ministry is resisting further separation as
impractical and unnecessary. However, the proposal has strong support from MPs
on the influential parliamentary cultural committee. "When the working environment is
all-male or all-female, employees and students are liberated from certain
distractions," Mousalreza Servati, a committee member, told the ILNA news
agency. "In free environments, the possibility exists that when a lady
passes, a gentleman likes her face or her behaviour and has it not happened
quite often that this interest later results in the wife leaving the husband to
marry another man."
Why atom bomb? End prostitution,
says Iranian Nobel laureate
By IANS in New Delhi,
Nov 25, 2006
Iran may be toying with the idea of
acquiring a nuclear weapon, but Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi argues that the
money needed for making an atom bomb can be used better for a more pressing
need - ending prostitution and sexual trafficking of women.
"The cost of making an atom
bomb should be set against the cost of rescuing and rehabilitating girls and
women trapped in prostitution," said Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize
winner, the only Iranian to win the coveted honour, here Saturday. "Governments
complain about not having money or resources to end sexual trafficking of
women. But that's only an excuse," Ebadi told rights activists and
journalists at the India International Centre here.
The 59-year-old lawyer and human
rights activist - an icon for many in Iran - was invited to India by Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an NGO
engaged in fighting sexual exploitation of women. Ebadi also launched "The
Place Where I Live is Called a Red Light Area" - a book that chronicles
the anguish and sadness of teenagers living in Kalighat and Sonagachi - the
areas infamous for prostitution in Kolkata. The book contains first person
accounts of teenagers living in a place scorned by civilised society and evokes
their raw feelings of rejection and daily humiliation through simple but
haunting sketches. "In your country, the military budget is more than the
combined budget on health and education," Ebadi said while pointing to the
flourishing of prostitution in different parts of India despite a legal bar on it. Iranian
women were trafficked to different countries and some of them ended up in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Ebadi also said that despite being
illegal in Iran, prostitution not only thrived but
women were also trafficked into that country from Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Caucasian countries. "The
victory of feminist movements in every country will open the door for more
democracy. A sacred battle is being fought in Iran for equal rights of men and
women," she added. Ebadi outlined some steps for the rehabilitation of sex
workers by teaching them alternative skills and opening of more vocational
courses by the government. "Violence against women knows no geographical
boundaries, caste or class. Taking measures to stop violence against women is
central to the 11th five year plan," said Syeda Hameed, women rights
activist and a member of the Planning Commission.
Maryam Rajavi savours
her victory
France 3, French TV,
December 12, 2006
The People’s Mojahedin Organization
of Iran, founded in 1965 in opposition to the Shah’s regime in Iran, and then to the Islamic Republic,
won its case before the European justice. Considered as a terrorist movement,
the Mojahedin had its European assets frozen. The EU Court of First Instance
reckoned that this decision was taken in violation of the right to defense and
decided to overturn it.
Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian
Resistance, invited to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, heard about the removal of
sanctions against her organization labelled as
terrorist by the European Union with joy. This represents rehabilitation for
this activist who struggles against the Iranian mullahs’ regime.
Maryam Radjavi: “This
is the victory of justice over compromise with the mullahs, because this label
was imposed on the request of the mullahs’ regime's.” The
European Union is extremely embarrased. It might be
obliged to remove the Mojahedin from its list of dangerous organizations, a
backlash against its antiterrorist policy, modelled
on the United Nations’.
Also a backlash
for the French antiterrorist justice and Judge Bruguière. In 2003, soon after the war in Iraq, he launched a vast police
operation against the Mojahedin based in Paris suburb. Militants
who had been in France for 20 years, were suddenly
designated as dangerous terrorists. 17 of them, including Maryam
Rajavi, are still indicted in this case.
But today, the interests of the
Mojahedin are very similar to that of the international community which is
wrestling with Iran on the nuclear file.