SCENARIO
Gathered crowd (Anniversary of Khomeini’s death)
"Down with Israel!" "Down with England !."
"God’s party dies – it doesn’t compromise !"
"Down with America !"
"The American mercenaries have to be executed!"
Narration
We’ve been marching together with thousands of Iranians who had come all over Iran to gather before Khomeini’s grave.
Gathered crowd
"Death to America!"
"Today we are in mourning, Ali Khamenei mourns more than anybody else."
Narration
The popular leader of the Islamic Revolution passed away today fifteen years ago, the 4th of July 1989
This man was appointed to succeed him...
The mullah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is nowadays the leader of Iran.
ÁYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI
Magistrate
The Islamic Democracy of Iran claims that all over the world, free people hate the American invaders, they can’t name terrorists millions of people from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and South Africa.
Gathered crowd
"Neither compromise, nor surrender, war against America!"
Narration
In 1979, the students overthrew the regime of the dictator Shah and sent the Americans away from the country forever.
It was a massive popular revolution, reclaiming equal wealth distribution and independence.
MASSOUME EMPTEKAR
Vice president of the government
Independence... Independence is very important; it is the keystone of the dignity. This is the message of the Islamic Revolution, a message of religious substance, of the Islamic thought substance.
Narration
Islam’s mixing with left ideologies made the Iranian Revolution unique in the world.
Ayatollah Khomeini, a mullah exiled in Paris, was called to govern the country. He became the father of the first real theocratic state in the modern world. Thereinafter, the mullahs were going to become the leaders of the country.
For the first time, remote areas in Iran had electricity and asphalt roads.
Newspapers of the opposition closed out.
Free medical treatment system was institutionalised.
The dissidents were executed as enemies of the Revolution.
Everybody could access the universities
Strict laws were imposed concerning the women attire and the people’s everyday behaviour.
Twenty four years have passed since then.
TITLE: KHOMEINI’S CHILDREN
Young guys in a car listening to western music, dancing and smoking
Narration
Everything had been organised in total secrecy.... As if it was about a coup d’etat or a robbery...
Young man
I want to go to my friend’s party and I am not afraid of anybody. We are good guys and I am not afraid of anybody. We are good guys. We don’t harm anybody.
Narration
These youngsters were going to a party, but parties are forbidden in Iran. The strict Islamic law imposed after the Islamic Revolution in ’79 doesn’t allow dancing between boys and girls who are not relatives.
Young man
If the Basij (religious police) come, we will try to talk with them. If the police come, unfortunately in Iran the police is easily bought off. Unfortunately, money resolves the problem, I mean, if you have money it’s not only the police that you can buy off, but even the Basij.
Another young man
We’ve got used to it, as we live here we’ve been caught so many times and then they set us free, so it is quite usual.
The car stops in a neighbourhood. The guys enter into the house. Live music dance, PARTY!!!
Narration
In Iran there aren’t any bars opened at night, but a lot of houses are turned into clubs at night.
Alcohol is bought illegally in the black market.
Girls arrive alone, so as to avoid suspicions, dressed according to the law: Hejab and a long coat covering their body. A room is given to them, in order to change clothes...
Girls changing clothes in the room, wearing lipstick etc…
Narration
Recently the police had arrested 120 youngsters in three different parties in Teheran. They had all committed the same crime: they were dancing with people of the opposite sex.
The sanction is lashes, whose number increases if the lawbreakers were not just dancing. The law in certain cases obliges for marriage and can even scale to the death sentence.
Youngster
Last time they caught me with a girl, I was detained, the other day they drove me to the court and the decision gave me thirty whip lashes on the back. I had thirty and I left. But the one who whipped me was a good man and he was lashing me slightly.
Narration
The girl as well had the same punishment
Young man
She had thirty lashes and then she was left and they forced her to sign that she was not going to be arrested again with a boy.
Narration
In the midnight, the illegal parties are finishing. Any provocation has to be avoided...
The girls are once more modestly dressed, in order to go out in the streets. Private and public life in Iran are two completely different things.
CUT
Narration
Mr Exan Samboni is a member of the Basij, the religious police. It consists of a corps of hundred of thousands volunteers, who ensure Islamic law is observed.
Exan Samboni, Basij’ member
It was in a liberal University of our city, at the beginning of the academic year some girls students were doing nasty things: they had boyfriends, they were going in the forest with men, we caught them, we drove them to the police station, we kept files on them, and we led them to the court, and there, they applied for marriage.
CUT
Leila, a young girl is walking.
Most of the things people are doing in Iran are illegal, but we have to do such illegal things, because of the human nature.
Leila rings the bell of a house. Kave her boyfriend opens the door.
Kave (off)
Elementary things of human life are forbidden in Iran. We have to see each other, we have to go to the restaurant, we have to go to the parties, we have to have a relationship.
Narration
Kave and Leila are treating us forbidden beer, that they make up on their own in the house.
Leila
Three or four years ago, a neighbour from the front house called the police because a girl was in her house with four boys, so she phoned, the police arrived, they went to the judge, and she married one of them, I don’t know why. They weren’t supposed to get married but they had to do it because they were there together.
Kave and Leila driving their car, climbing on a hill, enjoying the view of Tehran - Sunset
Leila (off)
I don’t feel guilty, as I do things that I believe they are good and they don’t harm anybody.
Kave (off)
Everybody is free, I think. And everybody can choose the way of his own life. But sometimes they press you, to do what they want you to do, not what you really want. In basic things of life, not in any other terms, in very basic things, to meet your girlfriend, to talk with boys and girls, to go somewhere...when you are young in Iran, you are always suspect, always.
Narration
The hills around the capital are offering refuge to young people who try to escape the supervision and the cloud.
Teheran is a chaotic megalopolis of 12.000.000 habitants.
The walls of the buildings are lauding the ‘79 Islamic revolution and the heroes of the Great War.
Almost one million people were killed during the eight-year pointless massacre between Iran and Iraq.
During the Iraqi war the mullahs prompted people to give birth to a lot of children, as there was a huge need of soldiers which could defend the country. Nowadays, those children grown up and Iran became the only country in the world whose 70% of the population consists of people in their early thirties.
This means that out of the 66.000.000 of the Iran habitants, the 46.000.000 are people with bare or even inexistent memories of the Islamic Revolution.
Young people in the big cities have adapted the occidental fashion in the Islamic way of life, they are chatting in the Internet, even if it is officially forbidden to do so, and they are flirting in modern commercial centres, as this one.
The prohibitions, in which they were brought up, are actually contested...
FADE TO BLACK
Images of the Holy City of Qom. Mosques. Religious people walking, talking to each other…
Narration
The Holy City of Qom, situated near Teheran, is the religious centre of Iran: the Vatican of the Shiits Muslims from all over the world.
Here you can see everywhere mullahs and imams.
Shops are selling religious artefacts.
The women are wearing their traditional black hejab
The sacred city of Kom is a city of religious people, who dislike both, the behaviour, the habits and the appearance of the young people.
Man
"I order you for the Good and I stop you from the Evil", that’s what I believe should stand, whoever is properly dressed should tell it to the others, in order to bring them to heel."
Another man
These are people willing to strike Islam, they don’t want the Islam to rule here.
Another man
One should keep the habit, the best adornment for a woman is to be dressed according to Islam, do you understand? To make this and that, to do this, these are for the others, do you understand? Islam says that you should be covered, cosmetics and such things only in the house for their husband, all the rest is prostitution...
Narration
But even here...
Young man
Why do you say so, you mean she is a whore?
Man
No, I didn’t say so.
Young man
She may be better than me and you...
Man
I tell the truth, they won’t let her there (points towards a mosque) without a kerchief.
Young man
It doesn’t matter, it’s the heart that should be pure...
Man (leaving)
I was just talking...
CUT
Narration
The island of Kish is thousands of kilometres far from Tehran. Here everything is different.
Kish is a holiday resort for the wealthy Iranians. A free zone, where the regime prohibitions are somehow loosen.
First woman
The government characterised this area as a free zone, as you said.
Second woman
And there are not so strict rules here as in other cities
First woman
Here, we can cover ourselves less than in Teheran, or in any other district, as here is a free zone.
Second woman
Actually, it is the only place where we can have some freedom and enjoy swimming and being together...
CUT
KATERCH PARVANA a well known woman singer, sings
"How beautiful were those days, when there were no worries....
No worries for the people...
We were not unrooting green boughs with our hands...
We were not plucking flowers...
Ïur hearts were living in a world of their own
They were like flowers...
For God’s sake, who had any worries by that time?
Memories from those days will always be alive."
Narration
Katerch Parvana often recalls the past. She lived both the Shah era and the Revolution.
KATERCH PARVANA singer
There might be an improvement for men, but I can’t say that it is better for the women as well, and I have a reason to say so.
Narration
Mrs. Katerch Parvanah is one of the most famous singers of Iran. Once, theatres were thronging not only in Iran but also abroad.
But now she can’t sing freely, as the woman’s voice is regarded to be provocative. She is just allowed to sing either exclusively in front of women or together with a man, but having her voice lower than his.
KATERCH PARVANAH singer
You should know that the best songs I’ve sung before, I hear them now by a man singer, Mr. Eftachari not only my songs, other women singers who can’t sing themselves, they give their songs to Mr. Eftachari and I am very distressed when I hear the songs I have sung once now sung by someone else. But I would like the people to listen to them.
Narration
Mrs. Parvanah is now teaching young girls how to sing, hoping that her students will be luckier than herself.
CUT
This is one of the most central parts of Teheran. Liberty square, the symbol of the capital.
Policemen are stopping us
Journalists are taken as suspects.
We are protesting…
You don’t need any permission to shoot on the street, it doesn’t have to do with any organisation, we don’t need any permission.
Narration
Usually, such controls are ending up to the nearest police station for ID verification...
CUT
Ashkan Aghvami watches satellite TV
Narration
The satellite TV is forbidden.
ÁSHKAN AGHVAMI Journalist
I have to know what’s going on in the world. And I think that one of the best ways, the best way for such a thing, is the satellite TV, which is banned here.
Three years ago, they have come, not in this house, in my previous one, and they broke everything and we had to pay a certain amount in the government, I don’t remember how much it was.
CUT
NIKACHAG KOOSAR is drawing a cartoon
Question (off): Could you tell me your adventure with the cartoon you made?
NIKACHAG KOOSAR Cartoonist
I have done a cartoon, it was a crocodile killing a journalist, but the crocodile was pretending that it was the journalist who was killing the animal. And the crocodile was saying "help me get rid of this nasty journalist ". And the journalist was killed.
I named this crocodile "Professor Crocodile", using a name rhyming with an old and respected clergyman’s name, and we didn’t pay attention at that time, that this could lead to a crisis. The worst thing was that few days later, about 6000 (six thousand) students of religious schools in the sacred city of Kom were asking for the cartoonist’s punishment and execution.
Narration
The cartoonist was imprisoned and now that he is free, he is more careful...
NIKACHAG KOOSAR Cartoonist
I have to work on subjects that wouldn’t harm neither the newspaper for which I work nor me. It is clear that there are "red lines", that there are "red borders" that we shouldn’t cross, that we are not crossing.
CUT
Manize Hekmat editing
Narration
The Iranian cinema had won only in 2000, one hundred ninety eight (198) prizes in big international cinema festivals.
Manize Hekmat’s film, "Women prison" received very good commends abroad, but in Iran it was banned.
Hekmat’s crime was that in the film some women were not covered with hejab.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
For half a year my film was banned, after a lot of troubles and running, something like nine (9 ) minutes were censured, and it was only ten (10 ) months ago that it ‘s been shown at the movies, all the records of selling were broken, even if we couldn’t advertise and promote it, a lot of tickets for the film sold, but after a short while it was brought down and in forty six (46 ) cities in Iran they didn’t give a permission to be shown.
Narration
Hekmat , in order to impress as truly as possible in her film the women prisons left uncovered the actresses’ heads, as the women when they are between them they don’t wear hejab. But the authorities couldn’t understand it.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
It is very complicated, one cannot understand how difficult it was trying to take the permission to film. What it gives, being obliged every day from seven o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night to run behind the assistant director of the Film Organisation, to be there and to beg, while he is passing in front of you without even looking at you, insulting all the time, while you are a film director of a standard in the world. And again insults, insults, insults, at last you are an artist, you create, it is complicated, everything is complicated, I can’t describe it, I don’t know what to say first and what second.
Narration
Mrs. Hekmat is now filming in the US and she is working together with Oliver Stone for the film "Alexander the Great".
CUT
Iran has a culture of two thousand five hundred years. The Persian Empire in the fifth century before Christ was extended as far as India, with Persepolis as the administration centre. It was from here that Dareious the Great and afterwards Xerxes planned their campaigns against Greece. The building of Persepolis lasted for hundred fifty (150 ) years. The town consisted of a luxurious complex of palaces and buildings, an hymn in the Art and the power of the Achaimenides dynasty. Alexander the Great burned it down in the fourth century before Christ... after having translated in Greek all the books of the libraries.
Carpet merchant
Here, we can see the Iranian kings of every period, Dareius the First, Meisant, and the Shaj Mohament Reza. Now, we are in the Imam Khomeini’s and Ayatollah Khameini’s era.
- Where is Khomeini?
- We are not allowed to put Khomeini on the carpet.
Narration
The national heritage is found in an outstanding position in the Tehran bazar: the famous Persian carpets and rugs. A premium quality costs seven hundred (700) Euros per meter.
Carpet merchant
For instance, this carpet is perfect, its weaver could have been a doctor. And it costs at about five thousand (5000 ) Euros, but we can discuss the price.
Narration
The weavers are living in the slums.
Workers weave a carpet
Hamze’s family, consisting of seven members, live in a two room basement, which functions at the same time as house and workplace.
If they work all of them the whole day, they will just weave a centimetre of the carpet. It will take them three months and a half to finish it. Out of this work all the family hardly earns hundred (100) Euros per month.
Carpet weaver.
Here, we weave the carpets, we are doing the hard work, we are damaging our eyes and then the carpet goes to the merchants, to the businessmen and abroad, they are earning, we are not, we just do the hard work.
Narration
Modern Iran is a country of inequalities. The forty percent (40%) of the population subsists below the poverty limits, the unemployment rises up to twenty percent (20%).
Images of luxury and wealth
Narration
Hotel Dareius, in the island of Kis, has just finished. It’s an imitation of Persepolis, made out of concrete, quite exaggerating. It’s one of the most luxurious hotels in Iran.
HOUSSEIN SAMBET Owner of the hotel
I think that it is not beautiful. It is something different.
Narration
Sincere Mr. Sambet, he is the hotel owner. He is an immensely rich Iranian living usually abroad, owning nine more hotels in the Canary Islands, in Spain.
HOUSSEIN SAMBET Owner of the hotel
I believe that, compared to our neighbours, we are among the best. The problem is that we have a bad reputation abroad. It’s this reputation that we have to ameliorate and finally to wipe out. I see that we have to communicate with other nations, to be more extrovert, to dialogue, as this nation is very powerful, we shouldn’t close the door.
CUT
University of Tehran
Discussion with a student
- What do you think about the demonstrations ?
-It’s a movement burst with the people’s will and it’s right.
-Do you participate ?
-Yes, it is a proper movement.
Student
Freedom, our only hope is to be free, to be able to choose, posthumous paradise shouldn’t be forced upon our people, I don’t want to go to paradise.
Students’slogan
"Nouveau-riches’ oppression and lies against people’s profit "
Narration
Demonstrations have become a usual phenomenon in the Central University of Teheran. Students reclaim more rights.
Students’slogan
"Freedom, thought, always, always"
Narration
They hold in their hands photos of a professors of theirs, Hassem Agazari , who had become the symbol of the student movement. Hassem Agazari declared in public that people shouldn’t execute blindly the mullah’s words, but should judge and think. For such an opinion, Agazari was condemned to death. It was hard-shell clergymen’s extreme act, which caused an uproar both in Iran and abroad. The sentence hasn’t been executed yet, but the professor is still in prison.
Night shots
Narration
Often the demonstrators are clashing with police or with hard-shell islamists, who ask for their exemplary punishment. In some cases, there were deaths or woundings.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
It’s your fault that you couldn’t share the wealth in the right way, it’s your fault that you couldn’t built a state of justice, it’s your fault that you couldn’t fix a lot of things, as twenty four years it’s a lot of time, it’s three generations.
Clerics praying
Narration
Great Ayatollah Saanei is one of the most important clergymen in Iran. He was co-operating closely with Khomeini, being in the head of the Justice for a long time. He claims that since Imam died, nothing is the same.
Great Ayatollah SAANEI
If I were to the Ministry of Justice, I wouldn’t have allowed so violent clashes. I wouldn’t have allowed such a behavior towards a university professor and disabled ex-serviceman.
Narration
Great Ayatollah often illustrates the "first page" in the newspapers, with his opinions and the criticism against the High Clergy of his country.
Great Ayatollah SAANEI (Áãéáôïëá÷ ÓÁÁÍÅÉ )
People are pressed, lose their rights, students as well as the professors will be disappointed, It would have been difficult to have a good future, we shouldn’t talk about an Islamic regime.
Students’slogan
"Chatami, Chatami resign!"
Narration
The discount towards the elected president of the country is huge. Khatami, a progressive clergyman won the nineteen ninety-seven (1997 ) and two thousand one (2001 ) elections with a huge majority due to the young voters. He had promised reforms. During the six years of the Khatami’s governing there is more freedom of speech and expression, and the state has become a little bit more tolerant. Nevertheless, the students waited for more.
SANTEH ZIMBAKALAM University professor
They want better jobs, better houses, better education, more freedom, more freedom of speech, more freedom of press, and so forth, and so forth, that’s why we understand them.
Students’slogan
"Let’s go out of the impasse, referendum, referendum"
Narration
The government says that the reforms are not something easy.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR vice president of the government
May be we have to succeed a balance between religious and moral values, and personal and political freedom.
Narration
Every attempt for reform, strikes against the hard-line clergymen. Iran magistrate, conservative Ayatollah KHAMENEI, keeps the last word for several matters. He controls the Army, the secret services, the justice, and millions of believers. The elected president of the country doesn’t have a lot of margins.
Clip showing the two poles of power
Narration
Iran has two poles of power, clashing everyday in every level.
Kave
They are rivals. In the television, in the newspapers, you can read, you can see, you can watch, you can feel that they are rivals.
Narration. - Graphic
Look at the official index about the press freedom in the country. Before Khatami’s election there were one hundred seventeen (117) newspapers. After his election they raised to two hundred eighty one (281). The year after some of them were banned. Afterwards, they increased again. Then, they were just sixty two (62). And in two thousand two (2002) they raised up to three hundred ninety three (393).
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
You don’t have to face just one policy and one thought, it’s ten thoughts and ten policies that you have to face. There are some people who have preserved this traditional society and they don’t want it to change, some others would like to get over it but they are still afraid of that.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
People think that if there are free elections, if there is a committee in the parliament and if there is a government then they sit together and they say yes or no. It is not so simple in Iran.
Narration
Mr. Kazembour Arntembili is the number two in the petroleum Ministry and his post is very important. He has to find markets and to sell petroleum or gas in foreign investors. Their capitals will warm over the country’s economy, which has an external debt of eight billion dollars.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
Iran could earn at about twenty billion dollars per year from its natural wealth, so as to pay so many other expenses.
Narration
Nevertheless, Iran doesn’t earn this money.
The hard-liners still preserve the self-sufficiency and isolation logic, the dogma of the nineteen seventy nine (‘79) revolution.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
It’s not that they are invaders, that they attack, it’s that according to the constitution we have incorporated them in the process. We have defined them in the process, in order to say yes or no in every measure that we take. Either we erase that from the constitution, but I don’t think that people is ready to accept something like that, either we bind ourselves in a dialogue, and afterwards we should conclude to a unanimous opinion and follow the one or the other way.
Narration
Iran reminds of a block of flats which has two caretakers quarrelling about it, when and how they are going to modernise it, while the area is striken by earthquakes.
Graphic – US intervention in Iraq…
FADE TO BLACK
US Embassy – Tehran
Narration
This is the American Embassy of Tehran. The Embassy is closed since nineteen seventy nine (1979), once the students broke in the so-called "spy nest".
Mrs. Masoumeh Emptekar a student at that time, vice-president of the government nowadays, had played a leading part in this fact
.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR Vice-president of the government
People were understanding very well that in order to preserve this freedom, this independence, they knew that they should ensure no external intervention in the issues of the country.
Narration
The occupation of the American Embassy shocked the whole world. The students captured as hostages fifty two (52) diplomats who were liberated four hundred forty four (444) days later. It was the first time that something like that was happening in an American diplomatic delegation in a foreign country. Thereinafter diplomatic relationships between the two countries were interrupted. And the United States of America used and are still using every means to topple the regime.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
They did what they could. Even if they failed their aims, they did whatever they could, except military action.
SANTEH ZIBAKALAM University Professor
In that case, if the United States of America come to Iran to topple the regime by military operations, there will be a complete chaos from Kaboul as far as Bagdad and Teheran. So, how many soldiers will the Americans appoint / settle in Iran and in Iraq and in Afganistan ? And how many military expenses could afford to keep their soldiers there?
Narration
The regime of Tehran not only is... disobedient, but also controls a country with a "gold" subsoil.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI (ÊÁÆÅÌÐÏÕÑ ÁÑÍÔÅÌÐÉËÉ)
Iran Representative in OPEC
I can reassure you that the reserves of Iran are nowadays in the second range worldwide. As far as the gas oil is concerned, nobody contests that Iran occupies again the second range with twenty six point six (26.6) trillions cube meters of gas reserves, so these two results counted together for the petroleum balance bring us on the top.
Narration
So, for the time being, the United States of America are trying to take advantage from the student movement and to handle it. Often, the Iranians are getting informed about the time and the place of the demonstrations from television channels of the so-called Iranian opposition, having their siege in the U.S.A. and broadcasting via satellite.
ASHKAN AGHVAMI Journalist
People are extremely influenced by the news coming from America, California, and they believe that maybe they will bring them something new.
Narration
The Iranian government claims that America’s aim is to create the impression of a widespread revolt.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR Vice-president of the government
They are trying to topple the regime from inside, the country from the inside.
Narration
At the same time they control an important, trained shock brigade. An army of three thousand Iranians who are fighting for years against the regime of their country. The organisation is called "Mujahedin of the People" and its camps are situated in Iraq.
Revolutionary Court of Tehran – Prisoners step in…
These people are members of the organisation " Mujahedin of the People". They have been condemned by the Iranian Authorities, with the charge of terrorism. They are all serving severe imprisonment sentences in the worst prison of the country and when they were arrested they all tried to kill themselves.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
I had a cyanium pile with me and I swallowed it, but they caught me in time, they took me to the hospital and they didn’t let me kill myself.
Narration
The Iranian Authorities kept the Mujahedins alive. And, once they extracted all the information they wanted, they were demonstrating them to foreign journalists, pinpointing that Iran takes its part in the war against terrorism.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
This is the sixty-centimeters mortar and its cover, such a cover is made in the Arabic countries.
Narration
Mourat Haksar. He was arrested together with his brigade while they were ready to attack the Ministry of Public Order.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
This one is the second part and we put it together. So, this breaks and comes out, there is a disc fitting there, and these are its rocket bombs. It is made like that, in case of control.
Narration
Karimi Far. He tried to slip in Kouweit as an illegal immigrant , in order to find some work, but the Iraqis arrested him. He had two alternatives:
Either in prison, or in the Mujahedin
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
They had some people who beforehand were in prison in Iran and they were telling to us that in prison they were tortured, they have burnt them with irons, they have extremely mishandled them, they were killing people with tortures, in that way they made us hating the regime.
Narration
The “Mujahedin of the people” was a party until the eighties (80s). It was Khomeini that banned it. The organisation became illegal and a lot of their members escaped the country and asked refuge in Iraq, in order to save themselves. Santam gave them camps and armed them.
The Mujahedin became the worst enemy of the regime. Iranians against Iranians. They were leaving their camps in Iraq and they were launching bomb attacks in the centre of Tehran.
MOURAT HASKAR Mujahedin
In two thousand (2000), they told us that it was meant to be the last year of the regime and that if we were launching more attacks, this would have helped people to go out in the streets and the government would fall.
Narration
The Mujahedin in their camps in Iraq were living in a close society without any communication with the outer world, worshipping in a sect way their two leaders.
We couldn’t ask anything, we didn’t have the right to ask anything.
"Massoud Retzavi knows everything, why do you ask?". "You don’t believe Massoud Retzavi ?" They were attacking you.
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
When one adheres, they are showing to him some videotapes, he has to listen to all that and he has to sign a paper saying that he is divorcing, either he is married or not, and he gives his word of honour that he won’t get married until the government of Iran will toppel, this is the law, he has to accept it, either he wants or not.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex- Mujahedin
Everybody has to love only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé), only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé). Why ? Because if you love each other the energy won’t be so good, whereas if you love only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé) you can fight against thousand (1000) people.
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
And afterwards the couples are getting divorced and then all their affairs are separated, as if they were two strangers, and they don’t have any relationship over there.
Narration
A lot of families broke up and they never came together again ... a lot of moutzachentin come from the northern town of Sari (Óáñé) in the Caspian costs.
MOLOUT SEIFI Mother of Mujahed cries:
All those years I was dying waiting.
Exactly seventeen years (17).
Narration
Even sixteen years-old pupils left their home for the moutzachentin.
IBRAHIM SALECHI Father of Mujahed
I don’t know which is their program but they are brainwashing them, so as to forget themselves, their parents, their life.
Narration
In the Ambouta Zambichi ‘s case, it happened the exact opposite : his parents were the ones who left and abandoned him when he was a baby.
AMBOUTA ZAMBICHI
They haven’t done what they should have done for me. They could have put aside their ideals for my life, but they have put aside my life for the sake of their ideals.
Narration
The “Mujahedin of the People” are characterised as a terrorist organisation both by the United States of America and the European Union. Nevertheless, their venues in New York are still in function. When the French Police burst in the bureau organisation in Paris and arrested their leaders, the Rajavi couple, we’ve seen these pictures around the world. Three members of the organisation burnt themselves in the centre of the city.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex-Mujahedin
They are addicted to Retzavi do you know what is the heroin? They need Retzavi as their heroin, as if they were addicted.
Narration
Now that Iraq is occupied, the American forces haven’t disrupted the Moutzachentin of the People. They cans turn to be useful to them in a crisis with Iran.
JOHN FELKER Sergent of the American Army
The allied forces will protect the Mujahedin against all those who would like to harm them.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex-Mujahedin
They will send them in the battlefield. They are three thousand (3000) and they won’t survive in a war against Iran, Iran has a huge army, Three million ( 3.000.000 ) people. Those three thousand (3000) will die straight away.
Fade
Bonak Dar is working on a car
Narration
Mr. Bonak Dar is known as the inventor of Iran. He is electronic engineer and he made an alarm of his own invention, bought immediately by a big car firm.
His store in Tehran is prospering.
When Bonak Dar finishes his work, he is wearing the cloth.
Apart from inventor, he is also a clergyman.
Bonak Dar leaves the shop, walks in the street – Dusk
BONAK DAR Inventor - clergyman
According to our religious education, offering to people equals to worshipping, we give a lot. The controversy equals withdrawal from keep going, for instance in order to bring to perfection what I make I am based in the others’ remarks, I think and I see that they are right and I fix them.
Bonak Dar reaches a house
Narration
In the house they were going to organise a commemoration ceremony.
Bonak Dar leads the ceremony
Inventor Bonak Dar incarnates the two different faces of his country, the secular and the religious. And it’s only time that will show if they will manage to coexist.
CREDITS
Written, produced and directed by Yorgos Avgeropoulos
Ass. director: Thanasis Papakostas
Camera - Sound: Niko Mistriotis
Research – Fixing: Ashkan Aghvami
Narration: Yorgos Allamanis
Additional research: Georgia Anagnou
Editors: Dimitri Nikolopoulos, Kostas Hristakopoulos, Giorgos Kipriadis
Executive Producer: Anastasia Skoubri
A SMALL PLANET PRODUCTION
© 2003 - 2004
Gathered crowd (Anniversary of Khomeini’s death)
"Down with Israel!" "Down with England !."
"God’s party dies – it doesn’t compromise !"
"Down with America !"
"The American mercenaries have to be executed!"
Narration
We’ve been marching together with thousands of Iranians who had come all over Iran to gather before Khomeini’s grave.
Gathered crowd
"Death to America!"
"Today we are in mourning, Ali Khamenei mourns more than anybody else."
Narration
The popular leader of the Islamic Revolution passed away today fifteen years ago, the 4th of July 1989
This man was appointed to succeed him...
The mullah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is nowadays the leader of Iran.
ÁYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI
Magistrate
The Islamic Democracy of Iran claims that all over the world, free people hate the American invaders, they can’t name terrorists millions of people from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and South Africa.
Gathered crowd
"Neither compromise, nor surrender, war against America!"
Narration
In 1979, the students overthrew the regime of the dictator Shah and sent the Americans away from the country forever.
It was a massive popular revolution, reclaiming equal wealth distribution and independence.
MASSOUME EMPTEKAR
Vice president of the government
Independence... Independence is very important; it is the keystone of the dignity. This is the message of the Islamic Revolution, a message of religious substance, of the Islamic thought substance.
Narration
Islam’s mixing with left ideologies made the Iranian Revolution unique in the world.
Ayatollah Khomeini, a mullah exiled in Paris, was called to govern the country. He became the father of the first real theocratic state in the modern world. Thereinafter, the mullahs were going to become the leaders of the country.
For the first time, remote areas in Iran had electricity and asphalt roads.
Newspapers of the opposition closed out.
Free medical treatment system was institutionalised.
The dissidents were executed as enemies of the Revolution.
Everybody could access the universities
Strict laws were imposed concerning the women attire and the people’s everyday behaviour.
Twenty four years have passed since then.
TITLE: KHOMEINI’S CHILDREN
Young guys in a car listening to western music, dancing and smoking
Narration
Everything had been organised in total secrecy.... As if it was about a coup d’etat or a robbery...
Young man
I want to go to my friend’s party and I am not afraid of anybody. We are good guys and I am not afraid of anybody. We are good guys. We don’t harm anybody.
Narration
These youngsters were going to a party, but parties are forbidden in Iran. The strict Islamic law imposed after the Islamic Revolution in ’79 doesn’t allow dancing between boys and girls who are not relatives.
Young man
If the Basij (religious police) come, we will try to talk with them. If the police come, unfortunately in Iran the police is easily bought off. Unfortunately, money resolves the problem, I mean, if you have money it’s not only the police that you can buy off, but even the Basij.
Another young man
We’ve got used to it, as we live here we’ve been caught so many times and then they set us free, so it is quite usual.
The car stops in a neighbourhood. The guys enter into the house. Live music dance, PARTY!!!
Narration
In Iran there aren’t any bars opened at night, but a lot of houses are turned into clubs at night.
Alcohol is bought illegally in the black market.
Girls arrive alone, so as to avoid suspicions, dressed according to the law: Hejab and a long coat covering their body. A room is given to them, in order to change clothes...
Girls changing clothes in the room, wearing lipstick etc…
Narration
Recently the police had arrested 120 youngsters in three different parties in Teheran. They had all committed the same crime: they were dancing with people of the opposite sex.
The sanction is lashes, whose number increases if the lawbreakers were not just dancing. The law in certain cases obliges for marriage and can even scale to the death sentence.
Youngster
Last time they caught me with a girl, I was detained, the other day they drove me to the court and the decision gave me thirty whip lashes on the back. I had thirty and I left. But the one who whipped me was a good man and he was lashing me slightly.
Narration
The girl as well had the same punishment
Young man
She had thirty lashes and then she was left and they forced her to sign that she was not going to be arrested again with a boy.
Narration
In the midnight, the illegal parties are finishing. Any provocation has to be avoided...
The girls are once more modestly dressed, in order to go out in the streets. Private and public life in Iran are two completely different things.
CUT
Narration
Mr Exan Samboni is a member of the Basij, the religious police. It consists of a corps of hundred of thousands volunteers, who ensure Islamic law is observed.
Exan Samboni, Basij’ member
It was in a liberal University of our city, at the beginning of the academic year some girls students were doing nasty things: they had boyfriends, they were going in the forest with men, we caught them, we drove them to the police station, we kept files on them, and we led them to the court, and there, they applied for marriage.
CUT
Leila, a young girl is walking.
Most of the things people are doing in Iran are illegal, but we have to do such illegal things, because of the human nature.
Leila rings the bell of a house. Kave her boyfriend opens the door.
Kave (off)
Elementary things of human life are forbidden in Iran. We have to see each other, we have to go to the restaurant, we have to go to the parties, we have to have a relationship.
Narration
Kave and Leila are treating us forbidden beer, that they make up on their own in the house.
Leila
Three or four years ago, a neighbour from the front house called the police because a girl was in her house with four boys, so she phoned, the police arrived, they went to the judge, and she married one of them, I don’t know why. They weren’t supposed to get married but they had to do it because they were there together.
Kave and Leila driving their car, climbing on a hill, enjoying the view of Tehran - Sunset
Leila (off)
I don’t feel guilty, as I do things that I believe they are good and they don’t harm anybody.
Kave (off)
Everybody is free, I think. And everybody can choose the way of his own life. But sometimes they press you, to do what they want you to do, not what you really want. In basic things of life, not in any other terms, in very basic things, to meet your girlfriend, to talk with boys and girls, to go somewhere...when you are young in Iran, you are always suspect, always.
Narration
The hills around the capital are offering refuge to young people who try to escape the supervision and the cloud.
Teheran is a chaotic megalopolis of 12.000.000 habitants.
The walls of the buildings are lauding the ‘79 Islamic revolution and the heroes of the Great War.
Almost one million people were killed during the eight-year pointless massacre between Iran and Iraq.
During the Iraqi war the mullahs prompted people to give birth to a lot of children, as there was a huge need of soldiers which could defend the country. Nowadays, those children grown up and Iran became the only country in the world whose 70% of the population consists of people in their early thirties.
This means that out of the 66.000.000 of the Iran habitants, the 46.000.000 are people with bare or even inexistent memories of the Islamic Revolution.
Young people in the big cities have adapted the occidental fashion in the Islamic way of life, they are chatting in the Internet, even if it is officially forbidden to do so, and they are flirting in modern commercial centres, as this one.
The prohibitions, in which they were brought up, are actually contested...
FADE TO BLACK
Images of the Holy City of Qom. Mosques. Religious people walking, talking to each other…
Narration
The Holy City of Qom, situated near Teheran, is the religious centre of Iran: the Vatican of the Shiits Muslims from all over the world.
Here you can see everywhere mullahs and imams.
Shops are selling religious artefacts.
The women are wearing their traditional black hejab
The sacred city of Kom is a city of religious people, who dislike both, the behaviour, the habits and the appearance of the young people.
Man
"I order you for the Good and I stop you from the Evil", that’s what I believe should stand, whoever is properly dressed should tell it to the others, in order to bring them to heel."
Another man
These are people willing to strike Islam, they don’t want the Islam to rule here.
Another man
One should keep the habit, the best adornment for a woman is to be dressed according to Islam, do you understand? To make this and that, to do this, these are for the others, do you understand? Islam says that you should be covered, cosmetics and such things only in the house for their husband, all the rest is prostitution...
Narration
But even here...
Young man
Why do you say so, you mean she is a whore?
Man
No, I didn’t say so.
Young man
She may be better than me and you...
Man
I tell the truth, they won’t let her there (points towards a mosque) without a kerchief.
Young man
It doesn’t matter, it’s the heart that should be pure...
Man (leaving)
I was just talking...
CUT
Narration
The island of Kish is thousands of kilometres far from Tehran. Here everything is different.
Kish is a holiday resort for the wealthy Iranians. A free zone, where the regime prohibitions are somehow loosen.
First woman
The government characterised this area as a free zone, as you said.
Second woman
And there are not so strict rules here as in other cities
First woman
Here, we can cover ourselves less than in Teheran, or in any other district, as here is a free zone.
Second woman
Actually, it is the only place where we can have some freedom and enjoy swimming and being together...
CUT
KATERCH PARVANA a well known woman singer, sings
"How beautiful were those days, when there were no worries....
No worries for the people...
We were not unrooting green boughs with our hands...
We were not plucking flowers...
Ïur hearts were living in a world of their own
They were like flowers...
For God’s sake, who had any worries by that time?
Memories from those days will always be alive."
Narration
Katerch Parvana often recalls the past. She lived both the Shah era and the Revolution.
KATERCH PARVANA singer
There might be an improvement for men, but I can’t say that it is better for the women as well, and I have a reason to say so.
Narration
Mrs. Katerch Parvanah is one of the most famous singers of Iran. Once, theatres were thronging not only in Iran but also abroad.
But now she can’t sing freely, as the woman’s voice is regarded to be provocative. She is just allowed to sing either exclusively in front of women or together with a man, but having her voice lower than his.
KATERCH PARVANAH singer
You should know that the best songs I’ve sung before, I hear them now by a man singer, Mr. Eftachari not only my songs, other women singers who can’t sing themselves, they give their songs to Mr. Eftachari and I am very distressed when I hear the songs I have sung once now sung by someone else. But I would like the people to listen to them.
Narration
Mrs. Parvanah is now teaching young girls how to sing, hoping that her students will be luckier than herself.
CUT
This is one of the most central parts of Teheran. Liberty square, the symbol of the capital.
Policemen are stopping us
Journalists are taken as suspects.
We are protesting…
You don’t need any permission to shoot on the street, it doesn’t have to do with any organisation, we don’t need any permission.
Narration
Usually, such controls are ending up to the nearest police station for ID verification...
CUT
Ashkan Aghvami watches satellite TV
Narration
The satellite TV is forbidden.
ÁSHKAN AGHVAMI Journalist
I have to know what’s going on in the world. And I think that one of the best ways, the best way for such a thing, is the satellite TV, which is banned here.
Three years ago, they have come, not in this house, in my previous one, and they broke everything and we had to pay a certain amount in the government, I don’t remember how much it was.
CUT
NIKACHAG KOOSAR is drawing a cartoon
Question (off): Could you tell me your adventure with the cartoon you made?
NIKACHAG KOOSAR Cartoonist
I have done a cartoon, it was a crocodile killing a journalist, but the crocodile was pretending that it was the journalist who was killing the animal. And the crocodile was saying "help me get rid of this nasty journalist ". And the journalist was killed.
I named this crocodile "Professor Crocodile", using a name rhyming with an old and respected clergyman’s name, and we didn’t pay attention at that time, that this could lead to a crisis. The worst thing was that few days later, about 6000 (six thousand) students of religious schools in the sacred city of Kom were asking for the cartoonist’s punishment and execution.
Narration
The cartoonist was imprisoned and now that he is free, he is more careful...
NIKACHAG KOOSAR Cartoonist
I have to work on subjects that wouldn’t harm neither the newspaper for which I work nor me. It is clear that there are "red lines", that there are "red borders" that we shouldn’t cross, that we are not crossing.
CUT
Manize Hekmat editing
Narration
The Iranian cinema had won only in 2000, one hundred ninety eight (198) prizes in big international cinema festivals.
Manize Hekmat’s film, "Women prison" received very good commends abroad, but in Iran it was banned.
Hekmat’s crime was that in the film some women were not covered with hejab.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
For half a year my film was banned, after a lot of troubles and running, something like nine (9 ) minutes were censured, and it was only ten (10 ) months ago that it ‘s been shown at the movies, all the records of selling were broken, even if we couldn’t advertise and promote it, a lot of tickets for the film sold, but after a short while it was brought down and in forty six (46 ) cities in Iran they didn’t give a permission to be shown.
Narration
Hekmat , in order to impress as truly as possible in her film the women prisons left uncovered the actresses’ heads, as the women when they are between them they don’t wear hejab. But the authorities couldn’t understand it.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
It is very complicated, one cannot understand how difficult it was trying to take the permission to film. What it gives, being obliged every day from seven o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night to run behind the assistant director of the Film Organisation, to be there and to beg, while he is passing in front of you without even looking at you, insulting all the time, while you are a film director of a standard in the world. And again insults, insults, insults, at last you are an artist, you create, it is complicated, everything is complicated, I can’t describe it, I don’t know what to say first and what second.
Narration
Mrs. Hekmat is now filming in the US and she is working together with Oliver Stone for the film "Alexander the Great".
CUT
Iran has a culture of two thousand five hundred years. The Persian Empire in the fifth century before Christ was extended as far as India, with Persepolis as the administration centre. It was from here that Dareious the Great and afterwards Xerxes planned their campaigns against Greece. The building of Persepolis lasted for hundred fifty (150 ) years. The town consisted of a luxurious complex of palaces and buildings, an hymn in the Art and the power of the Achaimenides dynasty. Alexander the Great burned it down in the fourth century before Christ... after having translated in Greek all the books of the libraries.
Carpet merchant
Here, we can see the Iranian kings of every period, Dareius the First, Meisant, and the Shaj Mohament Reza. Now, we are in the Imam Khomeini’s and Ayatollah Khameini’s era.
- Where is Khomeini?
- We are not allowed to put Khomeini on the carpet.
Narration
The national heritage is found in an outstanding position in the Tehran bazar: the famous Persian carpets and rugs. A premium quality costs seven hundred (700) Euros per meter.
Carpet merchant
For instance, this carpet is perfect, its weaver could have been a doctor. And it costs at about five thousand (5000 ) Euros, but we can discuss the price.
Narration
The weavers are living in the slums.
Workers weave a carpet
Hamze’s family, consisting of seven members, live in a two room basement, which functions at the same time as house and workplace.
If they work all of them the whole day, they will just weave a centimetre of the carpet. It will take them three months and a half to finish it. Out of this work all the family hardly earns hundred (100) Euros per month.
Carpet weaver.
Here, we weave the carpets, we are doing the hard work, we are damaging our eyes and then the carpet goes to the merchants, to the businessmen and abroad, they are earning, we are not, we just do the hard work.
Narration
Modern Iran is a country of inequalities. The forty percent (40%) of the population subsists below the poverty limits, the unemployment rises up to twenty percent (20%).
Images of luxury and wealth
Narration
Hotel Dareius, in the island of Kis, has just finished. It’s an imitation of Persepolis, made out of concrete, quite exaggerating. It’s one of the most luxurious hotels in Iran.
HOUSSEIN SAMBET Owner of the hotel
I think that it is not beautiful. It is something different.
Narration
Sincere Mr. Sambet, he is the hotel owner. He is an immensely rich Iranian living usually abroad, owning nine more hotels in the Canary Islands, in Spain.
HOUSSEIN SAMBET Owner of the hotel
I believe that, compared to our neighbours, we are among the best. The problem is that we have a bad reputation abroad. It’s this reputation that we have to ameliorate and finally to wipe out. I see that we have to communicate with other nations, to be more extrovert, to dialogue, as this nation is very powerful, we shouldn’t close the door.
CUT
University of Tehran
Discussion with a student
- What do you think about the demonstrations ?
-It’s a movement burst with the people’s will and it’s right.
-Do you participate ?
-Yes, it is a proper movement.
Student
Freedom, our only hope is to be free, to be able to choose, posthumous paradise shouldn’t be forced upon our people, I don’t want to go to paradise.
Students’slogan
"Nouveau-riches’ oppression and lies against people’s profit "
Narration
Demonstrations have become a usual phenomenon in the Central University of Teheran. Students reclaim more rights.
Students’slogan
"Freedom, thought, always, always"
Narration
They hold in their hands photos of a professors of theirs, Hassem Agazari , who had become the symbol of the student movement. Hassem Agazari declared in public that people shouldn’t execute blindly the mullah’s words, but should judge and think. For such an opinion, Agazari was condemned to death. It was hard-shell clergymen’s extreme act, which caused an uproar both in Iran and abroad. The sentence hasn’t been executed yet, but the professor is still in prison.
Night shots
Narration
Often the demonstrators are clashing with police or with hard-shell islamists, who ask for their exemplary punishment. In some cases, there were deaths or woundings.
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
It’s your fault that you couldn’t share the wealth in the right way, it’s your fault that you couldn’t built a state of justice, it’s your fault that you couldn’t fix a lot of things, as twenty four years it’s a lot of time, it’s three generations.
Clerics praying
Narration
Great Ayatollah Saanei is one of the most important clergymen in Iran. He was co-operating closely with Khomeini, being in the head of the Justice for a long time. He claims that since Imam died, nothing is the same.
Great Ayatollah SAANEI
If I were to the Ministry of Justice, I wouldn’t have allowed so violent clashes. I wouldn’t have allowed such a behavior towards a university professor and disabled ex-serviceman.
Narration
Great Ayatollah often illustrates the "first page" in the newspapers, with his opinions and the criticism against the High Clergy of his country.
Great Ayatollah SAANEI (Áãéáôïëá÷ ÓÁÁÍÅÉ )
People are pressed, lose their rights, students as well as the professors will be disappointed, It would have been difficult to have a good future, we shouldn’t talk about an Islamic regime.
Students’slogan
"Chatami, Chatami resign!"
Narration
The discount towards the elected president of the country is huge. Khatami, a progressive clergyman won the nineteen ninety-seven (1997 ) and two thousand one (2001 ) elections with a huge majority due to the young voters. He had promised reforms. During the six years of the Khatami’s governing there is more freedom of speech and expression, and the state has become a little bit more tolerant. Nevertheless, the students waited for more.
SANTEH ZIMBAKALAM University professor
They want better jobs, better houses, better education, more freedom, more freedom of speech, more freedom of press, and so forth, and so forth, that’s why we understand them.
Students’slogan
"Let’s go out of the impasse, referendum, referendum"
Narration
The government says that the reforms are not something easy.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR vice president of the government
May be we have to succeed a balance between religious and moral values, and personal and political freedom.
Narration
Every attempt for reform, strikes against the hard-line clergymen. Iran magistrate, conservative Ayatollah KHAMENEI, keeps the last word for several matters. He controls the Army, the secret services, the justice, and millions of believers. The elected president of the country doesn’t have a lot of margins.
Clip showing the two poles of power
Narration
Iran has two poles of power, clashing everyday in every level.
Kave
They are rivals. In the television, in the newspapers, you can read, you can see, you can watch, you can feel that they are rivals.
Narration. - Graphic
Look at the official index about the press freedom in the country. Before Khatami’s election there were one hundred seventeen (117) newspapers. After his election they raised to two hundred eighty one (281). The year after some of them were banned. Afterwards, they increased again. Then, they were just sixty two (62). And in two thousand two (2002) they raised up to three hundred ninety three (393).
MANIZE HEKMAT Film director
You don’t have to face just one policy and one thought, it’s ten thoughts and ten policies that you have to face. There are some people who have preserved this traditional society and they don’t want it to change, some others would like to get over it but they are still afraid of that.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
People think that if there are free elections, if there is a committee in the parliament and if there is a government then they sit together and they say yes or no. It is not so simple in Iran.
Narration
Mr. Kazembour Arntembili is the number two in the petroleum Ministry and his post is very important. He has to find markets and to sell petroleum or gas in foreign investors. Their capitals will warm over the country’s economy, which has an external debt of eight billion dollars.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
Iran could earn at about twenty billion dollars per year from its natural wealth, so as to pay so many other expenses.
Narration
Nevertheless, Iran doesn’t earn this money.
The hard-liners still preserve the self-sufficiency and isolation logic, the dogma of the nineteen seventy nine (‘79) revolution.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
It’s not that they are invaders, that they attack, it’s that according to the constitution we have incorporated them in the process. We have defined them in the process, in order to say yes or no in every measure that we take. Either we erase that from the constitution, but I don’t think that people is ready to accept something like that, either we bind ourselves in a dialogue, and afterwards we should conclude to a unanimous opinion and follow the one or the other way.
Narration
Iran reminds of a block of flats which has two caretakers quarrelling about it, when and how they are going to modernise it, while the area is striken by earthquakes.
Graphic – US intervention in Iraq…
FADE TO BLACK
US Embassy – Tehran
Narration
This is the American Embassy of Tehran. The Embassy is closed since nineteen seventy nine (1979), once the students broke in the so-called "spy nest".
Mrs. Masoumeh Emptekar a student at that time, vice-president of the government nowadays, had played a leading part in this fact
.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR Vice-president of the government
People were understanding very well that in order to preserve this freedom, this independence, they knew that they should ensure no external intervention in the issues of the country.
Narration
The occupation of the American Embassy shocked the whole world. The students captured as hostages fifty two (52) diplomats who were liberated four hundred forty four (444) days later. It was the first time that something like that was happening in an American diplomatic delegation in a foreign country. Thereinafter diplomatic relationships between the two countries were interrupted. And the United States of America used and are still using every means to topple the regime.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI Iran Representative in OPEC
They did what they could. Even if they failed their aims, they did whatever they could, except military action.
SANTEH ZIBAKALAM University Professor
In that case, if the United States of America come to Iran to topple the regime by military operations, there will be a complete chaos from Kaboul as far as Bagdad and Teheran. So, how many soldiers will the Americans appoint / settle in Iran and in Iraq and in Afganistan ? And how many military expenses could afford to keep their soldiers there?
Narration
The regime of Tehran not only is... disobedient, but also controls a country with a "gold" subsoil.
KAZEMBOUR ARNTEBILI (ÊÁÆÅÌÐÏÕÑ ÁÑÍÔÅÌÐÉËÉ)
Iran Representative in OPEC
I can reassure you that the reserves of Iran are nowadays in the second range worldwide. As far as the gas oil is concerned, nobody contests that Iran occupies again the second range with twenty six point six (26.6) trillions cube meters of gas reserves, so these two results counted together for the petroleum balance bring us on the top.
Narration
So, for the time being, the United States of America are trying to take advantage from the student movement and to handle it. Often, the Iranians are getting informed about the time and the place of the demonstrations from television channels of the so-called Iranian opposition, having their siege in the U.S.A. and broadcasting via satellite.
ASHKAN AGHVAMI Journalist
People are extremely influenced by the news coming from America, California, and they believe that maybe they will bring them something new.
Narration
The Iranian government claims that America’s aim is to create the impression of a widespread revolt.
MASOUMEH EMPTEKAR Vice-president of the government
They are trying to topple the regime from inside, the country from the inside.
Narration
At the same time they control an important, trained shock brigade. An army of three thousand Iranians who are fighting for years against the regime of their country. The organisation is called "Mujahedin of the People" and its camps are situated in Iraq.
Revolutionary Court of Tehran – Prisoners step in…
These people are members of the organisation " Mujahedin of the People". They have been condemned by the Iranian Authorities, with the charge of terrorism. They are all serving severe imprisonment sentences in the worst prison of the country and when they were arrested they all tried to kill themselves.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
I had a cyanium pile with me and I swallowed it, but they caught me in time, they took me to the hospital and they didn’t let me kill myself.
Narration
The Iranian Authorities kept the Mujahedins alive. And, once they extracted all the information they wanted, they were demonstrating them to foreign journalists, pinpointing that Iran takes its part in the war against terrorism.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
This is the sixty-centimeters mortar and its cover, such a cover is made in the Arabic countries.
Narration
Mourat Haksar. He was arrested together with his brigade while they were ready to attack the Ministry of Public Order.
MOURAT HAKSAR Mujahedin
This one is the second part and we put it together. So, this breaks and comes out, there is a disc fitting there, and these are its rocket bombs. It is made like that, in case of control.
Narration
Karimi Far. He tried to slip in Kouweit as an illegal immigrant , in order to find some work, but the Iraqis arrested him. He had two alternatives:
Either in prison, or in the Mujahedin
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
They had some people who beforehand were in prison in Iran and they were telling to us that in prison they were tortured, they have burnt them with irons, they have extremely mishandled them, they were killing people with tortures, in that way they made us hating the regime.
Narration
The “Mujahedin of the people” was a party until the eighties (80s). It was Khomeini that banned it. The organisation became illegal and a lot of their members escaped the country and asked refuge in Iraq, in order to save themselves. Santam gave them camps and armed them.
The Mujahedin became the worst enemy of the regime. Iranians against Iranians. They were leaving their camps in Iraq and they were launching bomb attacks in the centre of Tehran.
MOURAT HASKAR Mujahedin
In two thousand (2000), they told us that it was meant to be the last year of the regime and that if we were launching more attacks, this would have helped people to go out in the streets and the government would fall.
Narration
The Mujahedin in their camps in Iraq were living in a close society without any communication with the outer world, worshipping in a sect way their two leaders.
We couldn’t ask anything, we didn’t have the right to ask anything.
"Massoud Retzavi knows everything, why do you ask?". "You don’t believe Massoud Retzavi ?" They were attacking you.
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
When one adheres, they are showing to him some videotapes, he has to listen to all that and he has to sign a paper saying that he is divorcing, either he is married or not, and he gives his word of honour that he won’t get married until the government of Iran will toppel, this is the law, he has to accept it, either he wants or not.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex- Mujahedin
Everybody has to love only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé), only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé). Why ? Because if you love each other the energy won’t be so good, whereas if you love only Retzavi (ÑÝôæáâé) you can fight against thousand (1000) people.
KARIMI FAR Mujahedin
And afterwards the couples are getting divorced and then all their affairs are separated, as if they were two strangers, and they don’t have any relationship over there.
Narration
A lot of families broke up and they never came together again ... a lot of moutzachentin come from the northern town of Sari (Óáñé) in the Caspian costs.
MOLOUT SEIFI Mother of Mujahed cries:
All those years I was dying waiting.
Exactly seventeen years (17).
Narration
Even sixteen years-old pupils left their home for the moutzachentin.
IBRAHIM SALECHI Father of Mujahed
I don’t know which is their program but they are brainwashing them, so as to forget themselves, their parents, their life.
Narration
In the Ambouta Zambichi ‘s case, it happened the exact opposite : his parents were the ones who left and abandoned him when he was a baby.
AMBOUTA ZAMBICHI
They haven’t done what they should have done for me. They could have put aside their ideals for my life, but they have put aside my life for the sake of their ideals.
Narration
The “Mujahedin of the People” are characterised as a terrorist organisation both by the United States of America and the European Union. Nevertheless, their venues in New York are still in function. When the French Police burst in the bureau organisation in Paris and arrested their leaders, the Rajavi couple, we’ve seen these pictures around the world. Three members of the organisation burnt themselves in the centre of the city.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex-Mujahedin
They are addicted to Retzavi do you know what is the heroin? They need Retzavi as their heroin, as if they were addicted.
Narration
Now that Iraq is occupied, the American forces haven’t disrupted the Moutzachentin of the People. They cans turn to be useful to them in a crisis with Iran.
JOHN FELKER Sergent of the American Army
The allied forces will protect the Mujahedin against all those who would like to harm them.
HOUSSEIN FARGANI Ex-Mujahedin
They will send them in the battlefield. They are three thousand (3000) and they won’t survive in a war against Iran, Iran has a huge army, Three million ( 3.000.000 ) people. Those three thousand (3000) will die straight away.
Fade
Bonak Dar is working on a car
Narration
Mr. Bonak Dar is known as the inventor of Iran. He is electronic engineer and he made an alarm of his own invention, bought immediately by a big car firm.
His store in Tehran is prospering.
When Bonak Dar finishes his work, he is wearing the cloth.
Apart from inventor, he is also a clergyman.
Bonak Dar leaves the shop, walks in the street – Dusk
BONAK DAR Inventor - clergyman
According to our religious education, offering to people equals to worshipping, we give a lot. The controversy equals withdrawal from keep going, for instance in order to bring to perfection what I make I am based in the others’ remarks, I think and I see that they are right and I fix them.
Bonak Dar reaches a house
Narration
In the house they were going to organise a commemoration ceremony.
Bonak Dar leads the ceremony
Inventor Bonak Dar incarnates the two different faces of his country, the secular and the religious. And it’s only time that will show if they will manage to coexist.
CREDITS
Written, produced and directed by Yorgos Avgeropoulos
Ass. director: Thanasis Papakostas
Camera - Sound: Niko Mistriotis
Research – Fixing: Ashkan Aghvami
Narration: Yorgos Allamanis
Additional research: Georgia Anagnou
Editors: Dimitri Nikolopoulos, Kostas Hristakopoulos, Giorgos Kipriadis
Executive Producer: Anastasia Skoubri
A SMALL PLANET PRODUCTION
© 2003 - 2004