Sahar Khodayari Set Herself on Fire
Sahar Khodayari set herself on fire.
Sahar Khodayari set herself on fire in protest, rather than be jailed for the crime of attending a soccer match in Iran as a woman. As she lay dying, the courts affirmed her sentence.
Where was your outrage in September?
100 protesters, no older than you or me, were surrounded in a marsh where they sought refuge, and executed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
When Ali Khamenei called to crush the demonstrators he said, “Do whatever it takes to end it.”
They were but a fraction of 1500 people murdered, including 400 women and 17 teenagers. A number hard to confirm with their internet shut off. Victims of a threatened regime, for the crime of wanting freedom. The Massacre of Mahshahr.
Where was your outrage in November?
Nawres Hamid became a naturalized US citizen in 2017. He was the father of two boys, ages 2 and 8.
Nawres Hamid worked as a linguist and translator. He was killed by Kataib Hezbollah, a paramilitary terrorist group funded and armed by Iran.
Where was your outrage in December?
On January 3rd, 2020, the United States killed Qasem Soleimani, a brutal terrorist and commander of the Quds Force. For decades he has been the architect of terror and death around the world. He is responsible for the deaths of at least 600 US troops, and the maiming of thousands more with roadside bombs built and shipped to Iraq by the Quds Force. He was likely involved in the planning, financing, and directing of the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi. He is behind the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people. He is responsible for the 1994 suicide bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Argentina, leaving 85 dead. He has the blood of an untold number of Iranian men, woman, and children on his hands.
On January 3rd, 2020, the United States killed Qasem Soleimani.
On January 3rd, 2020, I found your outrage.
I watch those so critical of his death kneel in front of our flag during the National Anthem. I watch those so critical of his death voice support for the BDS movement, who’s members often burn and disgrace the Israeli flag.
Yet I watch Iranian protesters in street, who march literally in the face of death, take care to walk around these flags. They risk their lives in pursuit of something more. Against a world in which a young woman feels that she has nothing left but to set herself aflame in one final roaring act of defiance against a brutal and evil regime. And from those so critical of the death of Qasem Soleimani, there is only silence.
In January, I am outraged.
