The Ultimate Price of Freedom

Amil Imani (Faithfreedom.org)
April 29, 2005

This was Ziba Kazemi’s fourth interrogation, which was orchestrated in a very bright room in the presence of about six revolutionary guards and militia torturers and Tehran’s prosecutor. She was asked about her connections with other Iranian political oppositions, especially the MKO. She was severely beaten, struck on the head, punched on both sides of her chest and was also badly beaten with a rubber truncheon on her shoulders and her back. Later, she was stretched out on a bed to which her wrists were tied with metal-wire, causing sharp, painful extensions to her elbows.

Ziba Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photographer who was arrested in July 2003 for taking photographs of Iranian demonstrators outside one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

The chief infamous executioner and Tehran’s prosecutor, Mr. Mortazavi and the members of the intelligence ministry of the Islamic Republic were standing there, vehemently urging her to confess to the crimes she never committed. One of the revolutionary guards started to gag her with a towel, while two heavy weight men started to take her cloths off and, in an shameful act of barbarity, savagely gang-raped the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist until she went into convulsions and lost consciousness. Finally, she lapsed into a coma.

Almost three weeks after her arrest and torture, (on July 11, 2003) she died in Islamic Republic custody in Baghiyyatollah Al-Azam Military Hospital. This was a premeditated murder by the mrmbers of the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, in a desperate attempt to cover up this brutal action, buried her body in Iran and refused the demand of Stephan Hachemi, her son, and the Canadian government to allow an international team of forensic scientists to examine Kazemi’s body.

This has been the story of many peace-loving Iranians for the past 26 years. One wonders if Ziba Kazemi had not been a Canadian citizen, would her case have attracted the front-page newspapers of the world?

The primary responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic regime has sentence thousands upon thousands of its innocent citizens to the gas chambers, Islamic slaughterhouses, public hangings, stoning, and other cruelties including the raping and the molesting of children. They are simply getting away with the crimes against humanity.

When is the world going to look at the Islamic Republic as the form of an absolute theocratic political terrorist state that it is? When is the world going to learn the lessons of history, not to appease the terrorists?

The current theocratic regime in Iran is also a totalitarian state, which has been imposed upon the Iranian people by force and brutal actions. Totalitarianism is defined as having absolute power over its citizens, especially when exercised unjustly.

We must salute Ziba Kazemi and all those brave journalists who have died for their passionate belief in truth, justice and making the world a better place. They do their job at great personal risk and they do whatever it takes to find the truth and get reveal the truth to the free world. For her great service to mankind, Ziba Kazemi paid the ultimate price with her life.