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Roya Boroumand, Executive Director

Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation

Ladan and Roya BoroumandOmid was conceived as a response to decades-long needs we felt as student activists in exile, researchers, but also as victims. We believe that post-revolutionary Iran missed its transition to a democratic regime based on the rule of law in part because there was little awareness among the Iranian people about human rights. The opportunity to create an environment in which a culture of human rights could be established existed but Iran’s political elite for the most part, had little interest in a pluralistic rights-based political system. During the transition, truth telling became a means to fuel hatred and encourage revenge rather than establish facts about past abuses. Revolutionary justice made a mockery of due process of law and killed officials and members of the former regime, innocent or guilty, potential threats, peaceful or armed opponents, and ordinary citizens whose plight went quasi unnoticed in the revolutionary fervor. Over the years, violence and impunity spread fear and silenced citizens inside, and even outside, the country.

Iranians founds various ways to protect themselves. Many accepted the role of passive observers; others conformed to the official ideology while some left the country. A deliberate amnesia about the abuses they witnessed helped citizens overcome their feeling of helplessness or guilt. The official narrative on Iran’s pre and post revolutionary history and the leaders’ rationale for violence established themselves almost unchallenged for more than two decades. The thousands of families mourning their loved ones were compelled to do so in silence unable to heal in the absence of justice or recognition from their fellow citizens. As human rights activists, we knew that victims of abuses needed society’s acknowledgment to heal. With the assassination in April 1991 of our father, a dissident living in exile, in France this theoretical knowledge changed into a painful reality. He was one of scores of assassinated political activists, hardly noticed and soon forgotten, whose right to justice was denied in the face of diplomatic and commercial interests.

Our life experience, as painful as it was, forced us to reflect and learn. We understood that transitions do not necessarily provide the opportunity for citizens to reflect and make informed decisions; change does not mean improvement; if unchecked, random violence and human rights violations during the transition will become rule; public awareness and cultural change are necessary to the establishment of a pluralistic rights-based political regime; and victims’ grief, if ignored, can turn into devastating anger.

Internet and new communication means put an end to the isolation of Iranians and allowed us a better understanding of the situation in Iran. The new generations distanced themselves from the ideologies that fascinated their parents’ generation and were looking at ways

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to improve their lives through non-violent means. The persistence also of laws and practices that cost hundreds of lives every year, politically motivated arrests, and institutionalized discrimination as well as impunity for human rights abusers created a fertile ground for new human rights-based debates. Change, sooner or later, was inevitable and the time was right to take a step in promoting a culture of human rights so necessary to a successful transition to Democracy. Truth telling, acknowledgement, education, raising awareness, and bringing shame on human rights violators could be more effective if we understood the scope and the nature of the abuses that has taken place in Iran. Our solution was a publicly accessible credible historical record, that did away with political considerations and hostilities and engaged victims and survivors to channel their grief in a more positive endeavor, truth telling. Omid a Memorial in Defense of Human Rights complemented by the Human Rights and Democracy Library were conceived to acknowledge all victims of executions and human rights abuses without discrimination and draw attention to the scope and nature of violence in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Omid’s is not about creating heros nor acting as an official truth commission. It aims at convincing Iranians of the need for due process of law for all, transparency, and accountability help ensure a future where they and their children can live with dignity.


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