Iran Feature: The Week in Civil Society --- At Neda's Grave (Arseh Sevom)
Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 10:15
What's the story behind this lion cub? See last entry in the round-up....
The 20th of June marked the third anniversary of the violent death of Neda Agha Soltan, caught on film.
Neda’s family was never allowed a decent memorial service because of “security concerns,” but her grave has now become a site of pilgrimage for many activists and dissidents in Iran. Last week, despite pressure, Neda’s family and some of her friends and relatives gathered at her grave in Behesht-e Zahra cemetery outside Tehran to remember a girl who, as recounted in this piece from our civil society magazine, was “unlike most of the national heroes of Iranian patriarchal society”. She was a young woman who “became the face of the nation. She was special because she was not special at all. She was the Iranian girl next door; one world apart from the image endorsed by the Islamic Republic.”
