Yeah. This.
I mean, I feel nothing but 100 percent solidarity with the people of Iran protesting for reform, but the sort of ghoulish thrill people are getting watching her bleed to death over and over again is seriously disturbing to me, more so than similar previous videos of Oscar Grant's shooting I've posted myself here.
I think it's because there's no record of the crime committed in the video, or of the criminals who committed it. It's just a woman dying horribly. It's like it's written in the passive voice.
I don't know. It just makes me sad that this woman had to die in order to be an icon for the people of Iran. Because it seems to me that the living Neda was pretty awesome.
RIP Neda. I'm sorry agents of your government murdered you. I'm sorry video of your death, what should have been an intimate, private moment between you and your loved ones at the natural end of your life, is being shown without your permission to a world full of creepy rubberneckers. I'm sorry you were so quickly abstracted into a symbol instead of a person, like you were some kind of sacrifice on the altar of democracy or something. (And I'm sorry if the thought of accidentally killing people like you wasn't enough to keep certain politicians from singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!") May peace and solace come to your family as soon as possible.
1 comment:
I couldn't even watch once. Thank you for linking to a story about the life that was lost instead of focusing on the death. You can't properly mourn a death until you have an idea of who died, and you can't do anything for the living, either.
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