Iran’s dead poets society: The execution of Hashem Shabaani shows the pen can be mightier than the sword
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/irans-dead-poets-society-the-execution-of-hashem-shabaani-shows-the-p
In Iran, there should be a Dead Poets Society. Or perhaps a Martyred Poets Society, with its newest member a certain Arab-Iranian from Ahwaz, in the far south-west of the country, on the Iraqi border.
He has been hanged for “spreading corruption on earth”, one of hundreds put to death by the Islamic revolution since 1979. Everything about Hashem Shabaani cries out in shame against his executioners: his pacifist poetry, his academic learning, his care for his sick father – a disabled soldier seriously wounded in the 1980-88 war against the Iraqi invaders of his country – and his love for his wife and only child. Already, of course, he has become a political corpse. His killers, the Iranian interior ministry and a revolutionary tribunal judge called Mohamed-Bagher Moussavi, must be the first culprits.
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9124529.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/pg-29-iran-1-apv2.jpg
A public hanging north of Tehran. Hundreds of poets, writers and others who ‘spread corruption’ have been hanged in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 (AP)
