IRAN: A familiar fear migrates to the U.S.
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The 20-year-old university student once didn’t understand why her friends, fellow second-generation Californians, would hesitate to give their full names when protesting violence or corruption in the homeland of their parents.
But now that the protests concern the Islamic government in Iran, she is asking that her name not be published.
In a more connected world, where news stories and images are beamed worldwide, the fears that have long plagued dissidents in Iran have migrated to the United States.
At demonstrations and in interviews, many Iranians in the Los Angeles area will give only their first names or no name at all, fearful that it could bring harm to them or their families back home. Many cover their faces -- some to hide their identity, others as a show of solidarity with demonstrators in Iran who are doing the same thing. It is a jarring sight in a city where protests are routine.
“I’ve always been the first to give my name out. I’m just like, oh whatever, nobody’s going to do something to me,” said the young woman, who heads a student organization. “But now that it’s my own country, yeah, I’m like, I can’t give my name out.”
When talking with relatives in Iran, she is careful about what she says and asks, assuming that the conversation could be monitored. And on the other end, relatives have played down the protests or used code, speaking about a “celebration” in the streets.
For many Iranian Americans born in the U.S., this is a new reticence that has come with being politically active for the first time against a country with a history of retribution against protesters. But for recent arrivals from Iran, as well as the generation that left the country during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the fear of giving out names and showing their faces is nothing new.
“I am an old-timer,” said Fuad, 52, an engineer in Orange County. “During the shah’s regime, we demonstrated against the shah’s injustice, and we’ve learned through the old experience not to expose too much of our personal identity to safeguard ourselves and our family.”
Later, he heard stories of Iranian students in the U.S. who opposed the Islamic Revolution and were arrested and tortured when they returned home. Since then, he said, they have learned to be more cautious.
Fuad’s parents still live in Tehran and he’s traveling there Monday to visit his sick father.
“They do everything possible to shut any movement right at the growth,” he said. “If the government knows what I’m telling you, when I go back they would probably have me arrested.”
The young student leader said she would be at a demonstration Saturday in Westwood – with a scarf covering her face -- in solidarity with protesters in Iran who are bracing for a crackdown.
“This is a government we believe helped an unfair election,” she said, “so who’s to say how far they can go.”
-- Raja Abdulrahim
