Fargol Dyrud is Iranian woman who came to the United States in 2013 when she was 23 years old. She found her loved one and got married to her American husband last month. But her parents could not come and attend her wedding because of President Trump’s executive orders. It has made her scared that she may not see her parents again. As a citizen of the United States now, she looks back to compare the Iranian people’s life here and her life in her own country.
Dyrud wanted to escape the wars in her country and build a new life in the United States. She said there was the largest protest in Iran’s history after the revolution. This is because people were really angry, tired and fed up, so thousands of people protested. The citizens found out their government had cheated in the recent presidential election.
Dyrud was a college student at the time and her university was probably the most political university in Iran. “ I started rallying and organizing. because in Iran most of the political movements always started from college students.” Dyrud said.
“As a student, you have a very critical role to change things, so I feel very responsible,” Dyrud said. “I felt like there is a time in my country. It’s a very critical time and I have a responsibility to do something about it.”
On the third day the Iranian government started to treat their people with violence and even would shoot people on the street.
There was a video that came out on the third day that forever changed Dyrud ‘s life. It was the footage of a 27-year-old girl called Nidame. She had not even voted and had not been associated politically with anyone. She was just going back to her home with her music teacher. She got shot and the footage was recorded by someone’s cell phone.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s probably 30 seconds of it. She got shot in the chest and you can see her dying. So she became this icon for people.” Dyrud said.
Dyrud said Nidame was the face of the Iranian Green Movement. People would print her face and make it into a mask and wear on their faces, because people didn’t really want to be identified by the government.
“Thank god, I didn’t see a person getting shot right in front of me, but I was there, probably like 100 feet to 200 feet away when they did it one day.” Dyrud said. “I saw a video later, but I can’t believe I was right there and they did that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAf_QOSHK64&t=1s
“There were really horrific things that happened during those times. It went on for two or three months. People got run over by the police cars, they took videos of them throwing people off the bridge.” Dyrud said.
“It was horrific and every day my mom was sick to her stomach because she had no idea whether I would come back home or not, because it could happen to me.” Dyrud said. “My university was very political and the protests all happened in that area, that’s always a very political area, there are two more universities that are also very political a very short distance from mine.”
Dyrud knew that it was very dangerous. People got arrested and there were many cases that came out later in court.
“There are many cases in court which are obviously never going to go anywhere, because the government is responsible for it and they are not going to arrest their own people.” Dyrud said. “But they had facilities outside of Tehran and outside of each of the major cities, if you got arrested, they would specifically target younger people. God knows what things they do to you.”
Dyrud knows there are so many rape cases. It’s not even normal rape. “I’ve heard of raping people with bottles, like glass bottles.” Dyrud said. “ Horrific things that they do to men or woman, they don’t care.”
For the Iranian government, there’s no regulation and there’s nothing that holds them accountable. They can do anything they want to you once you’re in their hands.They have killed people just for attending protests.
“The worst part is when someone would die in those facilities, when they had the bodies, the government wouldn’t hand the bodies to the parents or the family.” Dyrud said. “They wouldn’t let them hold a funeral, because that would be another chance for a crowd to come together.”
Dyrud was clinically depressed after those few months, because she felt the government did many inhumane and horrible things to their people. However, the Iranian officials felt more powerful than ever because there had never been protests like that.
“They felt like they had won. They suppressed such a big crowd and then they felt like they could do anything. They think they’re invincible and also not breakable.” Dyrud said.
Dyrud got depressed because she felt like all these things that she and protesters did put their lives in danger. A lot of people lost their lives, their loved ones. However, the result was that the government got even more powerful.
“They were like ‘look at us, good job! we even handled that one! So there’s nothing that we can’t handle.’”Dyrud said.
Some people in Iran might would rather have a war with America or Israel than continued to be controlled by their government.
“But I don’t think it’s a good option, because my country has been through an eight-year war with Iraq right after the Revolution and has been under the administration of this wild barbarian government for four decades.” Dyrud said.
Dyrud said the country is in a very fragile state now and war is not a good option for the region. It’s going to be like Christmas for ISIS, because no matter how evil the Iranian government is, now it is a very stable government compared to what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan or Turkey. So if Iran is not there, ISIS has this huge land with 80 million people who are probably now more fragile than ever.
“I don’t think war would be a good option at this point.”Dyrud said. “Even though the government is horrific to its own people, a war would just make things worse by bringing ISIS to my country.