I know, jumping a bit on the bandwagon here, but I have to say that the notion by the government of Iran that the video showing the fatal shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan is a fabrication, an attempt of the West or the demonstrators to provoke the government of Iran, is redicolous.
Of course, manipulation of public opinion is an old story and it would not have been the first time that “news” would have been fabricated to serve a propaganda purpose.
After all, even Hitler felt the need to stage a 'Polish' attack on Gleiwitz radio station as justification for the Invasion of Poland on 31 August 1939 rather than just outright admitting to attacking Poland.
And the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August 1964 falls in the same category as the US cited two separate attacks by naval forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) on US naval forces were presented to the US public as justification for the large-scale involvement of US armed forces in Southeast Asia. Later it emerged that there were no such attacks on US ships.
In December 1989, it was reported that in Romania between 4,000 and 10,000 people had been shot during a local demonstration by the Securitate, the state secret police, which in turn led to a nation-wide wave of unrest, ultimately resulting in the fall of the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu. Later official counts show that “only” 97 people were killed in Timisoara.
And who could forget the fabrication of the baby-incubator atrocity, allegedly committed by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwaiti hospitals, witnessed by a Kuwaiti "witness" named Nayirah, which was harnessed to help drive a reluctant Senate into the first Iraq war and Colin Powell’s bioweapons producing train laboratories and in general the existence of weapons of mass destruction to facilitate the second Iraq war?
So, could it be “thinkable” that the video is a fabrication?
Sure, certainly.
That some of the reports can not even agree on the age of Neda – in some she is 16, in others 19 or even 27 or 27- and tries to make Neda into “the face of Iran’s struggle”, an “Angel of the revolution” while other reports insist that she was an innocent bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time may also raise doubts about the facts surrounding the origins of the video.
And of course the video is being made all the more dramatic by the flood of pictures now depicting Neda as a young attractive woman – so much so that the tragic circumstances of the other 9 fatalities of that day have almost disappeared. This exclusive focus on Neda seems again be all to convenient not to be the result of a clever, albeit ruthless manipulation done by the press (and other, more sinister, agencies?).
But what would be the motive of faking the video?
In all other cases the fabricated news were used to spark some kind of reaction.
In the case of Neda that reaction, eg the nation-wide demonstrations, were already happening.
Should the video be a tool to radicalise the demonstrators?
Perhaps, but the government of Iran had themselve already announced that there were fatalities (perhaps in an ill-fated atempt to scare people off the streets, as some reporters suggested. In that case, how better to achieve this by attesting to the veracity of the video rather than denying it.)
If the video is fake, if it does not show Neda, or anyone else’s last moments after being fatally shot; if Neda (or the person in the video) was not an anti-government demonstrator… why then did the government of Iran prohibit a proper funeral according to islamic traditions, why does the government ban to hold memorial services for her?
More than everything, it is the reaction of the Iranian government that belie their own words.
But in the end it almost does not matter if Neda was a supporter of the opposition or not, if she was “too western” in her dressing style for the government (as some of the pictures distinctly show her non-traditional islamic dress code)... if old men with beards are so arrogant to have their state forces fire indiscrimiently into crowds, if they are so afraid of an unarmed young woman that they deny her family a burial according to islamic traditions in a country that proclaims to be an “Islamic Republic”, then we may indeed have seen the beginning of the end of that particular brand of islamic government.
And the thought that this may be a result that Neda would have not been too sad about is the only little bit of consolation when you see those last moments of her.
As with most things, make up your own mind about what you see.
And if you think that this is a genuine video, that it does show the last moments of Neda/someone, spare a few moments to mourn the passing of a young life.
