A Message from Iran

Many of you know that I am involved in several Harry Potter online discussion groups. One of them has several international members, including two from Iran.

I inquired after them the other day, what with the violence they've been experiencing there, and one of them, a young man named Amir, wrote me back privately. He's written me before, but I hadn't heard from him in a while. Here's his post.

Hi dear Strider.

I saw that you mentioned about Iran in one of your posts. Yes, Iran is dangerous now, but as you know, freedom is something that is hard to achieve. Many of our young people have been killed by the hands of the government, like Neda for example (Neda was a young girl that was killed by anti riot police, I think that you know of her).

Many of our people were tired of Ahmadi Nejad, because not only he was stealing people's money and ruining Iran, He was destroying Iran's relationships with other countries. So, our people went to the other candidate's side, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi. These candidates were the enemies and rivals of Ahmadi Nejad. They wanted to repair all that Ahmadi Nejad has ruined. But you know, government used fraud and cheating in the election. And now, people of Iran are protesting.

BUT, we cannot do this alone. We need support, from all of the people in the world, I didn't mentioned this in the group messages because I thought that it is not good to talk about politics in the group.

Strider, we need support from the U.S.A and Europe, from their people, from their governments. It is time to leave the past and help each other.

Please, tell this to anyone you can, that Iranian people need support from other countries, we need someone to rescue us from the hands of our murderer governments, from the great satan, Ayatollah Khameneii.



Here's what I wrote back:


Thank you for writing to me about this. I wish I had some influence over our government policies; as you know, our President is new and we aren't quite sure what he will do when it comes to the relationship between our countries.

I will tell people what you've told me, and I can always write letters and send emails to our representatives in the government. I'll do whatever I can. You're right, freedom is hard to acheive...but worth the fight, I think.

God bless you and your country,
Strider