You can watch the interview here (ENGLISH)

On June 20, 2009, during demonstrations to protest the contested and controversial Iranian presidential election, a young girl named Neda Agha-Soltan was shot to death in the streets of Tehran. Within hours, the video footage of her death, captured on a roving camera-phone, had circled the globe. It was also the moment of choice for Arash Hejazi – a writer who had originally trained as a doctor – who tried and failed to save Neda’s life. Within days Hejazi left Iran to tell the world the story the government was denying: Neda had died at the hands of the pro-government militia. “The Gaze of the Gazelle” is Hejazi’s personal story of how that tragedy came to be and how it will change the course of politics in Iran for a new generation. In a tale that mingles politics and the personal, mythology and history, Hejazi tries to answer the question: How did it come to this? His quest for an answer leads him through the story of the decades-long aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, when Ayatollah Khomeini was brought back from exile to drive the Shah from his throne and set up the Islamic Republic of Iran. Against the background of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran and the prolonged war that followed, Hejazi skillfully interweaves his own story and those of his family and friends with the machinations of the mullahs and politicians who seek to control Iranian lives. This timely, moving, and eloquent book describes the determination of a new generation to recover hope in the name of Neda, who gave her life in pursuit of a freer and better world.

Listen to the interview here.

“In his new memoir, Arash Hejazi recalls the moment Neda Agha-Soltan was shot, during Iran’s Green Movement protests—as he stood next to her.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/12/in-the-news-a-new-psycho-boozy-books.html#ixzz1gKRfTkaR

The National, Dec 11, 2011

Arash Hejazi smokes hand-rolled cigarettes, which he keeps in a silver case. He speaks a considered, professorial English, idiosyncratic only because of his Iranian accent. Despite having endured much since the summer of 2009, he exudes the guileless energy of a very young man (he is 37).

You may not have heard Hejazi’s name before, but it’s likely that you already know something of his story. During the Green Movement protests that swept across Iran in the summer of 2009, Hejazi was standing next to a young woman when she was shot. He bent over her prostrate body as she lay dying, in an unsuccessful attempt to save her life. A video of those events was posted online and soon became international news: images of Hejazi and the tragic girl were transmitted into hundreds of millions of living rooms. That girl was Neda Agha-Soltan, and she became a symbol of a new Iranian generation, their dream of freedom, and the brutal suppression of that dream.

Two-and-a-half years on, Hejazi is still haunted by the moments in which Neda lost her life:

“Before she passed away she looked into my eyes. I never understood what she meant by that look; it could have just been fear, or the empty look of someone who is dying. But at that moment I had the feeling that she was trying to tell me something. It was the look of someone who has been hunted down and is dying: what would a person be trying to say in those last moments?”

Hejazi’s involvement in Neda’s story changed his life forever. He left Tehran and has been unable to return. He now lives in England, and today we meet in London to talk about the memoir he wrote in the wake of these experiences, The Gaze of the Gazelle. But before all this, he was a successful fiction writer and publisher in Tehran – he founded the publishing company Caravan Books – as well as a qualified doctor. Hejazi was in England to attend a publishing course at the time of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections: he voted for Mousavi at the Iranian embassy in Kensington before returning to Iran the next day.

“The atmosphere in Tehran was terrible,” he says. “The news had come through that Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Everyone I spoke to believed the election had been rigged. People were out on the streets.”

The popular uprising that followed – and the brutal response of the Islamic Republic – reverberated around the world. On June 15 millions took to the streets in Tehran in one of the largest demonstrations in history. Five days later, Neda was shot as she participated in a street protest close to the offices of Hejazi’s publishing house.

“On that day I was one of the cautious people who didn’t want to go out because of the danger. But in my office a few people wanted to go. One young man was insistent he would go out, so I said: OK, if you have to go, I will come with you.

“There was a crowd of around 500 outside my office, being attacked by Basijis on motorcycles. We ran back through an alleyway with some others, and at the end of that alleyway Neda was shot.

“At that point, you switch off your emotions. I lay her on the ground and tried to stop the bleeding. But there was no way to save her: the bullet had hit her aorta and her lung.

“When I realised she was dead I stood up. Now I was overwhelmed by fear: there could be more bullets at any moment. My friend was in a state of shock. We took him back to the office and gave him a drink of water. I took his mobile phone and saw what he had recorded, and said: I’m going to post this online.”

Hejazi must have known that this decision would bring the ire of the Islamic Republic down on him: so why did he do it?

“I knew it was a dangerous thing to do. But I was furious at the injustice I’d just seen. I hadn’t been able to save Neda, and I was in a state of despair. In those moments, it was the only thing I could do.”

Hejazi says he emailed the video to a handful of friends outside Iran at about 6.45pm. By 9pm, when he arrived home that night, it was all over the international news channels. Instantly, Neda became a globally recognised symbol of the events of 2009.

“Neda was a young woman, a student. She wore jeans and sneakers. People in the western world saw that video and thought: these are not people from some exotic culture we can’t understand. They are like us; they have the same aspirations as us, and they are killed for those aspirations. So it was a powerful message.”

The Islamic Republic quickly moved to discredit the video, claiming, among other things, that Hejazi was a British spy. He left Tehran for London – where his wife and son were waiting for him – and has not returned.

“We were a well-off family in Iran. But the government has closed my publishing company. The early days back in England were dark times. But I’d do the same again.

“In every life there comes a moment when you have to prove your integrity and dignity.”

The world knows that the immediate aspirations of the Green Movement protesters were not realised. Today, though, the Middle East – from Cairo, to Tunis, to Tripoli – looks a different place. Why were these Arab countries successful in their push for change when Iran was not? And after everything, is Hejazi optimistic for the Iranian future?

“These are very complex questions,” he says. “When it comes to the Arab Spring, we need to define success. Take Libya: people were united to fight for what they didn’t want. But do they know what they do want? This reminds me of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when people were united to get rid of the Shah. I think we need to review the situation in these Arab countries in a year or two.

“As for the Green Movement, I wouldn’t say it has failed. It has opened up a space for further change. Most people in Iran have no appetite for the kind of political convulsions we’ve seen with the Arab Spring. They want a gradual evolution. I think we’re going to see that, but it depends on the international situation. People in Iran have not forgotten the pro-reform movement. They are waiting for the next phase.”

artslife@thenational.ae

He’s the doctor who tried to rescue Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who was shot during the 2009 protests in Tehran and became an icon of the struggle for democracy there. YouTube: Death of Neda (warning: graphic content)

Arash talks to host Jonathan Groubert about living through four decades of tumult in Iran before finally hitting his breaking point.

The Gaze of the Gazelle is Arash Hejazi’s memoir of growing up and then fleeing Iran.

Listen to the full interview here

The violent death of Neda Agha-Soltan is perhaps the most watched in history. The astonishing video which depicts her murder shocked the world when it emerged during the protests following Iran’s 2009 presidential elections. Neda, and thousands more like her, believed that the published result which indicated a clear and unprecedented victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a consequence of flagrant electoral fraud. She was shot dead at point blank range by a Basiji, a member of the Iranian regime’s voluntary militia, on a crowded street during a peaceful protest. The Basiji’s tactic on that day was to scatter clusters of demonstrators by shooting one individual in each cluster. Arash Hejazi is the man who can be seen in that video wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. He is fruitlessly attempting to prevent the transfusion of Neda’s blood from inside her chest onto the Tehran pavement.
Hejazi is an unassuming political exile. He is dressed casually, and appears relaxed. As he lights a cigarette, he does not seem particularly insurrectionary, but, as Hejazi admits, “I was never a freedom fighter or a revolutionary. The revolution didn’t help us really, we had a revolution and it didn’t help us. I don’t believe in sudden change, I believe in gradual change: Hejazi supported the establishment figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi in 2009 because of his belief that “the only way of getting change is from within”.
With his father studying for a PhD in Britain, Hejazi initially grew up in a Birmingham suburb. Aged four, he moved back to Tehran and witnessed the Islamic Revolution as a young child. His adolescence was defined by the Iran-Iraq war, the longest conventional conflict of the last century. “Our teenage years were
spent going to funerals of friends who had been killed in the war: A doctor by profession, death seems to be a prevailing feature of Hejazi’s life.
His manner is one of reluctant fortitude and gentle sincerity, emotions which the video of Neda would inspire in anyone. Her eyes in particular generate a deeply disquieting impact. She stares directly at the camera as blood cascades from her mouth and men gather around in a futile attempt to save her. The viewer sees the vitality behind the stare slowly disappear until she can only give the camera a bloodied, hollow glaze. Hejazi emphasises the motivational impetus that this experience generated within him:
•She looked at me as if to say, ‘Don’t let it be in vain’. I felt that she was asking me to do something.”
Hejazi did do something, and he did so quickly.
He and his friend who recorded the incident immediately distributed the clip via Facebook, YouTube and email. The video spread virally across the world within hours. Just a couple of days later, his friend
Paolo Coehlo – who wrote the introduction to Hejazi’s recently published book The Gaze of the Gazelle – mistakenly gave away his identity online. This made Hejazi a target for an Iranian regime which was now cracking down on dissents with greater force than ever. His determination that Neda’s murder be seen by the world ultimately cost him his possessions and all his money, as well as the ability to see his extended family. However, such losses were not the only impact of the clip: since its recording, Neda’s image has become an icon for pro-democracy movements in Iran and further afield.
Hejazi fled to Oxford, where he was completing a Master’s Degree at Oxford Brookes and where he still lives with his wife and young son. This was the last time he saw his homeland. “I realised afterwards I never had the chance to say goodbye; I never had the chance to see the places I loved for the last time; I never had the chance to see the people I loved for the last time. But it’s the price you have to pay: Hejazi’s parents still live in Iran, although his father, having been interrogated by the regime following his son’s banishment, is now banned from teaching. •Otherwise, physically, things are fine:
Most Western contemporary discussions of Iran focus on its complex: foreign policy commitments and oblique nuclear arrangements. However, it is important to remember that, day to day, modern Iran remains an intensely repressive place to live. Reporters Without Borders ranks the Iranian press as fourth from bottom in the world in terms of journalistic freedom. Political opponents are routinely tortured. The Basij militia perpetually hassles and intimidates citizens whom it doesn’t believe are adequately adhering to Sharia law. Hejazi draws a distinction between the popular Islamic regime that was swept in on the back of the 1979 revolution, and the current regime: “‘People have lost their belief in what they thought would be a religious Islamic government.
It isn’t anymore; it’s just an oppressive government using Islam as a means to justify its actions. It is now just a typical totalitarian regime.”

Hejazi believes that the West failed to put enough pressure on Ahmadinejad after his allegedly fraudulent victory. Countries recognised him as President and continued negotiations. Hejazi speculates that a domestically unpopular Iranian President is likely to be more dependent on international legitimacy, and thus more desirable to the West. He is also sceptical of the ability of the international community to generate real change in Iran. “The opposition outside Iran has its own agenda. However, inside Iran, I really think they are looking for change.” The current squabble between the President and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most extraordinary recent development of which was the Ayatollah’s threat to remove the office of elected President entirely, is ongoing.
Hejazi dismisses this as “a struggle for absolute power, a dictator wants to take over from another dictator”. He concedes it is difficult to see exactly where change in Iran can come from. It will likely require a combination of international support and domestic ebullience.
There are enough people in Iran today who do not want Neda’s death to be futile. Hejazi is just one of these. He is a trained doctor, and volunteered when an earthquake devastated the city of Bam in 2003, killing 26,000 Iranians. “Literally, I’ve seen thousands of deaths. As a doctor you have to be detached; you just focus on the issue. People come in with conditions so you are always dealing with the possibility of death. But this one, afterwards when it was over, I felt so terribly devastated because it was so unfair. She had done nothing wrong. It was her right to peacefully demonstrate and disagree with anyone she wanted to. Then without any justification, they just shot her and she just died.” Hejazi is clearly still deeply affected by the experience. His own eyes blink at me above the bridge of his rimless glasses. “Her eyes followed me, and have followed me ever since. That’s why I talked, that’s why I wrote the book, that’s why I uploaded the video.”

Read the Magazine Here

Related articles

• 47 seconds that changed the history of Iran: The Gaze of the Gazelle, the story of the lost Iranian Generation (cultureiran.wordpress.com)
• The End of Illusion; a review on The Gaze of the Gazelle (gazeofthegazelle.com)
• The Gaze of the Gazelle: witness to a death that changed history (Book Review) (gazeofthegazelle.com)
• Dr Shaheed, what you have presented is just the tip of the iceberg: Arash Hejazi’s open letter to Dr Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (gazeofthegazelle.com)

Professor Jalal Hejazi, Arash Hejazi's father

Dear Dr Ahmed Shaheed,
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,

I am Arash Hejazi, an Iranian physician, writer, publisher and journalist, and the Doctor who tried to save the young girl shot to death by the Iranian Basij or the pro-government militia, orchestrated by the Revolutiosnary Guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I then spoke up about the circumstances of hear death to the international media and for that I have lost my publishing house in Iran, I have been prosecuted and persecuted, and I have had to go on exile, leaving my family and my life behind.

I read your Special Report with interest, and while I appreciate your efforts on producing an accurate image on the dyre situation of human rights in Iran, I would like to bring to your attention that what you have presented in your report, is just the tip of an immense iceberg of years of undermining human and basic rights of the citizens of Iran.

You didn’t mention,

• The brutal crackdown of the Iranian pro-government militia, the police, and the Revolutionary Guards on the peaceful rallys of millions of people who were simply asking for the recount of the ballots of the presidential elections in June 2009;
• The brutal murder of hundreds of unarmed civilans on the days that followed the elections. One of them which was documented, was the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan by a member of the Basij. Mothers of those murdered have tried so hard to get their voices heard, and even they have been persecuted and beaten by the Basij;
• That the judiciary system of Iran has done absolutely nothing to bring the murderers of these innocent people to justice. Instead, it has done everything in its power to intimidate and threaten withnesses of these crimes;
• The torturing and murder of several protesters after being arrested by the police. Even the government of Iran has admited the murder of three detainees under torture;
• Hundreds of students that have been banned from continuing their studies, simply because the have been part of the Green Movement.
• The legistlation of capital punishment for bloggers;
• The fact that a muslim cleric, called Kazemeini Brujerdi has been imprisoned and tortured for years now, simply because he expressed his opinion that religion should be separated from the State;
• The widespread and illegal censorsip on books and other media. I have explained the situation in my article ‘Censorship in Iran’;
• The execution of prisoners of consciouns in Iran;
• Mistreating political prisoners leading to unexplained deaths;
• Undermining the rights of the minority groups in Iran, such as the Kurdish people;
• Undermining the rights of the workers and their unions;
• Undermining the children rights;
• Undermining the rights of the guilds and trade unions;
• Persecution and prosecution of the human rights activists.

Dear Dr Shaheed, this is a unique oportunity that destiny has placed on your path to make a difference. It might not be repeated. For the sake of hundreds of thousands of lives that have been destroyed in Iran in the past 30 years, I beseach you to do whatever in your power to reflect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing by the truth.

Kind regards,

Arash Hejazi