It would not be an exaggeration to say that ever since Iran’s green movement launched the 100-year old demands of the Iranian people from the country’s ruling group, we have participated in the movement with tears and joy and witnessed its progress while we rejoiced with its successes and shed tears when an ally fell or whose death was announced, at times without ever having seen the compatriot victim. We cried loudly without hiding our tears so that the silenced calls of the innocent for democracy and freedom could be heard across the world.

In the first initial days of the movement, we witnessed the enmasse arrests of many of the political leaders of the movement. There were arrests every day. Soon the form of these arrests changed: the political activists were behind bars while the people remained in the streets. Only after Neda Agha Sultan’s martyrdom was published on June 20, 2009, did we realize what had happened: By this time the streets were being filled with people whom we did not know, but who knew our pain. As lists of names of the new detainees were published, we began to understand that the names were completely unfamiliar to us. The movement had come expanded to the point at which its main slogan had become: “We are Countless.”

The presence of these individuals had brought about another issue: There were now countless fathers, brothers, mothers, children etc who had someone missing at nights. These missing detainees were unknown to the world and they spent bitter and said days in Iranian prisons. One would have to be lucky to have his or her name published somewhere. Otherwise, for the most part, the names of most of the detainees that had been arrested on the streets remained unknown to Iran or the world.

The green movement was born to fight discrimination and has decided to uproot its every form: gender, ethnic, religious, urban, etc.

One must note that fighting against something is not just opposing it. During the ruling of the Shah too all political groups, including the one that eventually created the Islamic republic, opposed dictatorship. But how democratic is the ruling group, whose actions and their consequences we witness on a daily basis, and the opposition groups? Let’s remember Nietzsche saying that in the struggle against a monster, it is not enough to oppose it. One has to fight the monster inside oneself.

In the last few days, an extensive campaign has been launched in sympathy with Majid Tavakoli, what is viewed as the honor of Iran’s student movement. This movement has caught the attention of many, but have we asked what the condition of other student prisoners is? Do you realize that there are about 100 other students behind prison bars right at this movement? Have you asked about their health and condition? For example, have we talked to the families of Abbas Kakai, Ali Parviz, Siamak Mirzai and others? Do we know what is happening to the mother of Mohammad Davari who has not seen her son for nine months? He was arrested simply for recording the documents that show rape committed in prisons of the Islamic republic? Has anyone asked about the health of Hossein Nooraninejad’s husband?

Have heard of the name Hadi Abed Bakhoda? Do you know that he is a paralyzed political prisoner in Rasht who has serious movement problems and has been sentenced to two years of prison?

Some of you readers of Rooz Online are right now using the counter filtering computer software that Babak Khoramdin wrote and sent you so you could open the site. But do you know that he (aka as Hossein Rownaghi Maleki) was arrested on December 13, 2009 and is being held in the Revolutionary Guards’s Intelligence office. He is under pressure to cooperate with the Guards on Internet issues and make a televised “confession”. Does anyone know that Hossein is in his fifth day of hunger strike and is kept in a solitary confinement cell?

Does any member of the public know how many political prisoners we have in Iran who were arrested since the June 12, 2009 presidential elections? Let alone the numbers, we do not even have some names of these individuals.

Our civil movement is to be a shinning light to show us the future path. This is the future that we have defined for ourselves and it makes no difference to us who is included in this: urban and provincial dwellers, prominent and local newspapers, human rights activists and members of reformist parties, etc. We want to build an Iran for all Iranians. If we want to succeed in weakening the foundations of discrimination, we must begin this with the immediate people around us.

We must launch a campaign against anonymity so that one day there is no anonymous person in Iran.