Only a profound sense of disconnection from the Other can make it possible for the devotees of political power to watch, with an easy conscience, the humiliation, suffering, injury and even death of another human being and, without any feeling of compassion, say: let there be more.
What does it matter if a mother has placed her aching body as a shield between a baton and her young daughter? They are “rioters”, and everywhere in the world they are treated in the same way. And if a young person, driven beyond endurance by witnessing scenes so merciless and devoid of justice, blocked a street and set a motorcycle on fire, he can be sent to the gallows. What does it matter that the person who is to be deprived forever of the possibility of life is a twenty-three-year-old who worked in a café, loved computer games, was passionate about sport and swimming, and had no criminal record; and that in a parallel world without the madness you have created for society, he might never even have been interested in politics?

A mature society stands with its whole being against this “othering” of its citizens. It is this othering that seeks to make us feel the pain of Baluch, Kurd and Arab citizens less intensely: to make them less fully citizens and less fully my brothers and sisters, so that they may die more easily and be silenced with less noise. It is our human responsibility, with commitment and full awareness, to remove every sign of the language and method of “othering” from our minds and from our society.

Before Kristallnacht and the arrest and killing of Jews, their homes and businesses were first marked with identifying signs, while ordinary people passed by them easily, unaware that permitting their compatriots to be made into Others was the first step toward stealing their civic and human rights. It is society’s responsibility to wipe every sign of discrimination from its face. Where power orders citizens, through a metal notice, to refuse social services to a citizen who is to become the “Other”, the moral and human responsibility of each of us is not only to disobey that order, but to erase all signs of this othering and discrimination permanently from the faces of our alleys, streets and cities, and from our minds and hearts as well.

Iran will become a safe home for all its children, and the word compatriot will recover its true meaning, only when we push the forces of division, othering and labelling back from the heart of our society. Only through this national unity and solidarity in removing the signs of discrimination can we glimpse the horizon of a society that has acquired the capacity to protect freedom and civic rights.

Long live my compatriot.
Aydin Areta