Berani beda, berani benar! (www.indrapiliang.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Satrio Arismunandar <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:48:10
To: HMI Kahmi Pro Network<[email protected]>; Syiar
Islam<[email protected]>; jurnalisme<[email protected]>;
sastra pembebasan<[email protected]>;
pantau<[email protected]>; news Trans
TV<[email protected]>; kampus tiga<[email protected]>;
Pers Indonesia<[email protected]>; AJI
INDONESIA<[email protected]>
Subject: [kahmi_pro_network] The Story of My Shoe By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI
September 15, 2009
My Flower to Bush, the Occupier
The Story of My Shoe
By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI
Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this speech
on his recent release.
In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.
Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.
Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me,
whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has
been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about
the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.
But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that
befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by
putting it under its boot.
And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland's) sons under its boots,
whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few years, more
than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and the country is
now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of
thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because of displacement
inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the
Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the
Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate
with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him. And despite
the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more
than a decade.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until we
were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The occupation)
divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and the son from
his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents. And our
graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is the
occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship and the
sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into makeshift
prisons.
I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a
stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad
burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my
head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous path,
the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and
duplicity. It deprived me of a good night's sleep.
Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a
newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of Abu
Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala,
Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past years, I
traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the
victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and the orphans.
And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.
And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily
tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris of
the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that stained my
clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of
vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it.
I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed
through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother,
every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an
orphan.
I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe
that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had
trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had entered
homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been violated? Maybe
that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express my
rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his
killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and
destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.
After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of
sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting,
bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims and
wanted flowers in response.
Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league
with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation or
after.
I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on the
day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why didn't he
ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to shame him? And
now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when we were ordered to
ask no questions before the press conference began, but only to cover the
event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.
And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under the
auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of
patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism should be
allied with it.
I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention,
because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish to
apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those establishments.
All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a
citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.
History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at the
hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt against
Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as
journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war by
deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many other
examples that I won't get into here.
But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious
agencies -- the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that
follow them -- will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a
rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize me,
and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that these
agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways, physically,
socially or professionally.
And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels to
say that he didn't sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I had
found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with the most
horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting hit with
metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the press
conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could hear the
voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my screams and
moans.
In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked me
in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth from the
people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were involved in
torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in the government
and in the army.
I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I
wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by
international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an ancient
civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history -- especially
in America -- will state how the American occupation was able to subjugate Iraq
and Iraqis, until its submission.
They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain their
objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to the
Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the
occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them
and spoke up for their cause: Never.
Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.
And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any
politicalparty, something that was said during torture -- one time that I'm
far-right, another that I'm a leftist. I am independent of any political party,
and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to any who need
it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I would.
My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all those
whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the souls of
the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who occupied
Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I pray for
peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are oppressed with the
chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are patient and looking to
God for release.
And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it
will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.
One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my
fellow detainees. They said, 'Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight to
the omnipotent powers' -- I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray to Him
-- 'remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting in prisons
because of an informant's word.'
They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.
They've only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons. And
now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear me or
see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government and the
officials and the politicians to look into what's happening inside the prisons.
The injustice that's caused by the delay in the judicial system.
Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you
The translation is by McClatchy’s special correspondent, Sahar Issa.
New Email addresses available on Yahoo!
Get the Email name you've always wanted on the new @ymail and @rocketmail.
Hurry before someone else does!
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
.
Posting yg berasal dari Palanta RantauNet ini, jika dipublikasikan ditempat
lain wajib mencantumkan sumbernya: ~dari Palanta r...@ntaunet
http://groups.google.com/group/RantauNet/~
===========================================================
UNTUK DIPERHATIKAN, melanggar akan dimoderasi:
- DILARANG:
1. Email besar dari 200KB;
2. Email attachment, tawarkan disini & kirim melalui jalur pribadi;
3. One Liner.
- Anggota WAJIB mematuhi peraturan serta mengirim biodata! Lihat di:
http://groups.google.com/group/RantauNet/web/peraturan-rantaunet
- Tulis Nama, Umur & Lokasi pada setiap posting
- Hapus footer & seluruh bagian tdk perlu dalam melakukan reply
- Untuk topik/subjek baru buat email baru, tidak dengan mereply email lama
===========================================================
Berhenti, kirim email kosong ke: [email protected]
Untuk melakukan konfigurasi keanggotaan di:
http://groups.google.com/group/RantauNet/subscribe
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
