With a Homeland or Without One S. Rouzbeh ۳ اردیبهشت ۱۴۰۵ A response to accusations of disloyalty against Iranians abroad, contrasting attachment to a country with the record of those who govern it. With a Homeland or Without One Who betrays the homeland: those who weep for Iran from afar, or those who sold its foundations from within? S. Rouzbeh When a media outlet affiliated with or aligned with the power structure uses a few loaded words and ready-made labels to call opponents, journalists and figures abroad ‘people without a homeland’ and ‘traitors’, the issue is more than a report or a headline. It is an attempt to turn truth upside down. A report published by Avash, citing Hamshahri, adopts an imperious tone to suggest that anyone abroad who protests against this government, or refuses to stay silent about the repression of the Iranian people, has placed themselves outside the homeland. Yet in its opening lines, the text itself shifts between ‘seizure’ and ‘confiscation’, and uses a few scattered social-media quotations to pass judgement in the name of ‘the people’. This is no longer journalism; it is an attempt to appropriate words: to appropriate the homeland, the people and the right to judge. But the central question remains: who betrays the homeland? Those who, in exile and estrangement, through rain and cold, write and raise their voices for Iran day and night? Those who, in the streets of London, Berlin, Paris and Toronto, pay from their own pockets for Lion and Sun flags, print photographs of those killed, make placards and stand outside the Islamic Republic’s embassies? Or those in power who have wounded Iran so deeply that millions of Iranians have been forced to live far from home, still falling asleep each night with Iran’s name and waking anxious for its future? The traitor is not the mother who sent her child into exile for fear of prison, bullets and repression, and still follows the news from Iran in dread every night. The traitor is not the young person abroad who spends the fruits of hardship, labour and sweat to keep Iran’s name alive. The traitor is not the journalist, artist, writer or activist whose heart still beats for Iran despite being kept far from it. The traitor is the structure that turned the homeland into a prison and then asked its prisoners to applaud the jailer. Whom, exactly, are you trying to frighten? Iranians who for years have lived in other countries through work, suffering and effort, while their hearts remain in Iran’s alleys? Those who stand day and night outside embassies and government centres, declaring loudly that they want Iran back from your grasp? No, the truth is bitterer still. You do not fear them because they have ‘no homeland’; you fear them because they are still with their homeland. Because they have not forgotten Iran. Because Iran’s name is still alive in their throats. Because you have still not managed to drive their love of this land from their hearts. If the meaning of betraying the homeland is to be made clear, we must begin elsewhere: with a forty-seven-year record of plunder, repression, humiliation and ruin. The traitor is the one who either swallowed the country’s wealth in corruption or burned it in projects unrelated to the interests of the Iranian people. The traitor is the one who made billions of dollars and thousands of billions of tomans disappear through embezzlement, patronage, collusion, organised theft and networks of plunder, then called the very people whose tables had been emptied to silence and ‘patriotism’. Betraying the homeland does not mean protesting against this government from abroad. It means major corruption cases emerging one after another from within this very structure: from Debsh Tea to Mobarakeh Steel, from Babak Zanjani to Yas Holding, from Sarmayeh Bank to other cases large and small, each involving resources that could have built a generation’s future but instead went into the pockets of circles of power and patronage. These are more than numbers. They are hospitals never built, collapsed schools, closed workshops, unsafe roads, postponed treatments and tables growing poorer every day. Every billion lost to corruption carried away a piece of this nation’s life and was spent on their own children in the very countries they rail against. The traitor is the one who, while Iranians were bent beneath inflation, unemployment, humiliation and hopelessness, continued to spend the country’s resources on foreign arenas and proxy groups instead of rebuilding Iran. The traitor is the one who took bread from people’s tables while asking them to bear poverty in the name of ‘resistance’. The traitor is the one who deprived people of water, electricity, medicine and dignity, yet spent money beyond the borders to preserve failed policies — in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the Quds Force, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen’s Houthis — then had the audacity to ask others: ‘What have you done for the homeland?’ The traitor is the one who treated not only Iran’s money, but Iranian lives, as cheap. The one who bereaved tens of thousands of families, imprisoned thousands of young people, shot hundreds of protesters in the streets, blinded many eyes, broke many bodies and wounded a nation’s soul. The traitor is the one who filled the country’s prisons with lovers of freedom and Iran, then called those same prisoners enemies of the homeland. The traitor is the one who answered this land’s young people with bullets, batons, torture and solitary confinement, then fashioned an image of a ‘defender of the homeland’ in its media. You are those same ‘defenders of the shrine’. You speak of the homeland, but which homeland? The homeland where mothers have wept at their children’s graves for years? The homeland where fathers hold photographs of their young people killed, without even being allowed to mourn freely? The homeland where students are not safe, journalists are not safe, women are not safe, and even children are not protected from fear, poverty and insecurity? You speak of the homeland, but what did you do to the prisoners? To those blinded? To those bodies pierced by pellets? To that wounded generation who left their eyes, their lives and their futures in Iran’s streets? The traitor is not the one who weeps for Iran from afar. The traitor is the one who made the home so unsafe that its children fled. The one who forced young Iranians to choose between prison, humiliation, unemployment, exile and death. The one who degraded the women of this land through force, insults and intimidation, then spoke of dignity and honour. The one who threatened the pen, stifled truth and harassed families, then spoke of ‘the people’s encouragement’. In the very days when you were compiling lists, threatening, seizing and confiscating, millions of Iranians abroad were spending the fruits of their own hardship and labour to keep Iran’s voice from being silenced. They buy flags with their own money, print photographs, make signs, stand for hours in cold and rain, take leave from work, set aside their work and daily lives, and come into the streets to say that the homeland cannot be held hostage. These people have not been brought to the square in government buses. They have not come for cartons of juice, favours or administrative orders. They have come with conscience. With love. With wounds. With hope. By contrast, for years you have manufactured an artificial image of ‘popular support’ through staging, organised crowds, administrative mobilisation, patronage, pressure and government spectacles. Yet a profound distance separates that organised crowd from this spontaneous cry. The distance is more than political; it is moral, human and historical. On one side are people giving of their lives and possessions to keep Iran’s name alive. On the other is a structure spending the nation’s money to frighten the people. You are the ones who betray the homeland; you who spent Iran to secure your own survival. You who drove this land’s young people from their homeland. You who left tens of thousands of those who loved their homeland in blood and dust, in prisons, streets, detention centres and the bloody days of repression. You who blinded eyes, cut off voices and then called all of it ‘security’. You who saw truth as your enemy and branded anyone whose heart still beat for Iran as someone ‘without a homeland’. You who fear the camera, the pen, the media, collective memory and the cry of exiles, because you know that truth stands against you. These threats, these lists, these games with the words seizure and confiscation are not signs of strength; they are signs of fear. A secure structure would not be so afraid of journalists, artists, migrants and protesters. You have also seized and confiscated the property of people who worked for years, bought land for their families and helped their relatives. A structure with genuine support does not need to call every opponent a traitor. This is not the language of authority; it is the language of fear. Fear of the day when people reclaim the words stolen from them. Fear of the day when the ‘homeland’ is no longer your propaganda shield. Fear of the day when Iran escapes your grasp. And that day will come. Iran will not remain yours. Iran belongs to the people who weep for it, cry out for it, spend their own money for it, and still speak its name with love in the most distant streets of the world. The Lion and Sun flag raised in the hands of exiles is more than a political emblem; it is living testimony to a truth: the homeland is still alive. Still alive in protesters’ throats. Still alive in mothers’ tears. Still alive in young people’s anger. Still alive in prisoners’ hearts. Still alive in the eyes that were lost and in wounded souls. The homeland cannot be killed by fabricated cases, seizure, confiscation, threats against families or the label ‘without a homeland’. Iran is alive because its people are alive. And that is enough to defeat you. Iran will soon see good days and days of freedom, and under the Prince’s leadership you will answer to the people and to justice. S. Rouzbeh Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-786cd531-6228-3105-b175-d6a9f4a1906a Please credit the author and link to this edition.