Focus: The Opposition
Terry Gillian’s 1985 film Brazil, a dark dystopic satire of authoritarian bureaucracy run wild, features a scene of the secret police (after a violent SWAT-style entry and arrest) explaining that all costs of the arrest and interrogation will be billed to the suspect. Later, an interrogator about to subject the suspect to hideously brutal torture offers the friendly advice that he confess right away, because a prolonged interrogation “could ruin his credit rating.”
Funny, yes, but perhaps a little too over the top to be genuinely hilarious. I believe that only the truth is really funny on a deep-down primal level. I mean, would any government really do anything remotely like that?
Well . . . yes.
On Saturday, June 20, while returning home from an acting class, pausing at a street corner in downtown Tehran, 19-year-old Kaveh Alipour was shot in the head and killed by Iranian security forces. He was shy and quiet, not politically active, had not taken part in any of the post-election demonstrations, and was simply standing at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The next morning his family began the search for their missing son – their only son – and eventually located his body in the morgue. When they tried to make arrangements for the release of his body for the funeral, the tragedy stepped right into Brazil-land.
The government would not release the body until the family paid the equivalent of $3,000 as a “bullet fee.” That’s right, the government was going to charge the Aliour family a fee for the bullet used by the security forces to kill their son. Eventually Mr. Aliour was able to persuade the officials to waive the fee, in part because it exceeded the net worth of the family and in part because the elder Mr. Alipour was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. The compromise was that Mr. Alipour’s son could not be buried in Tehran.
It’s a good thing for the government of Iran than the Iranian people are among the gentlest on earth.
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