Face to Face with Khatami
Recently we had a meeting with president Khatami. We were there because they have started to recognize weblog as a tool that can reach out to many people with many ideas, especially amongst younger people. So we've been approached by the National Youth Organization a couple of times to share our views on the blog phenomenon and how affective and useful it can be in understanding the young generation better.
We were 4 who have been active for over 2 years now and are not only running blogs but also taking part in many other online activities, such as hosting, web designing, running an e-zine and establishing e-journalism in Iran. We got our own 3 minutes to talk to Khatami and tell him about our concerns about IT in Iran. We chose a spokesperson who talked of our ideas.
I put a question in my Persian blog the previous day of the meeting asking people what they would like to ask Khatami. Of course most of the questions had to do with political issues and were blatantly asking Khatami why he had let us down so badly. But we were going there to ask about the field we were active in so we had to come up with questions that we had seen in different weblogs and petitions.
We asked about the filtering of sites and mentioned Hoder's blog as a sample. Then it was time to ask what is the government doing for improving internet access in Iran and why are we deprived of the high-speed connections which are available to others. And finally the issue of e-commerce was raised. Why don’t Iranian statespeople realize the potential benefit in this kind of business for the country and why don’t they start taking it more seriously?
Khatami talked about filtering and said that only immoral and corrupting sites shall be filtered and no site should be blocked because of its political content, but of course this is quite contrary to what we are experiencing nowadays in Iran. Then he continued that any government would block the opposition sites who are thinking of overthrowing it! And he rationalized that doesn’t mean that we are against the freedom of speech!!! He couldn’t answer technical questions and promised that he would ask professionals to follow up on the issues brought up.
The whole thing was a kind of angry outburst of the generation that felt betrayed. Most of the spokespeople talked of disappointment and forgotten promises; they complained about the silence that cooled their love for Khatami. It was really interesting that while people were criticizing him in the sharpest language possible he kept smiling and nodding his head as if he agreed fully! I guess he knows that we expected a lot more. I don’t know, maybe this is the sad feature in third world countries that we are all the time looking for a hero, looking for a savior to come and free us. Maybe we should stop blaming others for what happens to us and start acting instead of constantly nagging. The problem is, as I see it, that we don’t know about our rights and our abilities.
khatami asked all young people to go into research and find out what it is with us that we place too much hope in one person or one movement and then we immediately become disappointed and bitter if things are not going the way we had dreamed they would. I should start learning and encourage others to learn as well.
