April 30, 2024 09:31
His name is Toomaj Salehi, but he is known simply as Toomaj. He is 33 years old and since 2021 he has spent more time behind bars than at liberty. A few days ago an Iranian court sentenced him to death, a disproportionate sentence for a committed but non-violent musician.
Toomaj is one of the faces of the generation that took the side of Mahsa Jina Amini, the girl who died at the hands of the religious police due to a poorly worn veil. Today an international campaign is trying to save the rapper from his executioners, calling for his release.
Several prominent figures, including the Iranian-born artist Marjane Satrapi and the actress Golshifteh Farahani, wrote to Emmanuel Macron yesterday to ask him to intervene in the musician’s defense, reminding the French president that last year he had received a group of Iranian women supporting their cause.
But Toomaj ended up in the midst of the divisions produced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which pushes differences between the victims. Our world, it seems, experiences different emotions depending on the identity of the victim.
Those who mobilize for Toomaj – on April 28 there were demonstrations in several countries – criticize the silence on his case of those who vehemently protest against the massacres in Gaza. Perhaps this happens because Tehran is in open conflict with Israel, so for someone to support an opponent of the Tehran regime would mean being on the side of those who bomb Gaza.
In this Middle East crossed by passions and winds of madness there is a selective empathy that has contaminated the rest of the world.
The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October caused more than a thousand deaths, mostly civilians, while the Israeli response caused tens of thousands of victims, again mostly civilians. Since then there has been a certain tendency to distinguish between the dead. Solidarity has become selective, as if universal principles cannot be defended and all victims cannot be mourned.
Toomaj’s fate should inspire everyone’s solidarity. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, born after the death of Mahsa Amini, had attracted the support and admiration of much of the world. The Iranian rapper’s defense, logically, should be its extension. But the region’s conflicts have turned things upside down. The Iranian regime tries to ride the solidarity movements with the Palestinians to remake its image, taking advantage of the fact that Western campuses are focused on Gaza and ignore other causes.
The desire to defend human rights should push us to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, who suffer unbearable collective punishment in the Gaza Strip; with the Israeli hostages still in the hands of Hamas (this is also a war crime); and with an Iranian rapper deprived of his freedom who risks being executed by a merciless regime. Unfortunately it seems that in 2024 this is impossible.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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