In June of 2009 Iran held a presidential election the out come of which was disputed by the opposition parties taking part in the election. This dispute became known as the Green Revolution with thousands of Iranians taking to the streets to protest against what they believed to be election fraud by the government.
Neda Agha-Soltan became a world wide symbol for the Green Revolution and its supporters after she was shot and killed during a demonstration which was filmed by an anonymous demonstrator with a mobile phone.
Circumstances of her death
On June 20, 2009, at around 6:30 p.m., Neda Agha-Soltan was sitting in her Peugeot 206 in traffic on Kargar Avenue in the city of Tehran.[13] She was accompanied by her music teacher and close friend, Hamid Panahi, and two others, who remain unidentified.[26][31] The four were on their way to participate in the protests against the outcome of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.[32] The car's air conditioner was not working well, so she stopped her car some distance from the main protests and got out on foot to escape the heat. She was standing and observing the sporadic protests in the area when she was shot in the chest.[33]As captured on amateur video,[13] she collapsed to the ground and was tended to by a doctor, her music teacher, and others from the crowd. Someone in the crowd around her shouted, "She has been shot! Someone, come and take her!"[34] The videos were accompanied by a message from a doctor, later identified as Dr. Arash Hejazi, who said he had been present during the incident (but has since fled Iran out of fear of government reprisals):[35]At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father [sic, later identified as her music teacher] watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight at her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than two minutes. The protests were going on about one kilometre away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gas used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me.[3]Her last words were, "I'm burning, I'm burning!", according to Panahi.[26] She died en route to Tehran's Shariati hospital.[19] However, the civilian physician that tended to Neda in the video has stated that Neda died on the scene.[36][37] Hejazi, standing one metre away from her when she was shot, tried to stanch her wound with his hands. Hejazi said nearby members of the crowd pulled a man from his motorcycle while shouting: "We got him, we got him," disarmed him, obtained his identity card and identified him as a member of the Basijmilitia (government paramilitary). The militiaman was shouting, "I didn't want to kill her." The protesters let him go, but they kept the alleged killer's identity card and took many photographs of him.[4] A recent documentary on the shooting contained a previously unseen clip of demonstrators capturing the militiaman seconds after the shooting.[38] Logically we therefore cannot deduce whether Neda was shot from the rooftop or from the street hence questioning the apparent witness accounts.
One of the most interesting moments during these demonstrations occurred when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked that Twitter not go off-line for routine maintenance and up-grades.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday defended a U.S. request to Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown as a way to allow Iranians to speak out and organize.The Iranian government was able to violently suppress the opposition and has cut-off Iran from the outside world through a press blackout.
"The United States believes passionately and strongly in the basic principle of free expression," Clinton told reporters when asked about the State Department's request to the social networking firm Twitter.
"We promote the right of free expression," the chief U.S. diplomat added.
"And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people," she said.
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