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Today, we heard of two upsetting news about two different non-related Iranian families who have lost their children in two different situations.
The first story of loss: one Iranian family who lost their ten year old child in a car accident this past weekend, the news that this family do not even have the money for the child’s funeral was heartbreaking, however as I write this note, people are raising funds.

Another family lost their 15 year old boy committing suicide a couple of weeks ago (in January 2010) due to the act of bullying.   A friend of mine sends me this article published today, Feb 4, 2010:
http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/index.html

Ashkan Sultani was the victim of bullying in school.  His parents told the reporter that they wish their son’s suicide serve as an act of kindness or help others knowing about the ways of preventing these tragedies.
Let’s give our prayers to this family as well as send our condolences to both families who are in pain.

In order to help Ashkan Sultani’s family in raising awareness about the issue of bullying, we have to know many things.
As these parents said, they do not like to point to someone or blame someone.   We could not disagree with the parents, while adding that the issue of bullying is not about blaming,
it is about knowing the borders and the limitations in all relationships.

We need to help our children understand the mechanism of bullying while help the offenders change their ways of interacting in schools and out there.

We need to know and to teach our children and help them to understand that bullying is a serious problem while help the offenders change their ways of interacting in schools and out there.
We may be parent of a child who is a bully or bullying someone.  In either way, it is significant to not take the act of bullying as a victim’s low self-esteem type of blame.
Sometime in our culture, the act of bullying is mixed with the notion of “joking.” The offender always excuses its act by saying: “I was just joking.” Numerous times I have met those families whose children bully behaviour has been noticed,
while parents excuse their children’ behaviour by relating this to act of being childish or else.  Bullying may be childish still this is a serious problem, affecting our children’s physical, mental, psychological, and social health in all aspects.

For the same reason, we have to teach our children that never take any type of teasing, picking on, ridiculing, laughing at, name calling, belittling, threatening, forcing, and making the other feel less. These are all the behaviours that the bullies do in order to take control over the bully.  As parents we have to be aware of what is going on with our children while teaching them to never accepting someone taking control over their mind in this way.

What do we know about bullying?

The Persian translation of the word “bully” gives us: ???? ????? ? ???? ?????

When we are checking in with the English to English translation of the world “bully” we will find these explanations:

A Bully: If someone bullies you into doing something, they make you do it by using force or threats.
If someone bullies you, they use their strength or power to hurt or frighten you.  A bully is someone who uses their strength or power to hurt or frighten people.

About Bullying, there are many good articles out there and I found this one of particular interest, as it talks a little bit about the brain of the person who bullies:
http://www.physorg.com/news145252980.html

As a community, we in our Iranian community have never spoken about bullying and the signs of it.
In order to raise awareness we in the Iranian Educators Society for Families are organizing two public workshops in April 2010, to raise awareness about the victims of crime: Every Victim Matters.
This is part of a plan that is recognized and accepted while it will be funded by the Department of Justice Canada.

On this note, we will talk about bullying as a serious issue and how families can help their children not become a victim for bullying.
We invite all families who are interested to know about this serious issue and we hope we could see Ashkan Sultani and other parents of victims of bully to join us in exploring this issue in our community.
These two public seminars will be held in North Vancouver and Coquitlam as advertised and we invite all families who have been victimized for any reason due to any act of crime or trauma.  This is about: Every Victim Matters.
Please see our website/ News & Events: http://iranianeducators.com/?page_id=265

We like to help our communities grow. Let’s help saving lives by raising awareness.

Poran Poregbal, RSW, RCC
Iranian Educators Society for Families
Feb 4, 2010

The disturbing news about the rape of inmates in Iran prisons has now made the hardliners in Islamic regime to gaurd against the truth more than ever.   The controversial news however has shaken the foundation of the whole structure of this regime.  Those who fight to stay in power with any means still use denial, rejection, and intimidation as their usual way of silencing people.  Stealing the evidence, oppressing the witnesses, and threatening the victims are also what the oppressors in Iran do.  None of these are new to any of us Iranians, not any more.

Still, what is innovative is the shocking disclosure of rape, torture, and sexual assault on inmates all over the Iranian media.  Discussing or complaining about sexual assault allegedly offended by the prison guards in the Islamic regime has never been this easy.

Victims and their families are telling stories that change our communities forever.  The details of described sadistic act of crime offended by the guards and the interrogators in the prisons are finding ways to people’s everyday life now more than ever before in our history.

The public discussion about rape and sexual abuse in our prisons are leaking out in a broad scale and from different sources, something that opens up a discussion about the act itself.

While the act itself have been occurring  in the Iran prisons, at least to our collective knowledge during past 30 years, yet the impact of this violent crime on communities are not known.

Disgracing the inmates with rape while ridiculing their belief has been reported as used treatments by the guards in many of the prisons across Iran.  It is significant to realize that many victims of rape, torture, and harassments in jails are too fragile to come forward for telling their stories.  Beside the damages of such act on people are too harsh why their trusts in any justice are under question.  This all happens while the trust to any justice under the umbrella of current regime of Iran is impossible.

Unfortunately as there are no statistic or correct information about how many incarcerated individuals who have been victimized this way.

The clinical damages and the debilitating impact of these horrible crimes on individuals are to be discussed.  On one hand these victims and their families are brave to handle a very unbearable situation while on the other hand we can just imagine the cultural embarrassments and barriers for Iranian families to help these victims.  All these problems seem to challenge a nation in a country where justice is an illusion.

Peace and healing comes with acknowledgment and serious steps to help the victims and their families. Still hard to believe such an action is under the Iranian regimes of hate and terror of its own people.

May peace,healing, and happiness for our people be intertwined with freedom and democracy in a near future.

September 14, 2009
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In our Iranian community we have no discussion about bullying.  Translation of this word in our language does not show the seriousness of this topic.  Bullying is mostly misunderstood as “jokes” or as “just being funny” type of action.  In our culture it is easy to laugh at or ignore many hard topics such as bullying.  Victims of bullying could be anyone who is considered to be less than others.   Our exaggerated respect for social status does allow bullying becoming a top to down way of ordering orders.  Our jokes definitely reflect our way of thinking, acting, and feeling. Just to remind us of how bullying look like in our culture, take a moment to think of how we call one another based on the person’s personal attributes. We choose words and they have a meaning. This is a conscious way of bullying, even if we think it is a funny way of calling another person a name.

There are people who will argue with this write and say I am taking things too seriously. However we have to think of how we are victimizing others on a daily basis just by some minimal actions that are called: bullying.  It is time to learn what is right and what is wrong.

May 21, 2009

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