North Texans head to New York to protest Iranian president’s presence at the U.N.

Published by Star- Telegram- Sep. 23, 2009   

By ANNA M. TINSLEY

Mahie Ghoraishi hasn’t been back to Iran since she was 3.

She wants to go back someday, to see the country and her relatives who still live there, but says she can’t until her country is free. Until then, she says she’ll speak out about the way people there are treated — being arrested, tortured, even killed for protesting election results some say falsely put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in office as president.

The 30-year-old Keller woman is in New York today, along with countless others with ties to Iran, to protest Ahmadinejad’s presence at the United Nations.

"We feel he is not the legitimate president for Iran," said Ghoraishi, who is a social worker in Fort Worth. "We want to raise the voice of Iranian people and let their struggle be heard.

"If their hands are tied behind their backs there, our hands are free," she said. "We need to be on the Iranian people’s side, not the side of the regime."

Stories have ricochet around the world about people injured, raped and killed during the Iranian protests and their aftermath. For many, Neda Agha-Soltan became a symbol of the protest after the 26-year-old woman was shot and killed earlier this year not far from an anti-government protest. Video of her apparently bleeding to death was seen worldwide.

"My heart hurts because of the lack of human rights in Iran," said Ghoraishi, who is among possibly hundreds of North Texans making their way to the New York protest today.

Nikki Taherian, 50, of Fort Worth, is in New York today as well to add her voice to the protest.

She said she must speak out not just for herself, but for relatives who still live in Iran, a country she last saw when she was 19.

"If we stay quiet, who is going to know what is going on?" Taherian said. "I feel very bad for the people in Iran. If they leave their home, they don’t know if they’re getting back alive."

Mostafa Farahani, 51, a used-car-parts salesman from Kennedale, is also heading to New York.

He left Iran in 1979. While he tries to keep in touch with relatives there, he can’t really know what is going on because, out of fear their telephone lines are tapped, they "say nothing is going on."

"Here, the people are free and we can tell the whole world," Farahani said. "I want to show to the whole world that the president coming [to the U.N. meeting] is not our president of Iran."