Outside the Student Union Building (SUB) on July 10, protesters joined hands in solidarity while collecting signatures for an international campaign called the Green Scroll, which is an effort to break the world record for the world’s longest petition. The UBC part of the petition was organized by a group called Concerned About Iran (CAI). The group has made themselves known around UBC and Vancouver for their efforts in supporting the protesters against the recent events in Iran, lending their voices to the larger movement.

After results were released reporting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election over popular reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, voters took to the streets in mass rallies and riots across Iran, protesting what many have deemed a rigged and therefore false election.

The signatures collected from outside the SUB are to be sewn into a scroll that will be sent to Paris and hung from the Eiffel Tower later this month.

CAI is inspired by the people’s movement that arose from the Iranian election.

“We are here physically, we have this privilege of living in a free country, but our minds and souls are with our friends and families back at home all the time,” said Niousha Masoumi Fakhar, a second-year science student at UBC and member of CAI. “It’s our land so no matter where we are living we want our land to be free.”

CAI is made up of UBC and SFU students and other members of the local Iranian community. They organized a few events before the election, and emerged full force after the results were released. The group is comprised of a handful of organizers and many others come out to the events. CAI has held over a dozen events since mid-June, including Silent Scream, a candlelit vigil mourning those who have died in Iran. Silent Scream takes place every Thursday night this month in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Fakhar said that CAI is simply mirroring protests and efforts in Iran. This is because some of the members of the group, herself included, believe that those who reside in Iran should decide who they want as their leader.

“This campaign has been started in Iran,” Fakhar said. “I believe that I’m concerned about Iran and I would love to have freedom in my country, but I’m not the one to decide who should bring this freedom and in which way this freedom should come. Because I’m living here in Canada and have this opportunity.”

“I believe that those who are still living in Iran who would be the ones to pay any consequence or price to work for this change [should] decide whom they should want as their leader, how they want this freedom to come.”

Bijan Ahmadian, AMS Board of Governors representative, is supportive of the movement, as it adds to movements happening in Canada, the US, and Europe. “The activities here bring the matter to the attention of the Canadian politicians and they, in turn, make public statements about human rights violations in Iran which increases the international pressure on Iran,” Ahmadian said.

“The government of Iran seems to be critical and ignorant of those statements, brushing them off as ‘Western interference,’ but they can’t ignore the international pressure for too long….student activists in Canada can play a role in sustaining that pressure.”

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