Omid Memorial
The men and women whose stories you can read on this page are now all citizens of a silent city named Omid ("hope" in Persian). There, victims of persecution have found a common life whose substance is memory.
Omid's citizens were of varying social origins, nationalities, and religions; they held diverse, and often opposing, opinions and ideologies. Despite the differences in their personality, spirit, and moral fiber, they are all united in Omid by their natural rights and their humanity. What makes them fellow citizens is the fact that one day each of them was unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. At that moment, while the world watched the unspeakable happen, an individual destiny was shattered, a family was destroyed, and an indescribable suffering was inflicted.
Sattar Beheshti…
“I have threatening calls day and night, as if we have to shut our mouths as soon as they say so. I, as an Iranian, say that I can’t stay silent in the face of all this tragedy."
Habib Elqanian…
Iran’s first plastic factory was among his early enterprises. He was proud, he told a tribunal, to be an Iranian Jew.
Ebrahim Lotfollahi Mirehki…
He knew poverty and discrimination too well to be indifferent. He worked to pay for his law studies. His hope to be a lawyer and fight injustice was shattered in an Intelligence detention center in Sanandaj