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I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.

Akbar Ganji

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Akbar Ganji
Age: 54
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Ghazvin
Akbar Ganǧī
Simply
Simple
Never
Commander
Commanders
Guard
Join
Revolutionary

More quotes by Akbar Ganji

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We have two kinds of oppression. Oppression that is universal - everyone in Iran is subject to it. But everyone has also their own, unique way of experiencing this oppression.
Akbar Ganji
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The difference between us and the other side is that they use populist and...kind of slogans that are...they fool the people. They are the kind of dishonest and populist slogans that we are not willing to use.
Akbar Ganji
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When I was on my hunger strike, and I was in a hospital, the guards who inflicted all manner of injustice against me, and all manner of hardship...I could witness that as a result of Ahmadinejad, they lived in a dream. They believed that paradise is around the corner and that all their demands shall be met.
Akbar Ganji
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The Shah's regime was an incorrigible regime and after a while, when the revolution happened, the situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created...we simply wanted to change the regime.
Akbar Ganji
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It began early in the revolution. It was a process that was unfolding on a daily basis. We expected the system to be dispensing justice, but every day that passed by, we recognized that the justice we expected and hoped for was not about to be achieved.
Akbar Ganji
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I am only speaking of my own behalf.
Akbar Ganji
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Khomeini obviously had many problems, but he had one clever side to him. He never made economic promises to people and as a result, he never led to dissatisfaction in this perspective. Because they need to get votes, they use misleading slogans. And this leads to rising expectations. I had a personal experience.
Akbar Ganji
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We must struggle for creating a democratic system that is dedicated to democracy and human rights.
Akbar Ganji
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Three of our provinces have seen mass uprisings. The three provinces are Khuzestan, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan. Recently, we witnessed massive demonstration by Iranian woman in the 7th of Tir square, and it was brutally suppressed.
Akbar Ganji
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The lower strata are suffering all kinds of oppression and the injustice that is inflicted upon them has many faces and many facets. Well-to-do classes are using all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious benefits that this regime has created for it.
Akbar Ganji
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You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.
Akbar Ganji
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The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.
Akbar Ganji
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There is no possibility of a public demonstration [in Iran] of such defiance, but these defiant acts are certainly going on.
Akbar Ganji
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Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market. It is not clear what they have bought, how many secondhand materials they have bought. I am very worried that something like Chernobyl will happen to Iran.
Akbar Ganji
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We've had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system? Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.
Akbar Ganji
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In the West, when all of these reactors, nuclear reactors, are matters...part of the public domain, there are all kinds of supervision over them. We see that the ecological movement, environmentalist movement, organizes all kinds of demonstrations against these. They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.
Akbar Ganji
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If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist...the entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.
Akbar Ganji
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Let me begin by saying not only you can't have democracy with $75 million. You can't even have it with $750 billion.
Akbar Ganji
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Why did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.
Akbar Ganji
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Negotiation talks are the best way to solve anything. We must replace wars and weapons with negotiations and talks.
Akbar Ganji