Forbidden Iran [PBS - 60MINS - JAN 8th - 9PM]

[democratic]

caption: In "Forbidden Iran," airing Thursday, January 8, at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), reporter Jane Kokan risks her life to secretly film shocking evidence of a government-sponsored reign of terror against students calling for democratic reform.

"Iran is a country violently split in two," Kokan says. "It's a harsh fundamentalist Islamic republic, but it's also a young country: 70 percent of Iranians are under age 30. And they've had enough of the mullahs."

Kokan takes viewers inside Iran, where she secretly makes contact with students opposed to the repressive regime. Dodging the watchful eyes of her Iranian minder--and fearing that her hotel room is bugged--Kokan slips away at night to send coded emails from local Internet cafés.

Kokan's secret planning leads to several meetings with student leaders who share their personal tales of imprisonment and torture at the hands of Iran's government.

Forbidden Iran" reveals how the Iranian authorities ruthlessly responded to June 2003 demonstrations by disillusioned students calling for governmental reform. Viewers see photographs taken of a raid on a student dormitory, in which Islamic militants controlled by the mullahs attacked the sleeping students with machetes, butcher knives and chains. The exact death toll is unknown.

Correspondent Kokan's underground contacts also help her gain access to Amir Fakhravar. Considered to be one of the student movement's key leaders, Fakhravar is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence for writing a book that advocated democracy and free speech. He is also credited with smuggling a letter out of his jail cell in which he exhorted Iranians to boycott the nation's March 2003 elections, which he claimed were a sham. Voter turnout in the election plummeted to just 12 percent.

Speaking on a cell phone smuggled into his prison cell, Fakhravar tells Kokan that he witnessed the deaths of 19 students "with his own eyes" and claims that thousands of other students have been imprisoned in secret, unofficial prisons throughout Iran.

Viewers also witness videotaped footage of a July 2003 student demonstration. The footage, shot by the wife of a student protestor before she fled the country, shows police and bearded, black-clad, bicycle-riding Islamic vigilantes known as "basiji" attacking the students.

The free world including America can put pressure on the ruling clerics so that they accept holding a referendum to decide the future democratic structure of Iran," an Iranian student says, "But they cannot interfere militarily. We are not after their military intervention."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/w302.html

[democratic]

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