Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, the Copenhagen Voice, Malmö, Sweden, 4 July 2009

The sun is beating down from an almost cloudless sky and the thermometer reads 28 degrees C in the centre of Malmö, the Swedish city just across the Sound from Copenhagen.

It’s almost too hot to sit in the sun, yet eight representatives of Föreningen för Demokrati i Iran (Association for Democracy in Iran), a Swedish organisation promoting democracy in Iran, prefer to sit on benches in Gustav Adolfs torg than in their overheated tents.

Their spirits are good and they are drinking a lot to keep their strength up, but finding it difficult to fight the heat without food, says Ardavan Khoshnood, the association’s chair. Nor have they slept well because of the night life in this bustling city.

“Many of us have been burned very strongly by the beating sun, which has contributed to complications, including shivers and tremors, and some have developed fevers,” he adds. “But that is the price you pay for democracy and liberty.”

This is the third day of the hunger strike, which is due to end at 6 pm tomorrow, 5 July.

The association is using the strike to call on the Swedish government to cut all ties with Iran. It says that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been shaken by massive demonstrations for several weeks. People wanting the Islamic Republic to be toppled and crying for freedom and democracy have been met with batons and bullets.

“Today it is more imperative than ever that the Swedish government should follow this demand, as the whole world has witnessed how the Islamic Republic has murdered and violently maltreated people who have called for freedom and human rights,” says Föreningen för Demokrati i Iran.

Although many Swedish politicians and political organisations are engaged in the annual week of political meetings at Almedalen on Gotland, which ended today, politicians have taken an interest in the hunger strike, but apparently not in severing ties with Iran.

The many Swedes who have passed by the tents have also taken an interest. Many want to help through cash donations, but Khoshnood told them to join the association and lobby the politicians instead.

A group of Iranians also visited the hunger-strikers on Friday. They have just arrived from Iran and are going back in two weeks.

“They said they had heard about us on Iranian radio and wanted to let us know that they hoped Iran would be liberated soon,” Khoshnood says. “It’s things like this that give us the power we need to get us through this ordeal.”

Click here and here to see the Copenhagen Voice interview with Arvada Khoshnood.

Click here to go to Föreningen för Demokrati i Iran’s website.

Click here to read Karin Bergquist’s story for the Copenhagen Voice ‘Iran: The genie is out of the bottle‘.