Under the cold sunset of one December day in 2013, I am walking up an empty street in Nevshehir, Turkey. We are supposed to meet at a restaurant with a few Iranian refugees. My journalist friend points at a building: “That’s HRANA’s office.” He also worked there. I wanted to know more, to go upstairs and see what was happening there, but it did not happen.
I had heard of HRANA before. A couple of times, I heard from my journalist friends, “HRANA published another lie,” even when we wanted to publish a report about political prisoners on IranWire, these statements had stuck in our minds so much that we were really careful not to use HRANA as a source, unless it was to double=check with other sources.
In March 2014, I wanted to write an article regarding Iranian Dervishes. I needed basic information, and my research took me to HRANA. It was a complete source. I checked with other places, and the information was accurate.
There were a few features that stood out. First, HRANA’s news reporting was first-hand. It was clear that it had a strong eye-witness network that delivers good and accurate information. Many of the news reports were from inside the prisons. Fellows who have been in prison before and had left Iran and kept their connections to others in prison were able to turn this opportunity into a news agency. It has features that distinguish it from other news agencies.
Second, keeping a database. HRANA did not just publish the news. When one activist was arrested, the process of the dossier, the sentence, the bail amount, or the release could be looked up at HRANA. An important point was that there was no discrimination. All the prisoners were covered equally. Therefore, HRANA was able to create a strong and reliable archive.
Later, I found out it produced a monthly report on the human rights conditions in Iran. These all showed that behind HRANA, there is an organization that has its own mind, has plans and goals. When I combined my own observations with newspapers, letters from prisons or the library of the site, it was clear that many of the previous judgments of HRANA had been wrong.
I genuinely believed and still believe that HRANA filled a great gap in the information that the public received. The opposition, human rights activists and freedom of speech advocates need professional websites such as HRANA’s human rights activist. I know there was lots of talk about the tyranny that Iranian women experienced in the early years after the Revolution—what they did to the virgin girls and so on. We wanted to create a report and truly examine these talks, but there were rarely any documents available. The activists did not report these injustices. Government cruelty should be documented, recorded, and archived. Of course, news reported by HRANA was published by other websites without mentioning the original source. However, this was not important; What had really mattered was the lack of sufficient documentation of the crimes of the past three decades. Fortunately, HRANA has filled a part of this gap, and this is the best reason to respect and admire HRA.
However, in those days, I did not know and had not met Seyed Jamal Hosseini the editor of HRANA. My journalist friends didn’t say anything about him either. It was the summer of 2014 when I heard the sorrowful news of his death. I felt really bad, but it was too late.
I remember those days. I started reading and querying about Jamal Hosseini. There was a lot of news regarding his death and the reason behind it. His life had many interesting points. He had worked in a team for many years and believed in teamwork in HRANA. He was hard-working and diligent. Many of us journalists lack these characteristics.
Often many of us, when given the opportunity, instead of thinking and wanting to establish an organization or news agency, we would want to present ourselves as the media and that is why we talk and share opinions about everything and pretend to have the knowledge to do so. Jamal Hosseini, along with his colleagues, worked in silence and efficiently when it came to finances and time towards a specific goal and had a role in establishing an organization and a supportive network of people.
Recently, I have written fewer articles about prison, and I have not followed HRANA as much but have spoken to a friend about what happens to HRANA without Jamal. Indeed, HRANA was not only Jamal as he was a member of a greater network, but he was a key part of it. My friend was optimistic that HRANA and HRA will continue their path, and I also hoped HRANA would continue its work with the same quality as before, and in those few times I checked, I can see, the same work ethic has been maintained.
I believe continuing a legacy is very important. When looking at many of the fights in one’s life, from within the families whose members battle over inheritance of a father’s wealth, to people at the highest level in government fighting over inheriting the supreme leader position, many of the tensions, deviations and troubling incidents are due to lack of knowledge and etiquette in continuing a legacy and heritage. From the outside where I stand, I can tell that Jamal’s legacy has been maintained. I think this is the best gift that could be talked about every year on different occasions such as HRANA’s birthday, Jamal’s birthday and even on the anniversary of his death.
