Twenty prominent Iranian filmmakers have issued a statement marking the 40th day since the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, where 168 primary school students were killed.
The statement called on the international community to pay attention to what the signatories described as a war crime.
Among those who signed the text are Narges Abyar, Homayoun As’adian, Mohammad Mehdi Asgarpour, Kianoush Ayari, Mohammad Ali Bashe Ahangar, Abolhassan Davoudi, Alireza Davood Nejad, Ebrahim Hatamikia, Fereydoun Jeyrani, Babak Khajeh Pasha, Reza Kianian, Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian, Majid Majidi, Seyed Reza Mir Karimi, Parviz Parastui, Rasul Sadr Ameli, Kamran Shirdel, Behrooz Shoeibi, Kamal Tabrizi, and Haroun Yeshayaei.
Here is the full text of the statement:
On February 28, even the sun seemed to withdraw its bright gaze from one corner of this earth...
In Minab, in southern Iran, 168 schoolchildren were killed by two American Tomahawk missiles. Their small bodies were pulled from beneath the rubble of a place that should have been a shelter for their dreams. At the height of lawlessness and brutality, an elementary school was destroyed in a “double-tap” attack— a calculated act that targets not only human lives, but the very meaning of humanity itself.
This is a catastrophe that no action can make whole. No words, no statement, no apology, no political justification can bring these children back to their families, to their classrooms, or to the unfinished futures that belonged to them. No action can bring back the lives that have been lost. The bombing of schoolchildren in Minab is a horrifying example of the slaughter of civilians; a crime that, according to all documents and evidence, was deliberate. The laws of war leave no ambiguity on this matter: What happened in Minab is a war crime; a grave offense against life, innocence, and the future itself.
Condemning such naked violence against children is only the beginning, and silence in the face of it is itself a form of consent. We, a group of cinema professionals, call on our colleagues and on all people of conscience around the world to speak out clearly and to stand together against the killing of children—wherever it happens and whoever commits it. Let us refuse a world governed by violence, domination, and impunity. Let us insist on another future: a future in which no child’s life is sacrificed to the ambitions of politicians.
MNA
Your Comment