Reza Baraheni

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Reza Baraheni (born 1935) is an exiled Iranian novelist, poet, critic and political activist.

Baraheni was born in Tabriz, Iran in 1935 and now lives in Canada where he is a visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature and past president of PEN Canada from June 2001-June 2003.

He is the author of more than fifty books in Persian language and English and his works have been translated into a dozen languages. Moreover, he has translated into Persian, works by Shakespeare, Kundera, Mandelstam, Andric, and Fanon.

His most famous work is The Crowned Cannibals: Writings on Repression in Iran, which recounts his days in prison against the Shah of Iran.

Baraheni, the former Iranian political prisoner, is an ethnic Azeri and ardent supporter of Azari rights.

[edit] Political life

In 1973, he was arrested and imprisoned in Teheran and spent 102 days in solitary confinement. In 1982, he was expelled from the University of Teheran and deprived of the right to work. Baraheni was granted political asylum by the Canadian government in 1996.

[edit] Quotes

ايران يك ايالات متحده ي ايران، يك اتحاد جماهير ايران، يك مجموعه ملل مشترك المنافع مي تواند باشد با زبان هاي مختلف، با يكي دو زبان مشترك بين همه، چرا كه واقعيتش ايجاب مي كند كه اين باشد و غير از اين نباشد، و حكومت هايي كه در خلاف جهت اين واقعيت حركت كرده اند جز خونخوري براي مردم و خونخواري براي خود دستمايه ي ديگري نداشته اند.

"Iran can be a United States of Iran, a United Republics of Iran, a Commonwealth of nations with multiple languages, but with one or two common languages between all, because its reality necessitates this and none other than this, and any regime that has flowed against this direction has brought nothing but blood for its people and itself."

البته هستند كساني كه پس از رويت اين بلاها تزريق جدايي طلبي مي كنند. اصلا چه كسي گفته است كه ايران متعلق به ديگري است تا تو از آن جداي شوي؟ بزرگ ترين شهر آذري نشين جهان تهران است، با بيش از نيمي از جمعيت كل اين پايتخت، كه محصور به شهرهاي آذري نشين است، بزرگترينش شهري به جمعيت چند ميليوني كرج، و واقع بين اگر باشيم بايد بگوييم كه تهران و اطرافش، به رغم داشتن ميليونها فارسي زبان، در دنيا، پس از استانبول و اطرافش، بزرگ ترين شهر ترك نشين جهان است،

"Of course there are those that after seeing all these tensions in Iranian Azerbaijan inject ideas of secessionism of Azeris from Iran. I want to ask them: What other group does Iran belong to that has made you want to secede from Iran? Tehran is the world's largest Azeri city, with half the population being Azeri. And it is surrounded by Azeri cities as well, the largest being the multi million population city of Karaj. And if we even want to be realistic, we can even say that Tehran and its metropolitan area, despite its large Persian population, constitutes the world's largest Turkic city, after Istanbul."