FREE JOSH AND SHANE
CALL TO ACTION: Will President Ahmadinejad Travel To New York Yet Again Without Releasing Shane and Josh?
Sep 9th
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Dear Supporters,
Later this month, the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will take place in New York for the third time since Shane, Josh and Sarah were detained by the Iranian government in July 2009. Last year, Sarah was released just days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew to New York to address the meeting – and he plans to attend again this year with Shane and Josh still in prison for no reason.
When Sarah and her mother Nora met with President Ahmadinejad in New York one year ago, he told Sarah, “I hope you and Shane will be married very soon.” He also said that Josh and Shane are “good kids” and promised to ask the judiciary to show “leniency and expediency” in resolving their case. Even two years ago he used the same language!
Where are the results? Another horrible, anguished year has passed for Josh, Shane and everyone who loves them. Expectations for Shane and Josh’s release ran high during the Islamic month of Ramadan when Iranian Foreign Minister Salehi stated that he “hoped” that their July 31 trial would “result in their freedom.” The Iranian Ambassador to Iraq said he “expected a release very soon.” Instead, Shane and Josh remain locked away for no crime and a ridiculously unjust sentence has been imposed.
IF Shane and Josh are not released before the UNGA we are going to need your help. Free the Hikers will be protesting peacefully near the UN in New York during the week of September 19th. The theme is “None of Us are Free Until Josh and Shane Are Free.” We plan to build a large cell as a visual prop for the rally. In solidarity with Shane and Josh, family and supporters will stand inside the cell, with other supporters will stand in front of it holding up signs and banners.
If you can’t join us in New York in late September, we want to ask you to organize SOLIDARITY ACTIONS in your city or town:
Dimensions of Detainment NYC
WHAT: Build your own cell and display it in a public place along with a sign that says: “We are Not Free Until Josh and Shane are Free,” then get inside!
WHEN: The week of September 19th.
WHERE: Central Action: The United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza,
East 47th Street, between 1st and 2nd Ave, NYC.
Solidarity Actions: In your city, town or neighborhood!
HOW: You can build your cell out of something as simple as a cardboard box, or you can use four bodies and string like in previous actions in the streets of San Francisco and New York City.
Use your imagination and skill to create a visual reminder of the conditions that Josh and Shane have been forced to live in for more then two years. Please take photographs of your cell and send them to: Farah at Free the Hikers so we can post them on our site.
Connect with us and thousands of other supporters on our facebook page to coordinate an event in your locale!
Downloadable postcards also available there!
Thank you all for standing by Josh, Shane and all of us. Your participation is crucial for the success of this campaign; we couldn’t do it without you!
Until Freedom,
The Families of Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd
Lines of Hope: The Freedom of Dreams ~ Sarah Shourd
Sep 7th
Locked in a cell, your dreams are one of the only places you can go to feel free. There is a place in your subconscious where the countless restrictions placed on your body and spirit are temporarily lifted, where you can soar.
Wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket with a shirt wrapped around my eyes to block out the flourescent lights, my lonely cot at Evin Prison was a small comfort, a reminder that I had made it through yet another day. In our dreams, Shane, Josh and I could travel across the world, revisit the past and even venture into the future. I used to dream up adventures in the streets and markets of Tehran, I would talk to imaginary Iranian people and assure them of our innocence. I dreamed that I was finally allowed a cell mate; she was sad like me but we were together and she promised to teach me Farsi. I once dreamed that I was able to hide a kitten under my chador and sneak it into my cell, another time I received a surprise phone call from President Obama and yet another time my sweet mother came to visit me (which later came true) in a garden inside the prison. Those dreams were the only way that Shane, Josh and I could see the faces of our loved ones, hear their words and stay connected to the world we love.
Since I’ve been free, many of you have told me about your dreams about Shane, Josh and I over the last 2 years. Dreams are powerful connectors, so I’d like to ask you all to share yours here now, anonymously if you like, just like Shane, Josh and I did so many times during the brief time we had together in the prison’s open-air room. I’ll start with my own, one that I had while I was still detained:
I dreamed that I woke up in the middle of the night and the door of my cell was wide open. Somehow, I got a hold of some giant crayons. I walked down all the corridors, upstairs and downstairs. The bright lights were all on as usual but everyone was sleeping, even the guards, and there wasn’t a sound. Wearing a long white dress, I began to draw lines across the walls and cell doors. I drew a line across the whole prison, crossing it out and connecting all of us inside at the same time. The next day (in my dream), the investigators called me into the interrogation room and accused me of being the one who graffitied the walls. “How could I have done it when I was locked in my cell and I have no crayons?” I asked. “Anyway,” I said, “those marks are lines of hope. There are a lot of people trying to help us on the outside. It could have been any one of them that drew those lines. It’s art,” I told them, “it’s not a crime for them to give us hope.”
More than any other topic, Josh, Shane and I dreamed about the day we would all be freed. All 3 of us dreamed dozens of times about a big homecoming party, with everyone we had ever known in attendance. We called these “Temporary Freedom Dreams” and they helped us keep our hope alive, knowing that every day we were that much closer to the real thing.
Until Freedom, Sarah Shourd
To Our Fearless Leader, Josh ~ With love, Your IHP students
Sep 1st
To Our Fearless Leader,
Josh and some of his IHP Health & Community Study Abroad students in India.
It has been over two years since we all strapped pink pieces of rope around our wrists and ankles, over two years since we stood in a line to hug you good bye on your travels, and two long years since the world has been blessed by your freedom.
Despite the bracelets falling off, being removed for various ceremonies and a few strong bracelets surviving – we have all kept our promise, to stay in touch and to update each other on our lives past the 4 months of our world adventure. Much of our discussion over the past few years has been of you, missing you, remembering the joy you brought to our family, and focusing our efforts to send you our love, thoughts, prayers, and strength. Many of us attended various days and nights of peaceful protests and vigil on the first and second anniversaries of your detainment, among other days, and many of us have gone on hikes all over this country and others in your honor. We hold you in our hearts.
We hold you in our hearts all over the world. Post IHP we have found ourselves in a wide variety of places and jobs, each of which has been a result of your impact and our time together on IHP.
Josh's IHP Health & Community Study Abroad community in China
In the world of academia: Eric L, Komal, Katie, Mariam, Pooja, Anita and Shannon are off studying to become truly amazing doctors and have even found time to travel to Cambodia and Ecuador. Holly, Emily C and Sarah chose to pursue a Masters in Public Health. Lauren, with her love of naturopathy, is receiving a Masters in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition. Serg finished his Masters degree and has returned home to Singapore. Ben is working for Brigham and Women’s Hospital as a research assistant, where there is truly never a dull moment. Prior to his work, he found some time to travel back to India, where much of our journey together began.
A large contingent of us stayed in the public health sector, Victoria is very appropriately working for the Humane Society, focusing on religious outreach, Emily K is working for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Bridget is advocating for children’s right to healthcare, Sami is working for the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, Barbara is loving her job at a community mental health center, Heather just got a job with the American Diabetes Association, focusing on minority populations, and Abby just started a job in Boston working with children with behavioral issues.
A few of us ventured outside our IHP experience to wonderful and truly appropriate jobs. Eric K is putting his excellent penmanship to work for an advertising agency and the ever-motherly Kate is a nursery school teacher.
The nature-lovers of us have found a home as well, Helena is living in Maine working on experimental education for middle school children, and Kyle just recently moved to Ohio to do outdoor education.
Josh's IHP Health & Community students in South Africa
Lastly, a handful of us have spent most of our post-graduate life outside of the country. Nora has been in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, Yogeeta moved back home to Mumbai starting a research fellowship at a strategic philanthropy foundation, Leah moved to England to get a dual Masters of Philosophy in Public Health and Zoology, Walker spent a year in China finishing her studies and immersing herself in a culture she truly loves, and finally, though not surprisingly, Sasha has been living in Rwanda and co-founded Spark MicroGrants, a wonderful organization that supports local social sector projects in East Africa.
Josh, you would be so proud of all of us and we know you would be celebrating in our successes and with us. Just as you took care of us with your tea and calming Tai Chi moves on that cold day in China, when we were all sick and a little homesick, we are taking care of you now. We send you our strength, our love, and our constant and unfaltering support. We will continue to focus the power of our family to you, until you are safely home.
We love you, we miss you, and we will stand in solidarity until the day you come home.
With love,
Your IHP students
Free the Hikers Jewelry Fundraiser – Sarah Taylor Designs
Aug 30th
Sarah Taylor started making necklaces for the Free the Hikers campaign almost 2 years ago. It was at a Free the HIkers fundraiser organized by Jackie Brock, the sister of a good friend of Josh Fattal’s, that Sarah Taylor first donated a necklace for the silent auction. Jackie’s Mom won the necklace and promptly mailed it to Laura Fattal. It seemed fitting that all three Moms should have a necklace so the Brock family ordered 2 more. When the 3 Moms went to Iran in May 2010 they each wore their necklace.
Knowing this, created an attachment for Sarah Taylor to the hikers’ situation and it all spiraled from there. Sarah now has a ‘Free the Hikers Fundraiser’ page on her website, it offers necklaces engraved with “Free the Hikers,” “Free All Three” and another with “Shane, Sarah and Josh.” With each new necklace the word is spreading. Sarah Taylor says she is looking forward to the day she will never have to make another necklace because they will be free. “But until then, I feel fortunate to be able to help.. every person placing an order is so grateful to be able to support Free the Hikers and to spread the word.”
To view sample necklaces and earrings, see http://www.sarahtaylordesigns.com/free_the_hikers_fundraiser
To order your own necklace, contact sarah@sarahtaylordesigns.com
3000 DAYS without FREEDOM ~ Rebecca ‘Walker’ Christoforo
Aug 25th
When hikers Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer were tried in Iran several weeks ago, I felt a kind of quiet excitement settle into our campaign. It was obvious that they would be acquitted, having already spent two years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Their story, their passports, travel documents, and witnesses all showed the authorities what we, their family and friends, knew all along. Josh and Shane are simply the curious type, people who enjoy seeing things with their own eyes. They are not reckless, nor are they militant, and it would be even more absurd to assume they have a contract with the American government. I think a lot of us felt a sense of finality after the trial, and we began the preparations to welcome them home. But this morning, I received a call telling me that they had been charged with espionage and sentenced to 8 years of prison. 8 years. That’s almost 3000 days of waking up without fresh air, without sunshine, without games and books. 3000 days without direction and purpose, without the freedom to choose your lunch or ride your bicycle or listen to music. I don’t think most of us can comprehend the lifetimes that go by while living in confinement, or the desperation that can set in when we feel our autonomy stripped away and humanity ignored.
To fight this desperation, Josh and Shane have been ‘hunger striking’, or refusing to eat until concessions are made in their favor. It gives them leverage against their jailors, for (as terrible as it sounds) they are only valuable if alive. Shane’s fiancee Sarah Shourd, who was imprisoned with them but released for health reasons, tells us that they have already fasted several times to receive information about their case. Although she has had no contact with the two since returning home a little less than a year ago, she knows that they are continuing to fast- perhaps to receive letters, books, or more time in the courtyard.
Josh teaching IHP Health & Community 2009 students in Geneva, Switzerland
It is sad that Josh, who has studied and grown food so passionately, would be forced to take such measures. Before I knew him, he was working at the Aprovecho Sustainability Center, where he spent several weeks eating only foods that came from a 100-mile radius of the farm, which included a pilgrimage to the Oregon coast for salt. A couple of years later, in 2009, we met while traveling with a community health study abroad program. He was the teaching fellow, which placed him somewhere in between us students and our professors. Josh didn’t teach often, but when he did his lessons were always memorable and frequently beautiful. There was one class in particular that stands out to me now, those first days of the program in Switzerland. Josh began the class by asking us to think about our relationship with food, and reminding us that all good food comes from sunlight and clean water. He used the ‘power point’ program as a way to illustrate his ideas. The slides were simple, with no images and just a couple words. One looked like this:
FOOD = SUNLIGHT
It is a simple idea, and one that often gets forgotten in refrigerated aisles, but it was the beginning of a lesson that Josh would continue to impress upon us as the semester continued. Food is not something to be taken for granted, but something to cherish and consider. To know this can change how you relate to the world.
As I ate today, and thought of Josh and his hunger fasting, and of the many others who have fasted in protest, I couldn’t help but feel it is a true crime that a man who has such a connection to his food would have to use it as a means to an end. Food equals sunlight, but in Evin prison food equals power and information. With the recent verdict on his trial, and with only 20 days to appeal, we anticipate that Josh and Shane will continue to fast. It is in solidarity with them that I, and several other students who traveled with Josh in 2009, will continue to fast as well.
Rebecca ‘Walker’ Christoforo
Statement from the Bauer and Fattal families after verdict
Aug 21st
“Of the 751 days of Shane and Josh’s imprisonment, yesterday and today have been the most difficult for our families. Shane and Josh are innocent and have never posed any threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran, its government or its people.
We are encouraged that the Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, has said he hopes the case will proceed in a manner that will result in Shane and Josh’s freedom. We appeal to the authorities in Iran to show compassion and allow them to return home to our families without delay.
We also ask everyone around the world who trusts in the benevolence of the Iranian people and their leaders to join us in praying that Shane and Josh will now be released.”
~ Bauer and Fattal families and Sarah Shourd
“As we wandered together, Josh reminded us who we were and what we could be” ~ Leah Katzelnick
Aug 4th
On July 31, 2009, I had stumbled into a small Internet café in Managua, Nicaragua to read tidings from the United States. My inbox was flooded with the news that my mentor, teacher, and dear friend Josh Fattal, as well as Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer, had been taken into custody by the Iranian authorities. I circled around the block on that bright morning and cried with frustration on the curb. A blossoming tree embraced me with its laden branches; Josh’s imprisonment could not have seemed more strange and distant in that moment.
IHP is built on the principle of uprooting its students, casting them adrift in the magnificent, edifying school of the world. Our books were conversations, our classrooms villages and non-profits. Everyone we met was our teacher. In the midst of continuous change, Josh was a focus of stability, a pivot point in our transformative journey. He was there to make us laugh, to lead us on to the next adventure, and always to reflect with us. When our minds were unmoored he philosophized us into the docks of heightened awareness, when we were lonely he culled from within us memories that revived our wearied souls. As we wandered together, Josh reminded us who we were and what we could be, connecting our seemingly lost and our realized selves.
I have wandered a great deal since our journey together. I passed my summer after the International Honors Program to India, China and South Africa in Nicaragua; devoted my last year at university exploring what I had learned of NGOs and volunteering during my travels on IHP and in Nicaragua; spent a summer studying Dengue Fever in a lab in North Carolina; and passed the next year pursuing a Masters in Public Health in England. Not only did Josh help guide me towards this path, but his imprint on my thought process allows me to re-equilibrate as environment and ideas whirl around me in endless flurry. Yet, while I have migrated, he has been confined and restricted. In a dulled environment, he is deprived of that world of change, the world that moves and inspires and nurtures. His sustenance is memories and the few shreds of correspondence that reach his dank cell.
What Josh always provided us with was comfort amidst the strangeness of change, grounding and familiarity within the foreign. Josh, the most positive, optimistic, vibrant person I have ever met, is certain to search for this home within the foreign, comfort despite suffering. I cannot possibly imagine the courage this requires. We hope our fast and love for Josh will stir the unmoving, embrace him with the familiar, and sustain in him, and the world, a vision of freedom. We hope to act as a stimulus to bring him home.
~ 
Leah Katzelnick
IHP Health and Community, ’09
VIDEO: Josh’s 29th Birthday…Cottage Grove style
Aug 3rd
The prayerboats were sent off at dusk on Josh’s birthday, Main St, Cottage Grove, where the river flows sweet and straight right through town. We made 40 or more boats altogether during his birthday party. Kids, elders, Josh’s friends and family, some media, a couple that drove from out of town to leave a donation.
We sent the boats out to river in a line, handing them off like a firemen’s bucket brigade. Hand to hand. The first one, made of moss, caught fire and went out in a little boat blaze as it floated downriver. Josh would’ve liked that. Out to sea! Everyone stayed on the riverbank and the old covered bridge a long time. The the cloudy sky blazed in an eruption of pink and red fire – a sunset the likes of which we hadn’t seen for a long while.
Before the launch, we played games in the middle of large heart make of knotted scarves. We broke bread together. Sliced up a 10 layer cake baked in the shape of a Ziggurat. Sat in a circle around an altar full of flowers, candles, art, animal totems. We exchanged presents to honor Josh’s desire for a generosity based economy, trading with friends and neighbors. Everyone had stories of Josh and offered their gifts to the circle. We called the center of the circle “the fire” in memory of Josh ecstatically throwing his favorite shirt into a fire at at party.
Everyone cried when Alex threw Josh’s 2nd favorite shirt with the Zapatista red star on it, into the “fire”. At the end, our community put the t-shirt up on a wall at the bookstore. His brother took home a piece of 100yr old yew wood with a poem about surviving the fires that surround you. We agreed we should keep the rest for Josh.
We are so grateful for Josh’s life, we love him so.
Tegra Fisk and the Cottage Grove community
VIDEO: Happy Birthday Shane: Shane Bauer in the eyes of his loved ones
Aug 3rd
In the days leading up to a decision in Iranian courts regarding innocent hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, this video, first shown at a birthday tribute to Shane, takes a closer look at Shane’s work as a journalist/photographer before his captivity in Iran.
Here some of Shane’s closest friends, colleagues and family members talk about why Shane first traveled to the Middle East, why he began intensively studying Arabic when he was 19 and why he became a journalist and photographer.
Filmed by Natalie Avital and edited by Bobby Field. Additional footage from David Martinez and Jacqueline Soohen.
