VIDEOS
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.
DIMENSIONS OF DETAINMENT: Street Theatre at #UN Plaza, San Francisco, CA
May 3rd
Last Friday friends, family and supporters of Shane and Josh did a performance piece at UN Plaza in San Francisco piece to raise awareness about the horrific conditions Shane and Josh continue to be held under.
Supporters used string, paper and their bodies to recreate the exact dimensions of the cell Shane and Josh have been confined to for over 21 months in Evin Prison. In so doing, we made our collective pain and outrage visible and highlighted their deplorable conditions: no family visitation, no phone calls, no pens and paper, no access to their lawyer and no communication with the outside world.
As one of the “corners” of the cell, I found it both poignant and horrific. To put ourselves in their shoes brought us closer to them in spirit but at the same time reminded us how isolated and physically remote from us they are. This action also prompted us to reflect on the suffering and the inhumane conditions under which so many prisoners throughout the world are held. Defense of the innocent and the mistreated is a responsibility we all share.
~ Nora Shourd
Mother of Sarah Shourd, held in solitary confinement for 410 days in Evin Prison, Tehran, Iran
‘Imagine’ – John Lennon Cover by Rehana and Kieran Mawani
Mar 14th
Imagine - John Lennon
Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
CNN VIDEO: #USHIKERS GO ON TRIAL
Feb 7th
REPUBLISHED FROM CNN:
U.S. hikers held in Iran go on trial
Tehran, Iran (CNN) — The trial of three U.S. hikers started Sunday in Iran, according to the office of the lawyer representing them.
Iran accuses Americans Shane Bauer, 28, Josh Fattal, 28, and Sarah Shourd, 32, of spying and trespassing.
They were detained July 31, 2009, after they allegedly strayed across an unmarked border into Iran while hiking in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Shourd was released on bail in September 2010 because of a medical condition and immediately left the country. She has not responded to a court summons to return to stand trial, lawyer Masoud Shafii said Saturday.
Iranian authorities said she will be tried in absentia if she doesn’t appear in court.
The trial is closed to the press and the public, as is normally the case with revolutionary court proceedings. Iranian state media reported Sunday that not-guilty pleas had been entered for the three hikers.
Livia Lea Agosti, Swiss Ambassador to Iran
The Swiss ambassador to Iran, who represents American interests in the country, told CNN that Sunday’s trial will likely not continue the next day, but at a later date.
“It’s going to be soon,” Ambassador Livia Lea Agosti said, though she declined to divulge her source. “It’s not going to be another three-month wait.”
Agosti was not invited to attend the hikers’ trial but showed up anyway, she said. She was not able to enter the courtroom but she put in a request to see Bauer and Fattal, according to official IRNA news agency. The pair were present in the courtroom for the proceedings, she told CNN.
Agosti also said that Shourd’s decision not to return to Iran to stand trial was her own.
“This was Shourd’s personal decision and I don’t have any information as to why she didn’t appear for the trial,” the ambassador said, according to IRNA.
Shafii, the attorney, said he had been denied permission to see Bauer and Fattal the day before the trial began. He told CNN he has reviewed his clients’ case file and doesn’t see any evidence of a crime.
“In my opinion, they haven’t done anything wrong,” Shafii said. “The accusation of spying is baseless, and if they trespassed into Iran, it wasn’t their fault.”
Shafii said the border area where the hikers are accused of trespassing is unmarked and anyone could unwittingly cross over into Iran.
Human rights groups have condemned their arrests and their lengthy wait for a trial in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
CNN’s Reza Sayah contributed to this report
VIDEO: Noam Chomsky Testifies to Shane & Josh’s Good Character
Jan 19th
Noam Chomsky
World renown linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls for the immediate release of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who Iranian border guards detained while on a recreational hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan. He offers to testify to their good character and record of advocating for social and environmental justice.
Shane and Josh have been unjustly detained since July 31, 2009. So far they have been treated as political collateral. They were told their case was political after just over one month. It is time they receive compassion and are allowed to return to their families.
For more information, see this article in the New York Times.
Noam Chomsky Calls for Immediate Release of Josh & Shane
VIDEO: Interview with Alex Fattal, Brother of Josh Fattal | VOA Persian @VOAPNN
Oct 26th
VIDEO EXCERPT FROM VOA PERSIAN
Alex Fattal, cherished older brother of Josh Fattal, Is interviewed by the Persian program of the Voice of America. His interview is dubbed in Farsi and takes place against the backdrop of a film about his brother, ‘Josh Fattal: 444 Days in Iran…and counting.’
SPECIAL SCREENING OF SHANE BAUER’S FILM ABOUT DARFUR
Oct 19th
Special Screening of Songs to Enemies and Deserts
Free the Hikers, in conjunction with MN Film Arts, are hosting a special screening of this documentary created by Shane Bauer and David Martinez. Songs to Enemies and Deserts is a work of art created by Shane and David about the people of Darfur and their pursuit of a peaceful community. Please join us!!
- DATE: October 23, 2010
- TIME: 1:30 PM (35 minutes in length)
- PLACE: St Anthony Main
- ADDRESS: 115 SE Main St, Minneapolis, MN 55414
- COST: $12 ($8 Students)
- FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE
- DOWNLOAD PDF FLYER
- EVENT PAGE ON MAIN FREE THE HIKERS SITE
This documentary is about an area of Sudan that is controlled by two factions of armed rebels. It is about the daily lives of the farmers and herders who live there as they interact with the rebels who try and hold the forces of the Janjaweed and the Sudanese army at bay.
INTERVIEW WITH DAVID & SHANE FOR CURRENT TV ABOUT THE FILM:
This is a short news piece that Current TV did about Songs to Enemies and Deserts. Shane is on the viewer’s right and his co-director, David Martinez is on the left.
SHANE BAUER ON MAKING THE FILM, REPUBLISHED FROM HIS WEBSITE:
Songs to Enemies and Deserts:
A Film About The Rebels Of Darfur
From the mountains of Jebel Marra in central Darfur a ragged group of rebels swept down onto Sudanese military bases in 2003, routing the government’s soldiers and making off with rifles, artillery, and vehicles. The Sudan Liberation Army had scored its first victory, and no one could predict what would follow. Instead of taking on the rebels directly, the Khartoum government sent bombers and horse mounted militias to murder and terrorize Darfuri civilians. The ensuing horrors were documented by the international news media and the world’s outcry was part of the reason that the attacks subsided, at least temporarily. With the government murdering the civilian population to quell the rebellion, the rebels became the civilians’ only protection force.
Who are these men and why did they begin fighting in the first place, and what part do they play in the ongoing situation that is Darfur? Their demands are widely supported by the civilian population: they want roads and schools, clean water, health care, and representation in their country’s despotic government, controlled by an elite that has ruled from the country’s northern region since the Sudanese gained independence from the British in 1956.
David Martinez and I wanted to understand these rebels’ world, their motivations, their histories, who they were and why they fought. We felt that in all of the attention that Darfur was getting, the Darfuri people themselves were often portrayed as abject victims, with hands outstretched, needing the west to come to their rescue. And yet here were Darfuris who had risen up against a murderous and racist regime, people who were very far from being helpless Africans.
In August 2007 we went and found them in North Darfur, lived with them for five weeks, and shot a movie about them.
ABOUT THE FILM:
Songs To Enemies And Deserts, (35 minutes), NTSC, Color, Filmed on digital video. In Arabic, Zaghawa, and English with English subtitles. Directed by David Martinez and Shane Bauer, photographed by David Martinez, edited by David Martinez, Shane Bauer, and Iona Sidi. Sound mixed by Luis Guerra, Terremoto Studios, New Mexico.
SCENE FROM THE FILM:
Our heartfelt thanks to MN Film Arts for their assistance & to all supporters of Free The Hikers!
Sarah was released September 14, 2010. Shane and Josh remain in detention.
Please show your support for our efforts to release them to their families.
ALL proceeds go to FREE THE HIKERS!
JOSH FATTAL: 444 DAYS IN IRAN…AND COUNTING
Oct 19th
This is a Free the Hikers film about Josh Fattal, still unjustly detained in Iran along with Shane Bauer. No matter where Josh is, his interest in his environs combined with his kind and thoughtful nature provoke a deep sense of admiration from others. The film contains footage, photos and quotations from Josh’s loved ones in an attempt to begin to capture the extraordinary person he is. It starts with letters to him from his family, his roots, and continues to share reflections from childhood and university friends. It then gives a glimpse into how much he was valued as a colleague and friend at Aprovecho Research and Education Centre. The majority of the film shares Josh’s journey as the Teaching Fellow on the International Honors Program Health and Community Study Abroad Program. The intense journey took Josh to Switzerland, India, China, and South Africa from Jan-May 2009 with 33 students, 3 co-faculty, and multiple country partners. We hope that sharing this will help to speed his return to us and allow him to resume his journey. See www.freethehikers.org for more information
VIDEO: SARAH SHOURD ON DEMOCRACY NOW!
Sep 29th
REPUBLISHED FROM DEMOCRACY NOW:
Freed American Hiker Sarah Shourd Reflects on 14 Months in Iranian Prison and Calls on Iran to Release Her Two Friends
In July of 2009, Sarah Shourd and her now-fiancé Shane Bauer and their friend Josh Fattal were detained and jailed in Iran after being arrested near the Iran-Iraq border while they were on a hiking trip. Earlier this month, Shourd was released on “humanitarian grounds” on $500,000 bail, but Iran is continuing to hold Bauer and Fattal.
Sarah Shourd joins us today to discuss her time in solitary confinement, her political activism, how they were detained, her engagement to Bauer, and why she opposes a US attack on Iran. “I would really like to thank people and ask them to not slow down, to not wait—put my freedom on pause and wait with me, so that we can all enjoy it together once Shane and Josh are with us,” Shourd said. [includes rush transcript]
