There's plenty to hate Panahi for, but her family having to flee Iran in the late 70's-early 80's isn't one of them. As soon as the revolution was won, you can bet that unless your family was connected to the Shah's military and turned traitor to support the revolutionaries, that you were in serious peril and would have had your assets seized. Monarchy (The former Shah, the current Saudi Royal family) vs a Theocratic Republic (Iran). The real conflict is in vastly different systems i.e. Is it six years? I'd probably have run out of cash in 6 months personally.īasically, this is the core of the Iran/Saudi conflict, its not so much about religion even though everyone paints it as Shia vs Sunni (and both regimes are happy to use sectarianism to further their interests). Think about your own assets, then subtract 95% of their value and 100% of your super due to revolution and asset seizures, and imagine how long you'd be able to support a family on that figure. For some people, it takes many self-funded years to actually reach a savehaven.

they sell their house (which would have tanked in value if it was in Iran, following a revolution) and personal items to fund their travel, food, shelter while seeking refugee status. Also, they arrived in Australia in 1984, which means they'd probably been using their savings/assets for 6 years as the Revolution really kicked into gear in 1978. our government has a relationship to maintain with the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka, so having boatloads of Tamils showing up and getting refugee status is a bad look geopolitically).īack to the Panahi's, they likely had all their assets seized during the reovlution too, though they obviously had enough cash to travel to the US to make sure Rita was born on American soil and therefore automatically qualified for citizenship (I imagine her parents were never US citizens, or they'd never have been able to secure refugee visas for Australia).

Its also one of the major reasons the government hate 'boat people' because we can't control who we're accepting (i.e. Its one of the highpoints in Australia's history, and of course it happened under Gough Whitlam. The only examples where we definitely chose to accept refugees that weren't allied to the anglosphere was when we opened up for Chilean refugees escaping pro-US dictator Augusto Pinochet. Ergo, when Iran went to shit during the revolution, we would have opened up to refugees who used to support the regime. Refugee politics is a real thing, and we have regularly preferred to take people from 'our side' in overseas conflicts.įor Panahi's family, they were working directly for the Shah, who was a British and American puppet/dictator. Mental health information and resources.Do not solicit medical advice or seek comments on care provided by clinicians.įor more information, please refer here.Posts that are harmful or against the spirit of the sub may be removed at the discretion of the moderators.Humour posts must be funny enough to make the mods laugh.Avoid offensive remarks about a particular city, state or country.

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Rita panahi metoo