We Are Neda

Original song by ....
Music: Serge Laporte Estelle Esse
Lyrics: Martin Melhuish
Arranged and produced by Serge Laporte
Mixed and mastered at Sherlock Studios
Video by White Noise
As humanists we are saddened and enraged by humanity's shortcomings: in this case, the abject and repugnant assassination of a young woman.What makes Neda so special are the circumstances of her death. Random and cruel, her execution goes against all basic human instincts and those values our species takes pride in defending.This collective of artists and musicians is reacting appropriately to this assault and affront to all that is sacred in existence : life, freedom, dignity and respect.The death of Neda Agha-Soltan (Persian: - Ned Soltn; 1982 June 20, 2009) drew international attention when her shooting, during the 2009 Iranian election protests, was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the internet.The video quickly became a rallying point for the reformist opposition. Ned () is also the the Persian word for "voice", "calling" or "divine message," and she has been referred to as the "voice of Iran".Neda Agha-Soltan studied Islamic philosophy at Azad University, studied singing privately and worked at a travel agency. She was the middle child and only daughter of a middle-class family of three children, whose family resided in a fourth floor apartment on Meshkini Street in the the Tehranpars neighborhood of Tehran. Her father is a civil servant and her mother is a homemaker. She graduated from Islamic Azad University, where she had studied the traditions and values of Islam as well as the philosophies of the world.Agha-Soltan was an aspiring, underground Persian popular singer and musician, who was studying her craft through private voice and music lessons. She had studied the violin and had an as-yet-undelivered piano on order at the time of her death. She worked for her family's travel agency. Agha-Soltan loved travel, having saved up enough to have gone on package tours with her friends to Dubai, Thailand and Turkey. She had studied Turkish, in hopes that it someday would aid her as a guide for Iranians on foreign tours there. It was in Turkey, two months prior to her death, that she met her fianc, 37 year old Caspian Makan, who worked as a photojournalist in Tehran.Those who knew her maintain that Agha-Soltan had not previously been very political she had not supported any particular candidate in the 2009 Iran elections but that anger over the election results prompted her to join the protest. Her voice and music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who was accompanying Agha-Soltan during the protest and can be seen on the video trying to comfort the dying woman, told the media: "She couldn't stand the injustice of it." Panahi went on to state: "All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted. She wanted to show with her presence that, 'I'm here, I also voted, and my vote wasn't counted'. It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence."