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CAIRO — A new museum, soon to be inaugurated in Tehran, will try to enlighten Iranians on the ugliness and horrors of war in a country long defined by war and martyrdom.
"The people of Iran always hear about the glories of war, when we were invaded, but they rarely hear of the devastation of war," Shahriar Khateri, director of the Tehran Peace Museum, told the Christian Science Monitor on Monday, December 24.
The museum will bring together the voices of Iranian "victims of warfare…to speak of the sinister ills of war," reads one its brochures.
Giving people details of war's depravity and acute human costs is "tantamount to educating them for peace," it adds.
The Museum had a humble beginning, initially housed in the basement of the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support, of which Khateri is a director.
But the project later won political backing with the Tehran municipality donating its current building in the historic City Park in the heart of bustling Tehran.
It will be as much an interactive peace center as a museum, featuring workshops for children, students, and the public and conferences on peace culture, reconciliation, international humanitarian law, disarmament and peace advocacy.
The library will include oral histories of veterans and victims of war, who are the very volunteers of the museum.
Former soldiers, some of them were victims of chemical weapons, will help visitors to access monuments and lessons detailing the atrocities of warfare.
Also standing in City Park is the Tehran Peace Monument, a sculpture of a white dove mounted on a marble pedestal and decorated by a message in six languages.
"That terrible suffering gave us a new understanding of the cruelty of war, the terror of weapons of mass destruction, and the importance of peace," it reads.
"Until the day when all people on Earth can live in peace, we will continuously send messages of peace to the world."
Challenge
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Khateri, one of Iran's top experts on the impact of chemical weapons, believes a tough ideological challenge awaits the museum.
"It's not easy. People charge that you are damaging the morale of those who will stand against the enemy, when they see how bad war can be."
He cites his personal experience as a case in point.
At the age of 15, Khateri volunteered to fight during the Iraq-Iran war.
During the eight-year war, he was told like thousands of other young Iranians that they were soldiers of God, fighting Iraqi infidels.
But when Khateri's group was on a mission to return remains of Iraqi soldiers to their families at the border, he was stunned by the rather familiar scenes of war woes on the other side.
"It was really shocking psychologically to see those mothers, just like Iranian mothers, crying with photos in their hands, candles, and Qur'an.
"They call them 'family of martyrs,' just as we do."
Khateri returned from his mission with a new understanding of what war is really about.
Nearly 25 year later, the museum's idea came to him when meeting Peter van de Dungen, coordinator of the global peace museum network, in Belgium in 2005.
Khateri believes that by striking the right balance, his museum could touch people's hearts and minds with out being accused of damaging their morale.
"This is a philosophical challenge, [to show] that this will not frighten people from defending their country, but show the horrible consequences of invading, of using force to solve problems."
West Perceptions
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Steve Fryburg, director of the Dayton Peace Museum in the US state of Ohio, visited Iran twice this year to work with Khateri.
He recognizes the effect of bad publicity about certain countries and peoples in the western media.
"The people of peace around the world, including the Middle East, far outnumber the violent," he noted.
"Yet it is the violent people and violent news that is given priority in media coverage.
"This only distorts people's perceptions of other countries and cultures, increases fear, and reduces the chances for peace."
Fryburg believes the Tehran Peace Museum can help remedy this.
"It is very important for people not to get a distorted view about Iran and its people."
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