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  • For those who have joined the American family...

    Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL
    July 3 2004

    For those who have joined the American family, liberty can never be
    taken for granted

    By John Dolen
    Arts & Features Editor
    Posted July 4 2004

    July Fourth, Independence Day, our day of freedom.

    In 1776, it meant Americans were no longer subject to the whims of
    kings. Today it means Americans are not subject to central
    committees, tyrannical mullahs or dictators.

    Many Americans will pay fleeting heed to this as they scurry to
    barbecues and beaches today. But for those who've come from elsewhere
    to our land of freedom, the memories, and sometimes the fears, are
    never far behind.

    So is the gratitude for being able to pursue happiness without being
    pursued.

    While the world's lack of freedom is front-page news -- Cuba opposing
    a pro baseball player's family reunion, a journalist being gunned
    down in Mexico -- for some, freedom is a lot simpler.

    For Johnson Ng, 46, publisher of a Florida-wide Chinese newspaper,
    freedom can be about the small things.

    "Things are common sense here. Say you have a hole in the wall of
    your restaurant. OK, so the inspector comes and says, you have two
    weeks to repair," says Ng. "He doesn't come back three days later and
    demand money."

    Ng (pronounced Eng) has traveled throughout Asia and notes that in
    many places, money still has to grease palms to get things done, or
    not done. An unlikely newsman, Ng studied drama and stagecraft in his
    native Hong Kong. Here he has worked as a chef and as a manager for a
    bean sprout business in Miami, where he lives.

    When Ng became a manager, his father advised him, "Johnson, no matter
    how well you work for that business, even after 17 years, you will
    still be somebody else's manager. This is America. You should have
    your own business."

    Not long afterward, Ng started the United Chinese News of Florida.
    Once he got the weekly going, his wife became editor. Ng also does
    photos and reporting.

    So he claimed his piece of freedom: "In the U.S., no matter who you
    are, you have your own environment that you can survive in, and
    grow."

    Robert Taheri is known around Davie for the sage nutritional advice
    he gives out at his health food store, Simply Natural, which he
    opened 16 years ago.

    Taheri was 14 when he left his native Iran with his family for
    London, before the revolution that deposed the Shah and launched the
    regime of Ayatollah Khomeini.

    "Before the revolution you could do pretty much everything, have
    businesses, whatever, although you didn't have freedom of speech 100
    per cent," Taheri says. "Now, everything there is restricted because
    of the Islamic rule."

    How about opening up a health foods store? "Ownership is not
    guaranteed," says Taheri, 47. "They can come anytime and take over
    the business with different excuses or reasons."

    Taheri should know. He not only monitors Iran today on satellite
    channels but also by staying in touch with two of his brothers, both
    of whom support democracy in Iran.

    His brother Amir has written books about Iran and, according to
    Taheri, "has interviewed most of the leaders of the world." Amir
    currently writes for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and
    El Figaro, among others.

    His brother Ali was editor of one of the two major newspapers in
    Tehran. He fled the country after the revolution, when, according to
    Taheri, "freedom of the press was immediately demolished."

    Ali later signed on with Radio Free Europe in Prague, Czech Republic,
    which counters the heavily censored Islamic radio. Of Ali, Taheri
    says: "He is a man of honor telling the truth. He is fighting for the
    country, not just for himself."

    Taheri's wife, Satti, is Armenian. In Iran, certain parts of her
    culture had to be suppressed. Says Taheri with a smile, "The
    Armenians, they like wine, they have pork, all this is not allowed."

    Making his own transition to the subject of women's rights in Iran,
    Taheri paraphrases the words of last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner,
    Shirin Abadi, also from his country: "They lose their freedom before
    they even go out the door, having to dress the way [the ayatollahs]
    want, and you can't wear makeup."

    The Taheris and their 16-year-old son are U.S. citizens. "The Fourth
    is a glorious day for us ... doubly thrilling," Taheri says. "Because
    we had freedom and then we lost it in our home country. When you have
    it and then lose it, you really know what it is."

    First impression

    One immigrant remembers an afternoon more than 40 years ago when, as
    a teenager, she was looking forward to a big social that night.

    But her parents swept her off "to the other side of the island." The
    next thing she knew she was on a plane, soon landing at the Fort
    Lauderdale-Hollywood airport.

    She remembers being miserable without her friends back in Cuba and
    not being able to speak the language of her new country. But soon she
    began watching the TV news and teaching herself English "by staring
    at the mouths and listening carefully."

    "I was probably more attuned to current events than the average
    teenager," says Diana Wasserman-Rubin of the Broward County
    Commission. "The whole civil rights movement, it took me off guard.
    That wasn't what I expected.

    "I saw people protesting, and this was my first impression of
    freedom."

    It was such a foreign concept: "If you disagreed with someone where I
    came from you could not express your disagreement in public."

    Wasserman-Rubin attended schools in Miami Beach and moved to Pembroke
    Pines in 1971. Shortly after, she became involved in voter
    registration drives.

    In the 1980s, she became a member of the South Broward Hospital
    District; in the 1990s, the Broward School Board; and she has been on
    the Broward County Commission since 2000, where she has served as
    mayor in a rotating position.

    During that time she has been known as a voice for Hispanics and
    blacks.

    "If I had similar job in Cuba now I would have some responsibilities
    but not the tools to do the job," the commissioner says. "The Cuban
    government is not for the people, not by the people, and people don't
    have a say in who they elect."

    Wasserman-Rubin says she gets emotional on the Fourth of July.

    "I'm one of those hokey people who reflects on the meaning of the
    holidays, Thanksgiving too," She says. It reminds me how lucky I am,
    to be able to contribute to my adopted country."

    Now the woman who once landed at the strange airport in Fort
    Lauderdale serves on the council that runs it.

    Wedding massacre

    South Florida professor Dominic Mohamed was born and raised in the
    Sudan, a country facing a refugee crisis so dire that Colin Powell
    and Kofi Annan visited it just days ago in a high-profile effort to
    prevent disaster.

    The State Department blames Arab militias backed by the government
    for the current refugee situation in the west of Sudan, reports The
    New York Times, saying the militias "have systematically attacked
    hundreds of black African villages in western Sudan and neighboring
    Chad."

    Most of his life Mohamed has seen a country at war, between the Arab
    Muslim north and the African animists and Christians of the south.

    Mohamed's parents and family were Christian and, tragically, victims
    of the conflict.

    "Ninety-nine members of my family were killed, children, women and
    men, lined up against the wall at a wedding reception," says Mohamed.

    Those who managed to escape the 1965 massacre blame Arab militias,
    similar to those that are now waging war on the African Muslim
    population in west Sudan.

    "They were after the educated and the Christian Africans," says
    Mohamed, who was spared because his flight to the wedding was
    canceled due to gas shortages.

    Eventually, Mohamed made a new life for himself in the United States
    and has been teaching at Florida International University in Miami
    for 31 years.

    He traces a detailed timeline of civil war and brief truces since
    Egypt and Britain ceded control of the Sudan in 1957. It's a sober
    and ongoing story for the 60-year-old professor.

    Now with his own family (he married an Ethiopian woman and has three
    grown children), Mohamed teaches vocational and technical education.
    He stays in touch with the situation in Sudan through Web sites and
    letters from those who get out.

    He does not take freedom lightly.

    "In America, you have unlimited opportunities and you have freedom of
    speech," he says. "You have absolute freedom to choose and practice
    any religion you desire, without social or political constraint at
    all."

    Raised a Catholic, he is now a Lutheran and worships at the Lord of
    Life Lutheran Church in Kendall. When he thinks of Independence Day,
    he also thinks of a day 12 years ago.

    "When I became an American citizen in 1992, it was the first time I
    voted in my whole life," says Mohamed softly. "I cried in the voting
    booth."

    John Dolen can be reached at [email protected] or 954-356-4726.
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