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January 15, 2006 VOLUME 20
E-ZAN VOICE OF WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN
To our readers,
2005 closed with
harsher rhetoric and radical policies coming from the fundamentalist regime in Tehran. Iran’s president,
Ahmadinejad began the 2006 with an escalated policy of violence against women.
Within the first two weeks of the new year, the Iranian regime condemned three
women to death, including two teenagers, launched “acid attack” on young women
who do not observe the Islamic dress codes in public, closed women’s
publication and proposed a law to segregate public pedestrian walkways on
gender basis.
Nationwide
suppression and violence will be on the rise in the coming months for several
reasons:
-
Ahamdinejad’s regime plans to
set an example for the radical Islamists in Iraq, hence, there will be zero
tolerance of dissent in Iran.
-
Offering any breathing room to
women and young people in Iran will
spin the control out of Ahmadinejad’s regime, hence suppressive and monitoring
policies are in full gear.
-
Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear
weapons and continued meddling in Iraq is high on Ahmadinejad’s agenda and
foreign policy, hence he will not allow for any domestic disturbance to derail
this agenda.
So,
given the rising threat of his regime, what can the international community do
in defense of people of Iran and Iraq?
Total diplomatic and
political isolation of the Iranian regime will empower the voice of change and
resistance to Islamic Fundamentalism in both Iran and Iraq. Iran is clearly on a nuclear
path to a bomb. Ahmadinejad is clearly on a policy path to an Islamic
Fundamentalist empire. Combination of the two is clearly a danger to both world
peace and security. The time for action is now and the key to defeat Islamic
Fundamentalism is to rely on progressive and homegrown voices for change. Both Iran and Iraq have very organized and
progressive voices and groups, led by secular Muslim women and men, to end the
plague of Islamic Fundamentalism in their respective countries. It is
imperative that policymakers and international community rely on these groups
and leaders to bring about meaningful change and lasting peace in the region.
E-Zan Featured Headlines
The
Daily Telegraph, UK – December 18, 2005
Now, Iranians are
bracing themselves for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who himself rose through the ranks of
the Basij, to usher in a return to the more fearful times. They also foresee
the new president turning Iran into a pariah
state, making it difficult for Iranians to travel abroad or to have contact
with foreigners who visit. A Teheran lawyer who represents wealthy Iranians
said that over the past few months he had been advising them to convert their
assets into dollars and invest overseas.
Iran Focus – December 19, 2005
A powerful cleric rejected
the notion of women taking up posts in the assembly of theologians who choose
the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. Speaking in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, Abdol-Nabi Namazi, a
senior Shiite cleric and a member of the Assembly of Experts, said, “According
to Islamic law, the presence of women in institutions such as the Assembly of
Experts is not necessary, even if they were religious scholars”. The Assembly
of Experts, an exclusively clerical body, designates the country’s all-powerful
Supreme Leader.
Namazi said that under Islamic law women had to stay at home to raise children
as a priority to all other work. ”The most important reason for the prevalence
of moral corruption in society is the weak role played by mothers in families”,
Namazi said. “If we give other jobs to women that will weaken the families”.
Associated Press– December 20, 2005
A young woman driving through
the Iranian capital blared the Eagles' "Hotel California" from her car
speakers - an act that would have gotten her pulled over by police, and
possibly arrested…"Don't take this man seriously," the 25-year-old
scoffed, referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But some fear the ban that
Ahmadinejad enacted Monday is a sign of more to come. The order affects only
state-run television and radio, which occasionally play Western music - without
lyrics - in the background of newscasts or other programs.” We are concerned
about the cultural policies of this government," said Hamid Vafaei,
director of a music school in Tehran. "History has proved
that a policy of restrictions can't work for long.”Ahmadinejad was
elected in June after promising a return to the values of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini's revolution. So far, his ultra-conservative stances have been
reflected more in foreign policy, taking a tough line in nuclear negotiations
with Europe and
outraging the West with a series of anti-Israeli comments.
NCR-Iran Website – December 23, 2005
In the short time after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
has taken office as president of the Iranian regime, more than 120 prisoners
have been either executed or condemned to death. A significant number of the
victims were less then 18 years at the time of offence. The head of the
regime’s security forces, Salehi, told local media recently that over 12,000
people have been arrested in Tehran alone in the past 57 days on
dubious charges of “hooliganism.” The Presidency of the European Union said in
its December 20 declaration: “The EU is deeply concerned that the human rights
situation in Iran has not improved in any significant
respect in recent years, and in many respects has worsened. Use of the death
penalty is frequent, including for minor crimes, and executions are often
carried out in public.” The EU Presidency had also alluded to the unsuccessful
human rights dialogue with the Iranian regime and said the negotiations had
faltered in June 2004 and the regime had not agreed to another round… Mr.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National
Council of Resistance of Iran, said that the Iranian Resistance had on several
occasions pointed out that negotiations and dialogue with the Iranian regime,
which has executed 120,000 political prisoners and grossly violates the rights
of women, and ethnic and religious minorities, has no legitimacy and will only
result in more repression, executions, and torture in Iran.
Dutch News Agency (DPA)
– December 24, 2005
Following the final approval by the
Teheran municipality, women above the age of 23 and with a high school diploma
are entitled to apply for the new job after passing the necessary education
programme. The manager of the Teheran fire
department, Ahmad Ziaei, told Fars that the women could
especially be used in incidents in which only females are present, giving a
women-only indoor pool as an example.
United Press International – December 25, 2005
"Democracy,
modernity and freedom will never happen without (the support of) women,"
Chesler told United Press International in an interview. "We need to have
a universal standard for human rights. We can and we must if we believe in the
importance of our ideals." Chesler's views on the negative impact of moral
and cultural relativism are shared by Ramesh Sepehrrad, president of the
National Committee of Women for Democratic Iran… Sepehrrad spoke of her dismay
that Iranian women had been abandoned by the feminist wing. Despite living in a
country that still practices stoning, and where -- according to an unnamed
dissident cited by Chessler -- "being born female is both a capital crime
and a death sentence," in Tehran this summer women took to the streets,
chanting "misogyny is the root of tyranny." These actions went
unacknowledged by feminists in the West, Sepehrrad said sadly. Gender apartheid
can be ended, Sepehrrad argued. In Iran there must be external "support
(for) the indigenous voice for regime change. But the silence from the West is
deafening."
Iran
Focus – December 26, 2005
More than ten percent of
street-children in the Iranian capital, Tehran, are girls, according
to a report in the Fars news agency, which is close to the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The report quoted a senior official in the Ministry of
Welfare and Social Affairs as saying that 11 percent of runaway children in the
capital were girls. It added that the most common age group for street-children
is 15-19 years old, most of whom have only attended junior school. A recent
study last year revealed that fourteen percent of all children in Iran are currently working
so as to provide income for their families. The report pointed out that many of
these children were forced into illegal employment such as smuggling, selling
narcotics, and prostitution and had to forgo any opportunity of studying in
school. Most are facing malnutrition and prone to diseases due to lack of
hygiene, according to the latest statistics. Iranian authorities had recently
announced that the number of street children throughout the country was in the
hundreds of thousands. According to a
separate report in the state-run daily Iran on Sunday, organized
gangs are selling many young Iranian girls to wealthy men in places such as Dubai. The daily hinted that
the groups may have been given a green light by Iran’s hard-line judiciary,
which has given lenient sentences to individuals arrested for selling the
girls.
It said that some were freed straight away after paying a small sum as bail.
State-run daily Iran – December 28, 2005
The state-run daily Iran reported that a man involved in
human trafficking of young Iranian girls, each sold in Arab countries for over
50 million rials (US$4,600), received a prison term of three to five months. An
appeals court, however, overturned the ruling and released the smuggler and
ordered him to pay a fine of just US$275. [NCR-Iran Website: The Iranian
regime has executed minors on much lesser charges and continues to issue
stoning to death verdicts. But the regime’s judiciary deals quite leniently
with networks of human traffickers of young Iranian girls and women, since the
ring leaders of such networks are mostly linked to the ruling mullahs who
profit from the illicit trade.
On rare occasions when one of these ring leaders is arrested, they eventually
walk free after paying less than 6% of what they earn from selling a single
woman. Iranian state-run newspapers have reported that hundreds of girls and
women are smuggled and sold in Persian Gulf states and Pakistan every month.]
Reuters – January 2, 2006
Iranian government
ordered the closure of a daily newspaper and banned a new women's bi-weekly
from publication in the first media crackdown since President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad took office in August. "The Supervisory Board on the Press
agreed to the temporary closure of Asia newspaper and Nour-e
Banovan and ordered their cases sent to court," said the Culture Ministry
in the ban, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
Iran Focus – January 4, 2006
In the latest “acid
attack” by radical Islamists on young women accused of ignoring the country’s
strict dress regulations, two female university students had acid splashed on
their faces in the town of Shahroud, north-eastern Iran. The two women, aged 21
and 22, study geography in Shahroud’s Open University. Unidentified assailants
traveling on a motorbike moved next to them in Ferdowsi Street and threw acid on their
faces as they were walking. The attackers immediately left the scene and have
not been arrested. Radical Islamists operating under the umbrella of the paramilitary
Bassij force and Ansar-e Hezbollah have stepped up their campaign against the
“mal-veiling” of women and girls since the election of hard-line President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian President regularly addresses meetings of
these Islamic vigilantes and praises their efforts “to purify the Islamic
Republic of the vestiges of corrupt Western culture”.
Iran Focus – January 7, 2006
An Iranian court has sentenced a
teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she
had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.
She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh
onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from
her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.
As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this
point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl,
however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention
of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from
rape, the report said. The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for
Nazanin to be hanged to death. Last week, a court in the city of Rasht, northern Iran, sentenced Delara Darabi to death
by hanging charged with murder when she was 17 years old. Darabi has denied the
charges.
State-run daily Etemad, January 8, 2006
The state-run daily Etemad reported
that the clerical regime’s judiciary has condemned an 18-year-old girl for
killing a man who attempted to rape her. [NCR-Iran Website: The victim,
identified as Nazanin, was attacked when only 17 by three men who attempted to
rape her and her niece. In the scuffle that followed, Nazanin acted in
self-defense which resulted in the death of one of the attackers. She testified
in court: “I only committed homicide while trying to defend myself and my
niece. I had no intention of killing that man. At that moment I didn’t know
what to do because nobody came to help us.” The murderous judges ignored
Nazanin’s testimony, the facts in the case and the testimony of eye-witnesses
that corroborated her version of the incident, and condemned her to death. The
assailants were reportedly members of the suppressive paramilitary Bassij force
in the city of Karaj (west of Tehran).]
Michigan News – January 10, 2006
Now the latest is that
his regime has programmed the city streets. Iran’s "pedestrian
walkways" will be segregated on "gender basis," according to
Iran Focus. The deputy in Iran’s Majilis (Parliament)
has stated that this is to be law. It is the contention of Fatemeh Alia that
"new measure have been enforced to “return to the Islamic Republic to the
days of the (1979 Islamic) revolution." Both Ahmadinejad and Alia will
work in concert to see that more restrictions are placed upon the public. No
leniency. No hints of democracy. No opening the windows to freedom. It is
instead a return to closure. "As part of the government plan called
“Increase the hejab (veil) culture and female chastity”, the Ministry of
Housing and Urban Development has received orders to construct separate
pedestrian walkways for men and women, according to Alia." It will be in
two weeks that the program will be made public and put into operation. "This
plan is the most advanced and complete plan regarding the hejab."
E-Zan
Featured Reports
Islamic Gender Apartheid
Frontpage
Magazine, By Dr. Phyllis Chesler
December 15, 2005
According to one Iranian dissident, “being
born female is both a capital crime and a death sentence.” Today,
the plight of both women and men in the Islamic world, and in an
increasingly Islamized Europe, demands a sober analysis and a heroic response. In a
democratic, modern, and feminist era, women in the Islamic world are
not treated as human beings. Women in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world
are viewed as the source of all evil. Their every move is brutally
monitored and curtailed. The smallest infraction – a wanton wisp of hair escaping
a headscarf – merits maximum punishment: Flogging in public, or worse. This is
happening in Iran even as we speak. In 2005, a
hospital in Tehran was accused of refusing entry to
women who did not wear head-to-toe covering… Women in Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and increasingly in Egypt, are veiled from head to toe.
They live in purdah and lead segregated lives. Women are also forced into
arranged and polygamous marriages, often when they are children and often too
much older men or to first cousins. Girls and women are routinely
beaten. Woman-beating is normalized and culturally sanctioned and those who
dare protest it are shamed, beaten savagely, and sometimes even
honor-murdered by their own families. According to the Women’s Forum Against
Fundamentalism in Iran, two out of every three Iranian
women have experienced serious domestic violence. Eighty one per cent of
married women have experienced domestic violence in their first year of
marriage. In addition, every year, millions of Muslim women are
genitally mutilated—and this is not only happening in Muslim Africa. It
is increasingly happening in Iran and in Europe and in North America where the procedures
are quietly carried out in hospitals.
Most
runaway girls in Iran are raped within the first 24 hours
of their departure. The majority of such runaway rape victims are rejected
by their families after they are raped. When Iranian girls or women run
away from abusive homes, they are also quickly trafficked into prostitution,
which has increased alarmingly in the last decade in Iran and which now includes temporary
marriages that allow men to “marry for only an hour.” Rape victims and
suspected prostitutes are quickly jailed and repeatedly raped, and often
impregnated, by their guards. In 2004, nearly 4,000 women were
arrested in Tehran alone. Six hundred and forty
nine were girls below the age of 14. Iranian women are worn down every minute
and in every way in their private lives. For example, in the summer of
’05, a court in Tehran barred a young woman from working
after her estranged husband complained that she was only allowed to be a
housewife. This woman had been battered and she had fled the marriage two
years earlier. But the court confirmed her husband’s right to bar her
from working outside the home. In November of ’05, an 80-year-old husband
clubbed his 50-year-old wife to death, “because he could not tolerate her
wearing makeup outside the home”. In October of ’05, female civil
servants at Iran’s culture ministry were forced to
leave the office by dusk “to be with their families”. One female journalist,
who works nightshifts at an Iranian newspaper said: “This decree means that I
will be jobless soon.”
And then there are the public and
terrifying atrocities.
Increasingly in Iran, women are publicly hung or are
slowly and painfully stoned to death for alleged adultery or for having been
raped. Public amputations, floggings, and executions are “almost a daily
spectacle”. If women (and men) publicly protest such heartbreaking barbarities,
they are slandered as “anti-Muslim,” arrested, and
often murdered by the state.
The bravery of Iranian demonstrators
is therefore heart stopping. They know precisely what can and will happen to
them and still they demonstrate. In Tehran this past summer of ’05, women
protested Iran’s clerical rulers. They
chanted “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” and called for a referendum on religious
rule. They chanted “Unequal law means inhuman justice” and “Misogyny is
the root of tyranny.” Earlier in March of ’05, demonstrators at Tehran
University demanded that women have a right to choose what they wear; that
women must be free to choose their husbands and to marry or to divorce; that
any kind of sex trade and human trafficking should be forbidden; that polygamy
must be illegal.
Many Muslim women are also honor
murdered by their families—yes, by their mothers as well as by their fathers
and older brothers for the crime of wanting to go to college, marry for love,
end abusive marriages, or go to the movies. Honor murders are usually
horrific, very primitive. The girls or women are be-headed or they are stabbed
many times, or slowly choked to death. I write about all this in my most
recent book, The Death of Feminism. What’s Next in the Struggle for
Women’s Freedom.
I call this systemic mistreatment:
"Islamic gender Apartheid."
If we do not
oppose and defeat Islamic gender Apartheid, democracy and freedom cannot
flourish in the Arab and Islamic world. If we do not join forces with
Muslim dissident and feminist groups; and, above all, if we do not have
one universal standard of human rights for all—then we will fail our own
Judeo-Christian and secular western ideals. We will also inherit the whirlwind.
If we do not stop Islamic gender and religious Apartheid abroad, be
assured: It is coming our way soon. Indeed, it is already here… If we, as
Americans, want to continue the struggle for women's and humanity's global
freedom, we can no longer allow ourselves to remain inactive,
anti-activist, cowed by outdated left and European views of colonial-era racism
that are meant to trump and silence concerns about gender. As I see it,
everything is at stake. This is not the time for ideological party
lines. It is a time for action, clarity, and unity. As
Americans, we must acknowledge that Islamic religious and gender Apartheid are
evil and have no justification. I would like us to support Muslim and
Arab dissidents in their fight against Islamic gender apartheid and against
tyranny. To fail this opportunity betrays all that we believe in…
Women, Islam, and the
New Iraq
December 27, 2005
Foreign Affairs, By Isobel Coleman
Article 14 of Iraq's new constitution,
approved in a nationwide referendum held on October 15, states that Iraqis are
equal before the law "without discrimination because of sex." Yet the
constitution also states that no law can be passed that contradicts the
"established rulings" of Islam. For this reason, the new document has
been condemned by critics both inside and outside Iraq as a fundamental setback
for a majority of Iraq's population -- namely,
its women. According to Isam al-Khafaji, an Iraqi scholar, the document
"could easily deprive women of their rights." Yanar Muhammad, a
leading secular activist and the head of the Organization of Women's Freedom in
Iraq, worries that the
Islamic provision will turn the country "into an Afghanistan under the Taliban,
where oppression and discrimination of women is institutionalized."
These criticisms are not
without merit, and the ambiguity of the new constitution is a cause for
concern… Many secular
Iraqis worry, however, that Article 39 will lead instead to an Iranian-style
theocracy, which would severely limit women's rights in particular. Adnan
Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister and a secular Sunni leader, told
The New York Times in August that although he agreed with much of the new
constitution, he was troubled by its more overtly Islamic provisions.
"They want to inject religion into everything, which is not right,"
he said. "I cannot imagine that we might have a theocratic regime in Iraq like the one in Iran. That would be a disaster."
Indeed, Iran's theocracy has been a disaster on
multiple fronts, including women's rights. In the aftermath of the 1979
revolution, Iran's new government quickly suspended
the country's progressive family law, disallowed female judges, and strongly
enforced the wearing of the hijab. Within a few months, sharia rulings lowered
the marriage age to nine, permitted polygamy, gave fathers the right to decide
who their daughters could marry, permitted unilateral divorce for men but not
women, and gave fathers sole custody of children in the case of divorce. Over
the intervening years, Iranian activists, including some conservative religious
women, have managed to soften some of the harshest inequalities. But anything
approaching the Iranian system would still represent a major setback for Iraq's women. Iraq's constitution does not
specify who will decide which version of Islam will prevail in the country's
new legal system. But the battle has already begun…
Women's organizations
and moderates across the country quickly mobilized against the new regulation.
They held rallies, press conferences, and high-level meetings with the American
authorities to make their concerns known…In Iraq, unlike in many other Muslim
nations, women will have a strong advantage in their fight for equality:
namely, a provision in the new constitution that guarantees them 25 percent of
the seats in parliament. This quota is the product of intense lobbying by
women's groups, who feared being left out of the new Iraqi politics. It also
has some grounding in Iraqi history. The Baathists gave women the vote and the
right to run for office in 1980; within two decades, women had come to occupy
20 percent of the seats in Iraq's rubber-stamp
parliament (compared to a 3.5 percent average in the region) and some prominent
cabinet positions. After the invasion, U.S. policymakers were
sympathetic to women's concerns that they would lose their political position
in an election process dominated by conservative Shiites. Washington also wanted to support
Iraqi women without directly challenging religious convictions. Instituting a
quota seemed a good way to do both… The status of women in the future Iraq will also depend in
large part on the strength of the country's judicial system…
Although the status of
Iraqi women will ultimately depend on Iraqis themselves, the United States can still play a constructive
role. Washington should start by identifying and cultivating Islamic feminists
within Iraq's mainstream religious parties. These women (and men) may not want
to cooperate with the United States at first, and some of them will hold
anti-American views. But these individuals wield far more political influence
than the secular but marginalized Iraqi leaders who are popular in Washington,
and the United States must learn how to work with them.
Indeed, the United States should work with Iraqi
women across the religious spectrum in order to cultivate new leaders. Thanks
to the quota system, there is no question that Iraqi women will continue to
play a significant role in national politics in the years ahead, and Washington
should help ensure that it is a moderating one…The United States should also
assist with judicial reform. This means not only helping the courts modernize
technologically, but also training judges, especially women, in modern Islamic
jurisprudence.
In the next year, a new
Iraqi parliament will be elected with the power to write laws that will shape
the country for the next generation. Washington must therefore do
everything it can to aid Iraqi women's groups and programs designed to help
women leaders there. Efforts such as the U.S.-funded legal-education program at
the University of Baghdad, where women make up 40
percent of the participants in rule-of-law seminars, should be expanded to
other universities and cities across Iraq. Washington should also consider
establishing a women's college in Baghdad, which could become a
center of learning and critical thinking for the entire region.
The United States should also start
channeling a significant portion of its reconstruction dollars to Iraqi
businesswomen. Economic empowerment is a good way to boost the status of women.
Despite the enormous sums of American aid flowing into Iraq, the U.S. mission
in Baghdad has so far resisted having an adviser on gender issues on the ground
in Iraq -- where programs to support women are actually implemented. As a
result, its many gender initiatives have not been nearly as effective as they
could have been.
Although the United States has now missed this and
several other important opportunities to promote the role of women in
post-Saddam Iraq, the imposition of
sharia there was virtually inevitable. But the resurgence of Islamic law in Iraq need not be a disaster
for women. Although it may well mean a short-term setback in certain rights
enjoyed under Saddam, in the long run, Iraqis may manage to build a more
equitable society that accommodates both Islamic principles and a modern role
for women. This outcome is far from guaranteed, but it is also not too much to
hope for.
Iran’s
Future, Watch the streets.
International
Herald Tribune, By Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi
January 5, 2006
For
months Iranian activists and even moderate clerics have been concerned about
the radical tendencies of Iran's new president, Mahout Ahmadinejad.
In the past few weeks - after he said that the Holocaust was a myth, called for
Israel to be wiped off the map and banned Western music
from state-run radio and television, the concern spread around the world.
But there is another development in Iran - this one positive and with great
potential - that the world should not miss: civic defiance against
Ahmadinejad's authoritarianism is increasing.
From the outset of his term, the new
president's policies exhibited a volatile mixture of nationalism and radical
Islamic social engineering. While touting Iran's nuclear program, he has promised
to redistribute wealth to the poor and curb capitalists (without yet delivering
on either promise).
Ahmadinejad's language has been
replete with contempt for religious and ethnic minorities, xenophobia,
anti-intellectualism, rejection of compromise, and readiness for violence in
dealing with the political opposition and minorities, including Kurds and
Arabs. His performance is disturbingly reminiscent of those of European fascist
leaders of the 1920s and 1930s.
While policy makers and pundits in
the West are rightly chagrined by the language coming from Iran's new leader, less has been said
and little has been done by the international community - now or in the past -
to support ordinary citizens in Iran who have persistently been pressing
for genuine democracy, the rule of law and economic opportunity. Iranians are
risking imprisonment or worse by engaging in protests, not to satisfy American
or European foreign policy, but because they are fed up living with fear,
economic misery and arbitrary edicts from unelected clerics.
Against all odds, nonviolent tactics
such as protests and strikes have gradually become common in Iran's domestic political scene. Medical
professionals, teachers and workers have gone on strike. Last month, Tehran's bus drivers walked off the job,
paralyzing the city. In the week of the presidential elections, more than 6,000
Iranian women took to the streets to protest discriminatory laws, especially
the ban on women from running for the presidency.
Student activists have frequently
resorted to strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations, and the violent response of
the regime and repeated attacks of the paramilitaries have not succeeded in
silencing them. From prison, a leading dissident and defector from the
Revolutionary Guards, Akbar Ganji, is electrifying the country with hunger
strikes, declaring the regime illegitimate.
Unfortunately these are
uncoordinated actions, and their organizers have not known how to anticipate
and counter the inevitable repressive countermeasures - beatings, detentions,
torture and extrajudicial executions. While there is a grass-roots movement for
equal rights and civil liberties waiting to be roused in Iran, its cadres so far lack a clear
strategic vision and steady leadership.
Moreover, the failure of Iran's parliamentary reformists and the
ensuing victory of Ahmadinejad have tumbled society into a mood of despair. But
the new president's failure to deliver on any of his crowd-pleasing promises
will surely create a new opportunity for Iranians who remain determined to
resist repression and demand real economic reform.
That determination should also be
reflected by the international community in what it does to support freedom and
justice in Iran. Governments should increase
pressure on Tehran to stop human rights abuses and
release political prisoners. Nongovernmental organizations around the world
should expand their efforts to assist Iranian civil society, women's groups,
unions and journalists. And the global news media should finally begin to cover
the steady stream of strikes, protests and other acts of opposition. A regime
like the one in Tehran always wants to pretend that it is popular and
legitimate, whether it is or not.
There is a historical legacy of such
help being effective. Catholics in Europe and the United States aided the trade union Solidarity in
Poland and the "people power" movement in the Philippines. African-American organizations
gave crucial support to South African civic groups fighting apartheid. American
labor unions backed the anti-Pinochet campaign in Chile. In each instance, the objective
was assistance, not interference. That can also be the model in Iran.
The constituency for justice and
equality in Iranian society is vast but inchoate. Yet it is those Iranians, and
not the power-hoarding, self-enriching members of the repressive government,
who will ultimately shape Iran's future. Their prospects will not
be enhanced either by pleading with Iran's rulers for moderation or
threatening external intervention.
As with a score of other peoples who
transformed their countries from below - such as Poland, South Africa, the Philippines, Chile, Ukraine and Lebanon - Iranians themselves can summon
the will and apply the nonviolent strategies that dissolve oppression.
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us your comments or op-ed on relevant topics for future issues, email editor@wfafi.org
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20, January 15, 2006
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