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NEWS & LETTERS, October-November 2006Iran repression hits women, societyThe continuing nuclear standoff between Iran and the U.S. has helped the Iranian government to further crack down on the democratic opposition within Iran. Several recent developments signal this ominous trend. This crackdown comes after attacks have been waged upon women's protests and periodic workers' strikes. Just a few months ago, on June 12, the regime unleashed its women's police brigade on a peaceful women's demonstration which demanded basic civil rights. Prior to that it had crushed a transit workers' work stoppage in December and had arrested its leader Mansoor Osanloo. Osanloo was just recently released on Aug. 10. Currently faced with a strike of 3,000 automobile workers, the government has unveiled draconian anti-labor legislation. Over the past few weeks, several developments signal a deepening of an ominous trend. SHARGH SHUTTERED The closure of the most popular reformist daily, SHARGH, on Sept. 11 for publishing a cartoon which ridiculed Ahmadinejad: SHARGH had become an exciting forum for discussing ideas of West and East, ranging from its discussions of Habermas, Kant, Adorno, Marx to its yearlong series on lessons of the 1906-11 Iranian Constitutional Revolution, as well as its continuing effort to present the possibility of reinterpreting Islam to reconcile it with a secular society. SHARGH had also clearly opposed Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitism. Soon after Ahmadinejad's December 2005 speech in which he denied the Holocaust as a fact, SHARGH had reprinted an interview with the leading prosecutor of the Nurenberg trials (from der Spiegel) and had devoted several articles to Hannah Arendt's critique of authoritarianism. ACADEMIC STIFLING Ahmadinejad's call for the removal of liberal and secular university lecturers: This call threatens to destroy the limited openings for discussion and debate that had come to exist on some university campuses during the past few years. JAHANBEGLOO SILENCED The "voluntary" confession of the prominent French-educated Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo on Aug. 31 after his conditional release from prison. Jahanbegloo, who is most interested in the ideas of Jurgen Habermas and Richard Rorty, had been arrested at Tehran airport in late April as he was about to embark on a trip to India where he was planning to study Gandhi's nonviolent philosophy. Immediately after his release from prison, Jahanbegloo went to the office of the Iranian Student News Agency for an interview in which he "admitted" to having been "unknowingly used" by the "agents of U.S. Imperiaism and Zionism" who arranged for him to receive a grant from the U.S. Marshall Fund to compare the Iranian democratic opposition to the one in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. He has now vowed to stop engaging in politics and wishes only to return to his research projects. SHIRIN EBADI BANNED The government's declaration in early August that Shirin Ebadi's Center for Defense of Human Rights in Tehran is illegal: The Islamic Republic has threatened to arrest Ebadi and her co-workers unless the Center is shut down. Shirin Ebadi has vowed to fight this ruling "as long as I am alive." This center is a non-governmental organization and a member of the International Federation for Human Rights. It defends political prisoners pro bono and provides financial and emotional support for their families. One prominent student political activist, Akbar Mohammadi, recently died in prison after a long hunger strike and years of torture. Another, Ahmad Batebi, is on a hunger strike now and on the verge of death from starvation and the effects of several years of torture. Both were arrested in 1999 after a wave of student demonstrations. The democratic opposition movement within Iran desperately needs support from the grassroots international community at the moment. Continuing U.S. threats against Iran, the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Israel's devastating attacks on Lebanon and Gaza have strengthened religious fundamentalists in the region. —Iranian women's liberationist |
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