Protests as Iran Drops Tribute to Assassin
January 09, 2004
Reuters
Yahoo News
TEHRAN -- Around 200 religious hardliners have protested in Tehran over a government bid to improve ties with Egypt by renaming a street that honoured the assassin of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Sadat's memory is despised by Iranian hardliners because he made peace with Israel and gave refuge to Iran's ousted shah. They see Khaled Islambouli, the Egyptian Islamic militant who killed Sadat in 1981 and was later executed, as a martyr.
Seeking to end a 25-year freeze in full diplomatic relations between the Middle East's two most populous nations, Tehran city council agreed on Tuesday to a Foreign Ministry request to rename Khaled Islambouli street as Intifada, after the Palestinian uprising against Israel.
Officials from the two countries have since said they are very close to restoring full relations, which were broken off by Tehran shortly after its 1979 Islamic revolution largely due to Cairo's 1978 Camp David peace accord with Israel.
But hardliners in Iran are furious at what they see as a climbdown aimed at making friends with a U.S. ally in the Middle East that maintains ties with the Jewish state.
They rallied following the Friday prayers sermon in Tehran, chanting slogans against the Foreign Ministry and the city council.
The ultra hardline Ansar-e Hezbollah group, which organised the protest, said in a statement: "Foreign policy players and deceived city council members are mistaken to think they can strip Islambouli, one of the heroes of Islam's international movement, of the 'medal' Ayatollah (Ruhollah) Khomeini gave him." Khomeini led Iran's Islamic revolution.
The same group plans to unveil a monument in Tehran's main cemetery in commemoration of Islambouli.
Iranian media this week reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was due to arrive in Tehran next month to take part in a summit of eight developing countries.
But Ansar-e Hezbollah, which has been accused of attacking reformist politicians and students in Iran in recent years, warned that the Egyptian leader "will not be welcome in Iran".
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040109/325/eiqnx.htmlWho is Gary Sick, and what is his agenda on Iran? -- Here's a good article though older. Mr. Sick is one of the strongest supporters of the Islamic Republic, having been a board director of the AIC (American Iranian Council) funded by the IRI, Oil companies they've called for full restoration of ties with the IRI. You may also remember Sick from his 'octobor surprise'.
http://www.mehr.org/nro.htm Working for the Mullahs
Iranian experts in the U.S. parrot Iran’s official line.
By Mohammad Parvin
Columbia University associate Professor Gary Sick — famous for his October Surprise conspiracy theory whose subsequent investigation cost American taxpayers millions — used his podium as moderator of the Gulf-2000 online community to turn the attention of hundreds of academics, journalists, and NGO members to the Mission for Establishing Human Rights (MEHR) in Iran, a grassroots- and low-budget group I established dedicated to publicizing and ending human-rights abuses in Iran. Sick inexplicably forgot to mention that he serves on the board of directors of the American Iranian Council, an organization funded largely by oil companies that calls for unconditional restoration of diplomatic and business relations between Washington and Tehran. Many Iranians in both the United States and Iran describe the American Iranian Council to be the Islamic regime's unofficial lobby in the United States.
Specifically, Sick and some colleagues accused MEHR of working against freedom of speech and claimed that MEHR was a group for "militant monarchists." His allegations were untrue. MEHR is a registered non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status not affiliated with any political party or group. Indeed, unlike Sick, MEHR refuses to accept oil company money. The conference that so piqued Sick's invective was MEHR's September 1, 2002 commemorative conference in Los Angeles. Fourteen years previous, the Islamic regime liquidated more than 5,000 political prisoners (at a time Muhammad Khatami was Minister of Islamic Guidance and Culture). The forum attracted more than 500 Iranian Americans and was bipartisan in support of human rights. Both Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D., Ca.) and American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin (a Republican) gave keynote speeches in favor of judging the Islamic regime by its record, and not by the empty words of a few self-described reformists. Other congressmen wrote letters of support. Sick seemed especially upset that MEHR has sought to file human rights law suits against prominent figures in the Islamic regime.
Free speech is the right of Sick and others who may not uphold our human rights standards because we live in the United States and not in the Islamic regime of Iran. But what is troubling is that Sick and others in the American academic and intellectual community seeks not only to limit but also to completely restrict debate and discussion.
Sick posted numerous attacks on MEHR, Sanchez, and Rubin, but repeatedly refused MEHR the right of response. For Sick, consideration that the Iranian people might want a secular, democratic government is too dangerous to even be discussed; such might contradict his personal beliefs that envision legitimacy for a regime which oppresses ethnic and religious minorities, and unabashedly has funded a 23-year-old wave of terror stretching from the alleys of Tehran to streets of Buenos Aires.
After initiating vitriolic attacks on MEHR and conference speakers, Sick refused to allow MEHR to cite description of the massacre by none other than Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Ayatollah Khomeini's principle deputy, in his memoirs. (Montazeri, by the way, remains under house arrest in Iran; Khatami's "reformist" Minister of Culture banned publication of his memoirs inside Iran). Unfortunately, what Sick seeks to do in his online community — ironically funded by Open Society — many professors and journalists increasingly do in their classrooms and newspapers. It is no coincidence that Genieve Abdo reported critically from Tehran and was expelled, but Los Angeles Times correspondent Robin Wright, who parrots official rhetoric labeling Khatami "the leading reformist in Iran," has unfettered access.