Khatami Admits Iran Imprisons People for Beliefs
Wed Apr 28, 2004 07:21 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran holds people in prison for their political beliefs, President Mohammad Khatami was quoted as saying Wednesday, breaking a series of Iranian denials on the subject of political prisoners.
Iran's prisoners include Hashem Aghajari, a history lecturer who urged Iranians to forge their own interpretation of Islam and not follow the nation's clerical hierarchy "like monkeys," and Ahmad Batebi, who was jailed for holding the blood-stained T-shirt of a friend wounded in 1999 student protests.
"Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs," the moderate president was quoted as saying in the Iran daily newspaper.
Taking questions from young people frustrated by the lack of progress in his reform agenda, Khatami told an unusually frank meeting Tuesday he intended to publish fresh grievances about his inability to temper hard-line power.
The mid-ranking cleric, who speaks English and German, fitted Iran's problems into the malaise of ineffective democratic reform in the region.
"We are living in the East and face despotic governments, humiliating societies and centuries of destroyed hopes," said the president, criticized by many reformists for his fudged political compromises.
"We must ask how hope can explode in our society and then die so suddenly," he added, referring to the political apathy among the young, so often the vanguard of the reform movement.
Khatami was swept to power in a landslide victory in 1997 but most reformist attempts to push through change have been thwarted by the constitutional supremacy of hard-line bodies.
Earlier this month Khatami criticized the Guardian Council, a hard-line watchdog, for banning more than 2,000 mainly reformist candidates from February's elections.
He also withdrew two bills from parliament that were intended to boost presidential powers and curb the power of the Guardian Council to bar election candidates.
He withdrew the bills fearing that the spirit of the legislation would be perverted when conservatives take control of parliament in late May.
Iran's next presidential elections are in mid-2005. Khatami, having served two terms, cannot stand again.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4969252I have a feeling Rafsanjani has his eyes on the next election. Let's hope there will be big changes in Iran's government before then.