Posted on 01/01/2006 3:33:17 PM PST by F14 Pilot
Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." Iran's leading dissident, Akbar Ganji, though ailing in prison from torture, solitary confinement and the effects of a two-month hunger strike, has shown himself to be a man in the Gandhian mould.
Even as his body withers, Mr. Ganji, equal parts investigative journalist, political theorist and non-violent activist, continues to defy Iran's theocratic dictatorship. He has gone so far as to demand the resignation of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, according to the Islamic constitution, rules above the law and without accountability.
The world took brief notice of Mr. Ganji this past summer, during his hunger strike. A politically diverse group demanded his release: his Nobel Peace Prize-winning lawyer, Shirin Ebadi; the White House; former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky; former Czech president and dissident Vaclav Havel; Bishop Desmond Tutu; United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the European Union; and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But Mr. Ganji's fate was sealed, as the Iranian regime snubbed sustained calls for his release and engineered another "election" that brought to the presidency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man now notoriously known for advocating wiping Israel off the map and calling the Holocaust a myth.
In contrast to Mr. Ahmadinejad's thuggish speeches, Mr. Ganji addresses his audience with a quiet eloquence: "This is the voice of peaceful life, of tolerating the other, of love for humanity, of self-sacrifice for the welfare of people, of truth, freedom, and democracy, of respect for one's opponents ..... and of rejecting violence."
Though gentle and humane, Mr. Ganji plays that gloriously subversive role of Socratic gadfly. He stings the regime at every turn, most famously by exposing its direct responsibility for the killing of Iran's leading intellectuals in his 1999 book, The Red Eminence and the Gray Eminences. Much like Soviet-era dissidents before him, Mr. Ganji reveals truth amidst a society forced to "live a lie," to borrow from Mr. Havel. Demanding accountability for systemic human-rights abuses, he is also known for his campaign to encourage a boycott of the fraudulent presidential election. In his political manifesto, he has dared put to paper the near ubiquitous - though fiercely repressed - notion that the Supreme Leader is not only fallible, but corrupt and evil.
While the international community is justifiably alarmed at official rhetoric coming from Tehran these days, it should pay more attention to how the Iranian regime seeks to benefit from its hateful and incendiary language. By employing fascist rancour and focusing on Israel as the "common enemy," Mr. Ahmadinejad and his ilk are struggling to maintain their rule in the face of Iranians' growing demands for freedom. Theirs is an attempt to drown out the secular, democratic, peaceful voice of Mr. Ganji and his supporters and to beat back the natural, global trend for the expansion of freedom.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's biggest threat is not Israel or the United States, but freedom-loving Iranians. Despots' subjects are the stuff of their darkest nightmares, as it is they who are most familiar with their lies. The international community should recognize this, and the international media should be careful not to conflate a dangerously repressive regime's rhetoric with the thinking of its people. As evidenced under communism in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, dictatorships retain power through the big lie meant to obfuscate truth. It is thus important that the international community recognize that the people of Iran can see through it all, more so even than those outside their country.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's revolutionary trash talk does not impress Iranians, especially Iran's restive youth. It strikes many as ignorant and absurd, especially when placed against Mr. Ganji's robust manifestos for an open society. In condemning Mr. Ahmadinejad and in fighting against the prospect of a nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran's corrupt mullahs, the international community should provide unwavering support to its natural allies, those with the biggest stake in guaranteeing freedom and peace: the people of Iran. In that spirit, we should revive the focus on Mr. Ganji's noble struggle for democracy, now being waged from inside his solitary cell in Evin prison.
The world should pay tribute to the man who, in speaking of his own life as a political dissident, declared that, while "this candle is about to die out, [it] will raise louder voices in its wake."
Mariam Memarsadeghi is senior program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the U.S.-based Freedom House.
ping
Bump.
Help us FREE Iran!
iranian ping
I wish I could figure out how to unlock the international "outrage lock-box." It would help a lot of people if a tide of world opinion swept the Iranian regime in support of Akbar Ganji.
U.S. air strikes would do a lot more.
These folks [Ganji's oppressors and their ilk] never learn...until they find out, too late, that there are no 72 virgins waiting for them.
BTTT
Bump
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