Iranian Alert -- DAY 42 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Ignoring Iran's Abuses

July 21, 2003
The Washington Times
Editorial/Op-Ed

While American news outlets fixate on the 16 words spoken by President Bush about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium during the State of the Union address (three months after Congress voted to authorize the use of force), they have largely ignored a far more important story from that region of the world: the efforts of the people of Iran to overthrow an oppressive dictatorship, and the regime's brutal efforts to hang on to power, which now may include the murder of a Canadian journalist by Iranian security forces.

The situation in Iran has major geopolitical implications for the United States. With the demise of Saddam Hussein, Tehran is indisputably the world's leading supporter of international terrorism and a determined foe of U.S. efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. The regime has chemical and biological weapons, and could produce nuclear weapons in the next few years. With more than 150,000 U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, few developments would be more beneficial to American foreign policy interests than the replacement of the current government with a democratic one that is pro-Western in orientation.

In June, during 10 nights of mass protests throughout the country, police arrested 4,000 people — virtually all of whom remain behind bars. Vigilantes supported by the regime played a critical role in suppressing the demonstrations; some members of these groups reportedly invaded campus dormitories in order to beat student protesters in their beds. On July 9, hundreds of police officers and vigilantes surrounded Tehran University, where they arrested three student leaders after they had cancelled plans to hold a sit-in to protest against the repressive Islamic dictatorship in Tehran.

The paranoia and brutality of Iranian security forces had horrific consequences for Canadian photo journalist Zahra Kazemi. Kazemi, 54, was arrested June 23 while taking pictures outside Evin prison near Tehran, where many of those arrested are believed to be held. Iranian officials initially claimed she suffered a stroke during her interrogation; now, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi says she may have died of a fractured skull after having fallen "accidentally." But the French newspaper Liberation reported last week that Kazemi (a Quebec resident with joint Canadian and Iranian citizenship) suffered the skull fracture after being beaten in the head with a shoe by an interrogator — an Iranian security official. The news of Kazemi's death could seriously damage relations between Tehran and the government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, which has sought warmer ties with the current Iranian regime. Ottawa has warned that relations between the two countries could be jeopardized if Iran fails to return Kazemi's body and explain the circumstances of her death.

What's remarkable thus far is how little attention the democracy protests and the abysmal human rights situation in Iran have received from the three major networks: From the beginning of June through Thursday night, ABC, NBC and CBS evening news programs devoted less than nine minutes of air time to the human rights situation in Iran — a mere 11 seconds a night. Given the huge geopolitical implications for the United States, it surely deserves more serious, comprehensive coverage. For more information on the Iranian pro-democracy protests, see the Web site: http://www.daneshjoo.org.

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20030720-103228-8013r.htm

The EU issued a warning today over the nuclear program and human rights. I just pinged you to the thread.

While American news outlets fixate on the 16 words spoken by President Bush about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium during the State of the Union address (three months after Congress voted to authorize the use of force), they have largely ignored a far more important story from that region of the world: the efforts of the people of Iran to overthrow an oppressive dictatorship, and the regime's brutal efforts to hang on to power, which now may include the murder of a Canadian journalist by Iranian security forces.

That and Kobie Bryant. It's like there's a black hole between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Extremely frustrating to say the least.

Good post.

I'm giving your reply a well deserved big ol' bump!

It's very frustrating...

Your bump
Was it good for you? It was good for me! :-)

LOL! Absolutely! ;o)

There is nothing particularly unusual about what happened to Zahra Kazemi

The Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente 7.21.2003

She was picked up by government thugs for suspected crimes against the regime, and beaten so that she would confess. She died of a broken skull. Perhaps her death was accidental. But the torture was deliberate, and purely routine. The only unusual feature was her Canadian passport.
Margaret Wente

A Column By MARGARET WENTE From Saturday's Globe and Mail

There is nothing particularly unusual about what happened to Zahra Kazemi. It has happened to thousands of other people in Iran. She was picked up by government thugs for suspected crimes against the regime, and beaten so that she would confess. She died of a broken skull. Perhaps her death was accidental. But the torture was deliberate, and purely routine.

The only unusual feature was her Canadian passport.

The people who beat her to death probably didn't know about that. She was travelling on her Iranian passport, and had obtained the standard work permit issued to Iranian nationals. Then she went to Iran's most notorious prison to take pictures of demonstrators who had gathered there to protest the detention of thousands of prisoners of conscience. If the people who bludgeoned her to death knew what a fuss they were about to kick up, no doubt they simply would have expelled her. Their policy is to only kill domestic journalists.

We have a double standard in these matters, which is only human nature, I suppose. We're outraged when a Westerner runs afoul of the local justice system in some barbaric country. We're horrified that the Saudis have been talking about executing William Sampson. Of course they'll never do it, because Mr. Sampson is white and Western, and they don't need the aggravation. The Filipinos and other foreign workers who've lost their heads to Saudi justice weren't so lucky.

In the matter of Ms. Kazemi, our Foreign Affairs Minister and our Prime Minister are demanding Iran make a full accounting. They sound as if this is actually a possibility. Perhaps they believe the "reformers" have real power there. That is a delusion shared by many Westerners, who think that constructive engagement with the mullahs might persuade them to give up their nuclear weapons aspirations, stop funding international terrorism and stop killing people in their jails. Oh, well. Lots of people entertained the same delusions about Saddam.

Ask Iranians, and most of them will tell you that Iranian "reform" is an illusion. Take Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader," and Mohammad Khatami, the President -- supposedly, they are the hard-liner and the friendly face. In reality, they're Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Another illusion is that "democracy" has somehow taken hold. It's true, there were elections. But almost all the would-be candidates were declared ineligible before anybody had a chance to vote for them.

To be sure, the ayatollahs' slaughter of their own citizens has never reached a Saddam-like scale (except, perhaps, when they sent a million unarmed boys into war against Iraq and told them they would die as glorious martyrs). But their objective is the same: totalitarian control of the people.

"Do they still use the word 'reformists' about some people here?" wrote an Iranian in Tehran to her exiled friend in the United States. "They're very much hated now." As for the reformer President Khatami, "people curse him more than the hard-liners." The exiled friend to whom she wrote is a courageous woman named Azar Nafisi, who left Iran in 1997. Ms. Nafisi's extraordinary new book, called Reading Lolita In Tehran, lifts the veil on life in Iran. Those who hope the regime is capable of reforming itself ought to read it.

For two decades after the revolution, Ms. Nafisi taught English literature in Iran. Over the years, her books were banned and her students imprisoned and tortured. Some of her female students emerged from jail so traumatized that they immediately married and had children to remove themselves from official scrutiny. Some were arrested, and were never seen again. After teaching at university became too dangerous, Ms. Nafisi began a book club in her house, where young women would come each week to throw off their veils and discuss the subversive works of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Jane Austen. In her living room there was freedom. Now teaching in the U.S., Ms. Nafisi keeps up an e-mail correspondence with a few former students. Recently some excerpts were published in The Washington Post.

"Dearest Manna," Ms. Nafisi wrote to her friend in Tehran. "Where can we turn when we are caught by such extreme cruelty as that of a regime whose vigilantes throw protesters out of their dormitory windows, and an indifferent world that is too busy finding some saving grace for what is at best a moderate theocracy to pay attention to such horrific images?"

President Khatami likes to talk to the West about a "dialogue of civilizations." And lately the regime has allowed a certain relaxation of female dress codes. But Ms. Nafisi maintains that nothing has really changed. The state is still able to interfere at will with anything it considers immoral. There is no escape. "Living in the Islamic Republic," she writes, "is like having sex with a man you loathe."

Much of the West has been dazzled by the window-dressing of reform. Western journalists describe Mr. Khatami approvingly as a reformer, even though the number of state executions has not abated since he took office. Western academics routinely show up at conferences to praise Iran for its art and culture, overlooking its inconvenient human-rights abuses.

Western oil companies channel money to Iranian front groups that portray the regime as a bunch of reasonable fellows who are open for business. The UN even chose Iran to host a pre-meeting for one of its conferences against racism, racial discrimination and intolerance, thus lending legitimacy to a nation that flogs women for wearing nail polish, and still approves of death by stoning.

Canada's leaders, too, are talking as if Ms. Kazemi's murder were some unfortunate accident, which can be cleared up by an apology and a promise to do better in the future. "If crimes have been committed, we are demanding of the Iranian government to punish those who committed the crime," said Jean Chrétien the other day. And Bill Graham declared that the inquiry into Ms. Kazemi's death would be a test of whether the reformists can prevail.

But there is zero chance that the guilty will be brought to justice. That is because the real power struggle in Iran isn't between the hardliners and the reformers. It's between a regime that is as obsessed as ever with repression, sex and death, and a population that only wants life.

"Dearest Manna," Ms. Nafisi wrote to her friend. "Although many of the protests are presented as purely political, they are in fact existential in nature: Millions of people have been deprived of their right to individual freedoms, they have been forced to forgo the pleasure of ordinary life: falling in love, walking down the street hand in hand, dancing, singing, wearing lipstick -- and this turns the protest against the regime into an existential confrontation: We are fighting in order to exist."

mwente@globeandmail.ca

http://www.unitediranians.org/memo.asp?ID=1287

Oh Doctor, I'm so sorry to hear about his death. May God send His angels to carry him home. He was a brave man.

Great. Someone's paying attention.

Strange bedfellows indeed. Thanks for info.

I'm sorry to hear the news of "Hamid".
Considering they didn't take him to the hospital until after they did the surgery, his chances of survival were about nil.
score another murder for the ba$t*&ds.

EXPERTS AND JURISTS BLAST THE OFFICIAL REPORT ON KAZEMI’S DEATH

PARIS 21 July (IPS) As expected, the report released on Sunday evening by the investigation committee sat by President Mohammad Khatami on the death of Ms. Zahra Kazemi deceived all Iranian jurists, experts and observers, except for Iranian conservatives-controlled press that welcomed it as a "rebuff to all those who wanted to discredit the Iranian Judiciary".

Though the report, complied by ministers of Justice, Interior, Intelligence, Islamic Guidance and Health confirms that the 54 years-old Canadian photojournalist of Iranian origin died of brain hemorrhage caused by a "heavy object that hit the head" and not on brain stroke, as initially stated by officials, but it do not say how it happened, exactly when and where?

According to the report, the incident happened three days after her detention and "probably 24 hours before", not making clear that at that time, which of the Tehran Prosecutor, the Intelligence Unit of the law Enforcement Forces (LEF) or the Intelligence Ministry that interrogated her one after another had Ms. Kazemi in its custody.

More over, the report’s overtone is that because of her "aggressive and provocative" attitude during interrogations she might have provoked the interrogators to some violence on her.

In an interview with the Persian service of the BBC, Mr. Stephen Hachemi, the 26 years-old son of the defunct says he is not satisfied with the report and urges the Iranian authorities to immediately send the body of her mother to Canada.

On Saturday, Stephen’s grandmother, Mrs. Ezzat kazemi, called on the Canadian Embassy in Tehran and signed a document authorising the body of her daughter to be transferred to Canada.

Mr. Hachemi also demanded that an international committee of jurists and medical experts be sent to Tehran to investigate the death of her mother.

Dr. Karim Lahiji, the deputy president of the International Federation of Human Rights leagues who acts as Mr. Hachemi’s defence also insisted on the "necessity" of having the death that he described as a "deliberate assassination", to be investigated by an independent body made of international lawyers and medical forensics.

"Under present conditions in the Islamic Republic, there is absolutely not possible to have the case investigated independently, as seen by the presidential investigation committee’s report, which is full of dark points, not answering any of the basic questions", he told Iran Press Service.

Like other experts and observers, he also confirmed all the shortcomings of the report as raised and highlighted by IPS in its 20 July story, including the fact that though it is clear that it was the notorious Judge Sa’id Mortazavi, the new public prosecutor of Tehran who ordered the arrest and personally carried out parts of the interrogations, the report do not mention him by name, nor any of the interrogators.

The report says after she bled from her nose and blood was observed in her vomit, she had been presented to the hospital on digestive tube complications and doctors treated her on that problem.

In another passage, the report states that the ministers received "full reports" from all the organs that held Ms. Kazemi, except the prosecutor, but it fails to publish them and concludes that:

Ms. Kazemi refused to eat during all the time she was in detention, drinking water only;

On various episodes of the interrogation, she offered vague and inconsistent answers to questions, failing to give clear answers;

On 6 July, she was freed by the judge on a 5 millions bails and handed over to the family at the hospital;

Her provocative, aggressive and unnatural attitude during the detention is confirmed by all three organs that had her in custody;

When at the hands of the LEF, no other discomfort has been recorded except complains from punishing actions from agents in charge.

Observers noted that the report states that Ms Kazemi had been "freed and handed over to the family at the site of the hospital against a 5 million toomans (some 5.000 Euros or 5.300 US Dollars) bail" while at this very time she was in coma and presumed dead.

They also observed that while she had been taken to hospital for blood observed in her vomit, yet, according to the report, she had already been hit on the head with a "heavy object".

According to a story run by the French leftist daily "Liberation", Mortazavi hit the photographer’s head with his shoe. In a speech at the open session of the Majles on Sunday, Mr. Mohsen Armin, an outspoken reformer lawmaker openly accused Mr. Mortazavi of being the main responsible of the tragic death of Ms. Kazemi, reminding that he had ordered her detention on charges of espionage, an accusation not supported by the Intelligence Ministry.

Mr. Armin, a deputy-Speaker and vice-Chairman of the Majles’ Foreign Affairs and national Security Committee indicted indirectly the regime’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, hitting: "We all know that Mortazavi is not a man to commit such rogue actions if he was not assured of protection from powerful people", he told the House.

In his capacity as the leader of the Islamic Republic, Mr. Khameneh’i personally controls the Judiciary and appoints the judges. He personally had promoted recently Mr. Mortazavi to the rank of public and Islamic Revolution tribunal prosecutor in gratitude for his crackdown on the dissidents, arrest of more than 20 leading journalists, and closure of a hundred publications.

On their 21 July editions, conservative newspapers, in a concerted effort to absolve Judge Mortazavi, published the investigation committee’s report partially, highlighting its negative parts, as the passage it presents the photographer as a person with a violent nature behaving aggressively during interrogations and never responding clearly the questions.

While "Keyhan", the mouthpiece of Ayatollah Khameneh’i, said Ms. Kazemi spent only 4 hours at the prosecutor’s office, ignoring that the report say she was detained 21 hours here and the prosecutor, MEANING Mr. Mortazavi, was present at times at the interrogations, "Resalat", another hard line paper close to the bazaar oligarchy almost points the finger at the Intelligence Ministry as the culprit.

"Why, while Kazemi was in the hands of the Information Ministry during the last stages of the interrogation, the said Ministry keep silence, provides no information as what happened there?", the paper asked an in effort to blame the government for the death of the photographer.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government, which until now has gone slow motion on the case, was expected to tell the Islamic Republic that it was not satisfied with the inter-ministerial report in the one hand and urge Tehran to move faster of the transfer of the body to Canada.

In their meeting on Monday in Brussels, foreign affairs ministers of the European Union also called on Iranian authorities to identify and bring to justice all those responsible for the tragic death of Ms. Kazemi.

*
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Jul-2003/journalist_dies_21703.htm

That is sad to hear one's death.

A GOOD LINK FOR THOSE WHO WANNA KNOW MORE ABOUT IRAN:

A COUNTRY PROFILE:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/790877.stm

Two Iranian English Newspaper for your further reference:

http://www.iran-daily.com/

http://www.tehrantimes.com

Thanks for all the posts.

You are most welcome.

Thanks for your attention too!

This Thread is now closed.

Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- DAY 43 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 7.22.2003 | DoctorZIn

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

Thank you for your posts, and all of the links.

I wanted to express my heartfelt condolences for 'Hamid's' death. It was so senseless and, one day, CNN will be held accountable for their neglect of him.

I like your tagline!