Iranian Alert -- August 7, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

Regime frees some of the students according to its demagogic policy

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Aug 7, 2003

Several students, members of Islamic Student Associations and relatives of regime's officials, have been released by the Islamic regime according to its demagogic policy.

It's to note that hundreds of students and protesters, looking for the establishment of a Secular state, are still held captive while several of them have been executed and other will be executed in the coming days.

The Islamic regime and its leader intend, by such anticipated releases, to calm the NGO's and foreign governments; To try to put a stop on the disintegration of the Islamic Student Associations which were a day one of the main pillars of the regime's so-called reformists; To create distinctive line between the students and all other demonstrators; And most importantly to rehabilitate Judge Mortazavi accused of the murder of the Canadian-Iranian journalist.

Nerveless, the regime's demagogy which is well know to the absolute majority of the Iranians will not reach its goals as most Iranians are preparing themselves for a wide scale revolution.

The need of a radical revolution is gaining momentum and reaching spheres that till now were looking for gradual reforms. in this line and in an unprecedented manner, Dr. Mohammad Maleki, head of Tehran University wrote, today, an open letter to the Iranian students by declaring his understanding of their radical believes and hoping them victory in their endeavor for regime change in Iran.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1629.shtml

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Support for strike by Iranian journalists to protest against crackdown on press

Press Release
Aug 7, 2003

Reporters Without Borders today announced its full support and solidarity with the one-day strike that hundreds of Iranian journalists are to stage tomorrow to protest against a crackdown in which many of their colleagues have been arrested or summoned for questioning. The strikers will call for the release of the detained journalists and will condemn the unexplained murder of journalist Zahra Kazemi while in custody.

Secretary-general Robert Mnard said the announced strike was symptomatic of the discontent within the profession, pointing out that Reporters Without Borders had registered more than 50 cases of journalists being arrested or called in for questioning over a month. A total of 24 journalists were currently in prison and Reporters Without Borders called for their release, he said.

"Not a week goes by without their coming under more pressure," Mnard said. "Any of them can be arrested at any moment under any pretext. How can they work in such conditions? And how can they not be afraid when they know that several of the journalists currently detained are being held by the staff of Tehran public prosecutor Said Mortazavi and Revolutionary Guards in the same centre where Zahra Kazemi received the blows that caused her death?"

Reporters Without Borders voiced particular concern about the conditions in which some of these journalists are being held. The wife of Reza Alijani, detained since 14 June, told the ISNA news agency that she did not recognise her husband during her last prison visit because he had lost so much weight. The wife of Taghi Rahmani has received no word of him since his arrest on 14 June. Her requests to visit him have all been turned down, as have the requests made by the wives of several other detained journalists.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1630.shtml

Annan takes up Kazemi case

By Bruce Campion-Smith
Aug 7, 2003

OTTAWA—United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has promised to take up the case of Zahra Kazemi, the Montreal photojournalist who died while in Iranian custody.

Annan made the pledge to Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham Tuesday afternoon during a "lengthy" telephone conversation the two men had about the case, Graham's spokesperson Isabelle Savard said.

"Kofi Annan had heard about the case. He was highly concerned," she said yesterday.

"He said when he had a chance, he would raise it to help us to continue to put pressure on Iran."

Kazemi, 54, was arrested after taking pictures outside a prison and died July 10 after being interrogated by Iranian authorities. Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi has publicly admitted that she was probably killed while in custody.

Her violent death and quick burial in Iran — against the wishes of her family — outraged Canadian authorities. Ottawa recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest and hasn't ruled out sanctions.

Graham has called on the Iranian government to hold an open inquiry into her death. Ottawa also wants Kazemi's body returned to Canada.

Graham's phone call to Annan this week was meant to keep up the pressure, Savard said.

"It's to mobilize the international community on the case itself and the security of journalists around the world, freedom of expression and all these issues," she said.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1627.shtml

Rise of Iraq's Shiites could pose threat to Iran's clerical rulers

from the August 08, 2003 edition
By Nicholas Birch | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

TEHRAN, IRAN – Well before the first bomb dropped on Baghdad, Western analysts worried that liberation from Saddam Hussein's Sunni-based tyranny could push Iraq's Shiite majority into the arms of Iranian theocrats.
In the chaos that followed, such concern has seemed justified. Protesters in Shiite districts of Baghdad brandish posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's theocracy. In Iraq's holy city of Najaf, thousands flock to hear the speeches of Moqtada al-Sadr, a virulently anti-American advocate of clerical rule.

But an extraordinary outburst this week from Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson shows that the renaissance of Iraq's Shiites is a double-edged weapon that potentially is every bit as dangerous for Iranian rulers' grasp on power as it is for Washington.

Speaking to journalists in Najaf Tuesday, Seyyed Hussein Khomeini said that "Iranians insist on freedom, but they are not sure where it will come from. If it comes from inside, they will welcome it, but if it was necessary for it to come from abroad, especially from the United States, people will accept it."

While his name carries great weight for Iranians, Mr. Khomeini has little standing in the Shiite hierarchy. But his comments echo the discontent many Iranians feel about heavy-handed clerical rule.

Faced with US warnings not to meddle in Iraq's affairs, Iran has limited itself to barbed declarations that no one has the right to interfere in another country's affairs. "Tehran has no intention of trying to impose its political model on Iraq," says Amir Mohebbian, a columnist for the ultra-conservative daily Resalat. "All clerics, whether political or apolitical, share our goals and objectives."

But other Iranian observers say there is plenty of evidence that many in Iran would like Iraq to adopt clerical rule. The outspoken support of senior ayatollahs in the Shiite's sacred city of Qom, Iran, they say, has gone a long way toward legitimizing Najaf-based Mr. Sadr.

The rationale behind such behavior is clear, argues Seyyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, expert on Islamic law at Tehran University. "The revival of politically independent seminaries in Najaf will have a spillover effect on Iran. It could create a breathing space for those wishing to conform to the age-old precepts of Shiite tradition - the pious, apolitical links between senior ayatollahs and their followers."

Mesmerized by the push for change of Iran's reformist government, the West has tended to underestimate clerical opposition to the Iranian regime. One London-based clerical opposition group estimates that of approximately 5,000 ayatollahs in Iran, only 80 wholeheartedly support it.

While Ruhollah Khomeini was alive, doubts about his doctrine of clerical rule were tempered by his clerical credentials. The same is not true of his successor Ali Khamenei, only a middle-ranking cleric when he was appointed supreme leader in 1989. "Senior clerics treat his theological pronouncements with disdain," says Nadeem Kazmi, of the London-based Al-Khoei Foundation, a charity with close links to the apolitical Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf.

But what Ayatollah Khamenei lacks in credentials, he has made up for in surveillance, such as increased attempts to bring Qom's independent seminaries under state control. Nobody knows how many dissenting clerics have been executed by special clerical courts, although some sources put the figure at 60 since 1989.

"If Qom remains under the same kind of oppressive atmosphere, everyone will come to Najaf," Seyyed Hussein Khomeini said on Tuesday.

In a recent book on Iran's ruling elite, German Iranian scholar Wilfried Buchta goes further. "A Shia grand ayatollah from outside the Iranian system of power..., could issue fatwas [legal judgments] on religious-social matters that run counter to Khamenei's political line," he writes. "If this should happen, it could bring the whole system to the verge of breakdown."

Following a series of high-level clerical defections in recent years, some Iranian analysts see signs that dissatisfaction in Iran has spread to traditionally pro-regime clerics. But most Iranians doubt the clerics will transform passive opposition into active revolt. "If we're going to depend on them, we have a long wait on our hands," says Davoud Hermidas Bavand, law professor at the Supreme National Defense University in Tehran. The political editor of reformist daily Etemad, Rouzbeh Mirebrahimi, agrees. "Even if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani stood up in Najaf and criticized the Iranian regime, which he won't, nobody would listen to him."

But this is north Tehran, where students brandish copies of Nietzsche and whisper "God is dead" behind closed doors. While their more secular reform movement seems deadlocked, more traditionally minded Iranians may be willing to listen to clerics in Iraq who advocate separation of mosque and state.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0808/p06s01-wome.html

Iran's Rulers 'Should Call Referendum'

August 07, 2003
BBC News
Pam O'Toole

The grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has made a stinging attack on the country's current Islamic system and rulers.

In an interview with the BBC Persian Service, Hossein Khomeini, a hojatoleslam - or middle ranking clergyman - accused the current rulers of oppressing the Iranian people and committing human rights abuses.

Speaking from the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, he said that Iran's reformist movement was finished and called for a referendum to decide how the country should be governed in the future.

He was also highly critical of the way Iran's Islamic system of government has developed.

'Guilty of oppression'

Hojatoleslam Khomeini questioned the principle of velayat faqih, or Islamic jurisprudence, upon which the system is based.

He added that, if his grandfather were alive today, he would have opposed all of Iran's current leaders because of what he described as their excesses and wrongdoing.

These people, he alleged, did not even carry out their own Islamic beliefs.

They were guilty of oppressing the Iranian population, killing people or jailing them for no reason.

As for the reformists, he said, they were finished.

People who had voted for President Khatami hoping things would change had seen things get worse, rather than better, in his second term of office, he said.

Strong rejection

Hojatoleslam Khomeini maintained that those who voted for an Islamic Republic in Iran more than 20 years ago were now in a minority.

The vast majority of today's Iranians were either under voting age or not yet born when that decision was taken.

What was needed now, he said, was a referendum on Iran's Islamic system of government.

One way or another, he said, that could resolve the current situation without a drop of blood being spilled.

His comments mark one of the clearest and strongest rejections of the Islamic system of government by an Iranian cleric.

They will be seen as particularly significant because they have been made by the grandson of the man whose name has become synonymous with Iran's Islamic Revolution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3133915.stm

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