Saturday, 05 February 2011

Trend – Iran’s execution of Dutch-Iranian citizen Sarah Bahrami was firmly condemned by Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs in a resolution voted on Tuesday.

“Future EU relations with Iran – including possible further sanctions – should focus not only on the nuclear dispute but also on human rights abuses since the 2009 presidential elections,” they added.

46-year-old Zahra Bahrami, who had Iranian and Dutch citizenships, was executed on Jan.28 in Iran for drug trafficking. The sentence was fulfilled despite protests of the European Union.

Bahrami, was arrested in January 2010. Police found 450 grams of cocaine and about the same amount of opium on her. According to the relatives of the executed, all charges against her were fabricated, and she was arrested due to the fact that she was participating in the anti-Government opposition in 2009.

Firmly condemning the execution of Dutch-Iranian national Zahra Bahrami in Tehran on 29 January, MEPs are “dismayed that the Iranian authorities denied consular access to Ms Bahrami and did not ensure a transparent and fair judicial process”, says the resolution drafted by Bastiaan Belder (EFD, NL).

The resolution, approved in committee with 62 votes in favour, 3 against and 2 abstentions, is to be put to a plenary vote at the March plenary session in Strasbourg.

They also call on EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Catherine Ashton to raise the cases of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and Zahra Bahrami with the Iranian authorities.

Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs believe that the time has come for the EU to devise a new, broader, strategy towards Iran, which goes beyond the nuclear issue and addresses Iran’s human rights record and regional role.

They call on EU foreign ministers to impose sanctions targeting Iranian officials responsible for serious human rights abuses since the disputed presidential election of June 2009, in line with similar measures taken by the USA last September.

Strong opposition unrest broke out in Tehran after the announcement of the results of presidential elections on June 12, 2009. Then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections, who according to the Iranian CEC won 66 percent of the votes. One of the losing candidates – a reformer Mir Hossein Mousavi accused authorities of ballot rigging and called on people to hold protests. During the clashes, according to official figures, 20 people were killed, but according to unofficial data – about 150 people. Some 1,032 demonstrators were arrested, most of which are subsequently released.

Iran’s government has accused Western countries, particularly Great Britain, in a deliberate escalation of tensions in the country, in initiation of unrest and interference in the internal affairs of the country after the presidential election on June 12.

In September, the U.S. imposed sanctions against eight high-ranking Iranian officials. U.S. officials put the responsibility on them for human rights violations in Iran, in particular, the repression against the opposition members. Washington first imposed sanctions against Iran for violating human rights.

The sanctions involve blocking of the U.S. assets of officials and a ban on issuing visas to them. Moreover, U.S. citizens are prohibited to conduct business with them.

The sanctions were imposed on the following officials: IRGC Head, Mohammad Ali Jafari, his deputy on intelligence Hossain Taeb, Minister of Social Welfare and Security Sadek Mahsuli, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, Iran’s prosecutor general Qolam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, former Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, Deputy Head of Iran’s Police Ahmad Reza Radan and intelligence chief Heidar Moslehi.

MEPs note the popular discontent that followed the 2009 presidential elections and the Iranian people’s growing aspirations for democratic change. Iran’s domestic problems continue to deteriorate, despite burgeoning oil prices, say MEPs, while President Ahmadinejad continues to embrace a radical anti-Western, anti-Israel agenda.

MEPs are concerned that the growing military, political and economic role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iranian society is fuelling fears of a further militarization of the state, which in turn could lead to an escalation of violence and oppression of political opposition.

The Foreign Affairs Committee deeply regrets that the number of executions in Iran in 2009 was the highest in the past ten years, making Iran the country with the highest number of executions per capita in the world. MEPs demand official statistics on the executions carried out and call on the government to impose a moratorium on these executions and also to abolish the execution of minors under 18 years old.

Given Iran’s continuing refusal to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), MEPs consider that “additional sanctions have become the logical consequence”.

However, they also wish to ensure that Ms Ashton assesses the impact and effectiveness of all EU restrictive measures, in order to prevent Iran from evading the sanctions. Sanctions are meant to hit the blacklisted officials, not the Iran population as a whole, they warn.

In June 2010 the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1929, enacting new sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium. Later, the U.S. Congress and foreign ministers of all EU countries approved the imposing of additional unilateral sanctions aimed mainly against the energy, banking and financial sectors of Iran.

The embargo on arms sales against Iran is toughened in accordance with the resolutions and sanctions.

The list of Iranian organizations subject to sanctions is being expanded.

Moreover, the enterprises controlled by the national shipping lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran and 15 other companies owned by the IRGC were included in the “black list”.

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Saturday, 05 February 2011

WIRED – The authoritarian regimes in Iran and China are playing a double game, when it comes to the unrest in the Middle East. Tehran and Beijing are doing their best to spin the protests in their favor, when they talk to the world. But at home, they’re pursuing a different strategy: trying to muzzle anything but the official line on the upheaval.

Commentators have been keen to liken the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia both to the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian regime to power and the electoral protests of the Green Movement which tried to unseat it. Not surprisingly, the Iranian government has preferred to use the latter comparison.

Iran has sought to graft its own ideology and history onto the protests — as seems to be popular these days — painting the movements as the Egyptian version of the 1979 Iranian revolution that ushered in its theocracy. “Iran’s Islamic Revolution became a role model for the Egyptian nation. Without doubt the Egyptian dictator [President Hosni Mubarak] will share the same destiny as that of Iran’s dictator [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi],” the military affairs advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader told the semi-official Fars News Agency. Fars has pushed the supposed continuities further, playing up the claims of some Tunisian activists that they intend to form a group based on Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the political party cum terrorist group which acts as a proxy for Iran.

Iran’s enthusiasm for analogies between revolution and Egypt’s ends at 1979, though. Although it’s probably pleased to see an American-aligned rival regime go, Iran still seems a little nervous about giving its own reputedly Twitter-powered dissidents in theGreen Movement too much inspiration from the anti-government protests in Egypt. Since Monday, Iranians’ access to outside political news from Yahoo, Google and Reuters, some of the few remaining such outlets available in Iran, has been cut off without explanation, though some anodyne entertainment news is still accessible.

With large economic interests in Egypt, China’s hopes for Egypt are decidedly less ideological. In public, Beijing is asking for just one thing: quiet.

“We hope Egypt will restore social stability and normal order as soon as possible.” That’s been the consistent refrain from China’s Foreign Ministry when quizzed on its reaction to the events.

At home, China has blocked internet searches for “Egypt” and reportedly ordered Chinese media to follow the state-run news serviceXinhua’s line on the protest movements, which has emphasized the disturbance caused by the protests at the expense of explanations of their political grievances.

The private intelligence firm Stratfor points out that this has become increasingly standard practice for China during high-profile protest movements such as the revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Iran captivate global media. It probably doesn’t help that the Western press keeps mentioning Tahrir Square in the same breath as the 1989 Tiananmen square protests and subsequent crackdown, It’s a chapter of history banned from discussion in China. Let’s hope this one ends a little more happily.

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Saturday, 05 February 2011

Tehran Review – The Jasmine Revolution blossomed in Tunisia. Another revolution is taking root in Egypt. The routinized horror and humiliation for Tunisians has been disrupted, at least temporarily. The specter of this revolution has overflowed Tunisian territories and is haunting other countries in the region, setting in motion waves of mass protests in Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, etc. Questions arise.

What is a revolution about? What caused the Tunisian revolution? Why is this spirit contagious? Why is it instilling fear in the hearts of the dictators in the region? Do we (the non-Tunisians, non-Egyptians) have a duty to care about what’s happening in those countries? If so, what can we do to help those people? What to do after a revolution succeeds? I will address some of these questions in what follows.

What is a revolution? Albert Camus, the philosopher of rebellion, detects in any revolutionary act in the realm of politics, a reaffirmation of something beyond the individual, and nicely distorts the Cartesian principle: “I rebel – therefore we exist”. (2) “We” is the human. Revolution, even if carried out by one individual, is a collective act and has a collective dream. Even if you revolt individually against a tyrannical boss, you are performing a collective act, an act that completes your individuality; you demand respect for your ‘human’ dignity, and with that you are automatically in the domain of the collective. A Revolution comes into being by individuals, in individual countries (say, in Tunisia), against a tyrannical system embodied by an individual (say, Ben Ali or Mubarak) or an oligarchy (i.e. body of individuals, say, those governing Saudi Arabia or Iran), but it goes beyond that; it represents a value or a ‘something’ that is indeed higher than the revolutionary person, which completes her individuality, and which though not clearly determined, redefines personhood, redefines humanity, thereby relating all freedom-loving humans to one another.

Revolution, even if carried out by one individual, is a collective act and has a collective dream

What is that something, ideal, value, or belief behind a revolution? It is an affirmative NO, a NO to humiliation, enslavement, oppression, a NO that says YES to freedom and life, a life that defies enslavement of lives, of humans. Revolution bespeaks an ideal destiny, evokes a higher value, and undertakes the task of mapping out a country yet to come, in point of fact, countries yet to come. (3) This is why the revolutionary spirit is contagious. It’s a wake-up call to other peoples (e.g. Egyptians and Yemenis) telling them that that ideal concerns not only ‘them’ (the Tunisians) but ‘us’ as well, that in the large scheme of things there is no ‘them’, and we all belong to a big ‘us’, the human realm. In this sense, ‘we are all Tunisians,’ ‘we are all Egyptians.’ And the petty dictators understand this, which is why they are scared.

If the preceding is true, it follows that not only are the Tunisian, Egyptian, Yemeni, and Iranian revolutions (or any revolution against tyranny, for that matter) relevant to us but they touch on the very core of our lives and our politics. To be more precise, we can say that revolutions are political; politics is by definition the domain of the collective. Revolutions, being political, are therefore collective. Collectivity, being a human concept, cannot be confined to territorial (e.g. national) boundaries. A revolution summons forth a new and free country. A free country cannot be so in an enslaved world. It therefore summons forth a new world. A new world entails a new people. The new people (that are yet to come, that may never come) cannot be myopic “individuals” (as most of us are), but are humans who see their very individuality as simultaneously conditioning and conditioned by the existence of a true and free collectivity, a true and free world, in which as long as there is one oppressed individual in the world, none of us is truly free. The formula is therefore right: the Tunisians rebelled, therefore the Egyptians are, Yemenis are, therefore we all are.

In this light, we should be concerned about oppressed people, respond to their call. How? The most general answer would be ‘start from whatever civil you can do, wherever you can do it.’ Some suggestions: we need to spread the word in the media and among the people around us, and take part in rallies in support of those people. Academics should write and talk about it. We must demand that our politicians not support “friendly dictators” (Mubarak, Saudi family, etc.), and teach them that the idea of ‘friendly dictators’ is (oxy)moronic! That the enemy to a free world is not only Ahmadinejad and Bashar Asad (“unfriendly dictators”), but every dictator in every oppressed country.

The Egyptians, Algerians, Yemenis, and Jordanians are already on the street. Iranians for a long while now. But instead of supporting such people, many Western governments secretly support those dictators, providing them with “military and security assistance”. The French government stood behind Ben Ali until the last moment. U.S. has been providing financial and military assistance to Mubarak for decades. IMF diktats wreak havoc to the lives of those people. Secret operations, international sanctions, and threats of war are making life and rebellion against those tyrants doubly difficult for the people. This is what politicians do here. Even if that human ideal is not morally compelling for some of us to be concerned about oppressed people, the very fact that our own Western societies vote for politicians who support such dictators makes us, the citizens, partially responsible for the miseries of those people. We need to change this trend; start from ourselves and our politicians, that is.

What’s next after a revolution? Allow me a serious caveat here. Revolutions, history has taught us, are pregnant with dictatorial potentials. The French (1789), Bolshevik (1917), and Iranian (1979) revolutions are the most obvious cases in point. The best way to avoid such a turn of events is to think of a revolution not as an event but a process and keep the revolutionary spirit alive. If Tunisians want to steer clear of this danger they need to learn from history, and put in place systems of check and control that are not prone to totalitarian tendencies, depose those from the previous system in a civil fashion, keep a vigilant eye on the new politicians, and react civilly to any sign of political misconduct. A revolution is a beginning not an end. It is a work in progress. It takes self-criticism for it to survive. If followed self-critically, revolutions have emancipatory potentials too: The American Revolution, India’s experience with Ghandi (1947), South Africa’s with Mandela (1994) are famous cases in point. There is, therefore, hope in revolutions.

Throughout history many a revolution has been hijacked by vindictive revolutionaries

Another way to stop a revolution from turning into despotism is to not let vengefulness and thirst for blood be the driving forces behind it, especially after it succeeds. Throughout history many a revolution has been hijacked by vindictive revolutionaries, who started to execute those from the previous political system and then opponents in the new system. The French revolution with its Reign of Terror and the infamous ‘guillotine’ is an obvious instance of an ideal gone horribly awry. Similar was the Iranian revolution (1979) with all the brutal executions of those from the previous regime and the political dissidents in the new system. Vengefulness and obsession with the past, if taken as the defining trait of a revolutionary movement, become its future modus operandi.

A revolution is a departure from the past and looking forward to future. Instead of vengeance, Hannah Arendt’s idea of ‘forgiveness’ (and I would add ‘hope’) should be the driving force of any successful revolution. Having fled the Nazi Germany as a Jew, upon returning she came to forgive her teacher, Martin Heidegger, who was a registered Nazi. What is more, she introduced the concept of ‘forgiveness’ to political philosophy, the idea being that we can (and should) forgive the person (but not the act), that forgiveness is in fact a ‘duty’. So, the Tunisians and all of us should be wary of this danger. Justice should be carried out civilly, but the point is that vengeance and death should not provide the fuel for a revolutionary machine. The earth cannot become ‘la nouvelle terre’ with more blood. Nor can a people become the promised ‘nouveau peuple’ if vengeful.

There is a lot more to say about a lot more, especially what caused the Tunisian revolution or what started those in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, etc. But suffice it for the moment to quote Victor Hugo, himself a political exile during the French dictatorship of his time, who wrote: “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.” This can explain the cause of almost all revolutions. If revolution in its different forms is a right in the face of tyranny (and I can’t see why it should not be), Egyptians, Yemenis, Kurds, Algerians, Iranians, and all other oppressed people should and will repeat the Tunisian experience, hopefully soon, hopefully as ‘a work in progress’, and hopefully with ‘forgiveness’, and ‘hope’.

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