A voice that refuses to be stifled

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), DEC. 5. If the Islamic revolution in Iran inspired a generation of martyrs prepared to die and kill for the cause, the struggle for democracy under way in Iran is being waged by those not afraid to open their mouths. When the annals of this struggle are written, a prominent place will have to be given to Mr. Akbar Ganji, who was editor of the newspaper Shobe Emrouz till he was jailed in April and the newspaper subsequently closed down. Mr. Ganji is not just unafraid to open his mouth but is prepared to scream at the top of his voice.

Mr. Ganji has been under detention on a host of charges though most people in Iran believe that he was arrested mainly in connection with a series of articles in which he accused intelligence operatives and conservative clerics of having ordered the death of pro-reform intellectuals in early 1988.

In a trial on one of the charges over the past week, Mr. Ganji has not only repeated the charges in greater detail but also accused the judge trying him of having committed some of the same violations on which he is facing trial. In pointing an accusatory finger at a key clique within the clerical establishment, Mr. Ganji sought to draw a distinction between this clique and the rest of the conservative faction but has probably gone so far that he will not avoid a heavy punishment.

The charge on which Mr. Ganji is currently undergoing the trial pertains to a conference held in Berlin last year where Iranian intellectuals had shared the floor with representatives of the dissident movement in exile. There are other charges still pending including accusations of having contacts with foreign intelligence agencies and banned dissident groups as well as of having villified religious sanctities. All these charges carry heavy sentences and Mr. Ganji has claimed that he was tortured in detention. Seventeen prominent intellectuals have also been charged in the trial.

Iran's conservative establishment, including the judiciary which it controls, has made much of the Berlin seminar organised by the Heinrich Boell foundation that has links to the German Green Party. In the charge-sheet, the foundation is also described as having a Zionist connection. During the conference, Mr. Ganji and the other leading figures of the pro-reform camp in attendance did point out the weaknesses of the current Iranian dispensation but also defended Iran when it was criticised by the exiled dissident groups.

However, the conservatives have seized upon the very presence of the reformers at the conference as a sign of the moral degeneracy of the entire reform platform. In their news- clips, the conservative-controlled electronic media played up the anti-Iran tirades of the exiled dissidents while down-playing the defence put up by the reformers. It repeatedly showed clips in which an exiled dissident male stripped off his shirt and an exiled dissident female danced crudely implying that the reformers encouraged such ``depraved activities''.

Defending himself in court, Mr. Ganji said that if any of his action in Berlin were wrong then the conservatives too had committed violations of the religious code. The regime's intelligence and justice departments were accomplices to his wrong-doing since they had not fore-warned him that the Heinrich Boell foundation had any connection to Zionism.

Moreover, the Iranian government had hosted Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr. Joschka Fischer, a member of the Green Party and therefore, according to the charge-sheet an affiliate of the Boell foundation and a Zionist. How could the judiciary charge him with connections to Zionism when they had themselves hosted such a ``prominent Zionist''?

This trial is only a lead-up to the more serious case that the conservatives have pinned on Mr. Ganji. In the articles on the murders of dissidents, Mr. Ganji had accused the former intelligence minister, Mr. Ali Fallahian, of having had a direct role in the murders.

He repeated the charge in the court and also accused a leading conservative judge, Mr. Gholam-Hossen Mohseni-Ejei, head of both the Special Court for Clergy and the press court, of issuing the order for the murder of communist militant, Mr. Piruz Davani, who disappeared in August 1998 and is presumed to be dead. Elaborating his accusations, Mr. Ganji said Mr. Fallahian and Mr. Mohseni-Ejei were affiliated to the Haqqani clerical sect from the city of Qom, headed by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, which believes that democracy and Islam are incompatible.

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Section  : International
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