The life and [troubled] times of the Islamic Republic...
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The United Nations Human Rights commission has once again condemned the Islamic Republic for its gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. A resolution condemning Tehran for its human rights record was passed by 78 countries, including many of the regime's "friends" in the European Union.
Understandably, the Islamic Republic rejected the UN resolution. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Mohammadi claimed that the United Nations "will damage its reputation by turning the issue of human rights into a political matter."
The November report by UN Special Rapporteur for Iran, Prof. Maurice Copithorne, came as a sharp blow for Tehran, since the authorities were hoping after Copithorne's visit in February that he would give them a clean bill of health.
"The West wants us to base our human rights values on their laws, but we believe we should take into account our religious and cultural beliefs," Foreign Minister Velayati complained. He claimed that Iran is an Islamic state practicing Islamic regulations. "This report has no value from our point of view," he concluded. [Jomhouri-e Eslami 11/11]
Kayhan, which is close to MOIS, criticized the government for having allowed Copithorne visit Iran in the first place. "Our authorities must have been naive to believe that by accepting to deal with the representatives of human rights organizations, including the UNHCR, they could explain the virtues of the Islamic legal system and the legitimacy of the Islamic judiciary. The truth is that international organizations are Western creations, and abandoning all humanitarian and Islamic values is the only way to satisfy them... Therefore the authorities should not allow these people abuse and insult the sacred values of Iran's Muslim people, on the pretext of monitoring human rights conditions in Iran. [Kayhan 11/10]
The opposition Iran Nation's Party, in connection with three other outlawed organizations operating inside Iran, has called on its backers to conduct a ceremony on December 5, to commemorate a 1953 clash at Tehran university.
Three demonstrators were killed when students had gathered to protest the Dec. 5, 1953 visit of Vice President Nixon to Iran. The demonstrators accused the United States of having backed the Shah's ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and were routed by paratroopers.
Since 1980, December 5 has become known as the Day of the University Student, and has been used by the Islamic Republic authorities as an occasion to mobilize pro-regime students on university campuses.
In previous year, the INP has held "private" ceremonies on December 5. But for the past two weeks, the INP and its coalition partners - the Iranian People's Party, the Movement for Freedom in Iran, and the Labor Party of Iran - have been distributing joint leaflets, calling for a public ceremony to be held at the Imamzadeh Abdollah graveyard in the south of Tehran. This is the graveyard where the three students killed in the 1953 clashes - Mostafa Bozorgnia, Mehdi Shariat Razavi, and Ahmad Ghanjdi - have been buried. [INP statements & leaflets]
Iran Azad University, also known as "Rafsanjani U" since it is controlled by the clan of the President of the Islamic Republic, may be one of the first victims of Mr. Rafsanjani's departure from office next summer. The University, which has more than 100 campuses and 120,000 students, is one of the largest private universities in the world.
In the past, Iran Azad University has been tolerated by other branches of the ruling clerical elite, despite the high fees and constant protests by students over mediocre academic levels, crowded classrooms, and primitive laboratories.
But now there are signs that the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education is trying to slash enrollment at the school, which has a virtual monopoly on private higher education in the country.
Mohammad Reza Hashemi-Golpayegani, minister of Culture and Higher Education, believes that "Azad University has deviated from its original goal which was to promote and elevate higher education in the country."
"Now this university has become an impediment, that has undermined the state-run higher education system," the minister went on. "We have suffered in many ways from the predominance of Azad University. It has caused a shortage of professors at state universities, and has reduced the chances of state university graduates of finding good jobs," he told a press conference in Bandar Abbas. [Kayhan, 11/10]
Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i has been pressing Azad University to segregate its largest campus - the Roude-e han campus near Tehran - into separate faculties for men and women.
In an effort to crack down on viewers trying to pick up the Voice of America's recently-launched weekly television show, the Law Enforcement Forces raided homes in Tehran last week, confiscating satellite dishes and related equipment.
LEF commander RG Brigadier Sefollahi told a Tehran press conference on Sunday, Dec. 1, that the LEF had succeeded in confiscating 10,000 satellite dishes in Tehran alone in recent days, along with 960 pieces of related equipment. The raids began at 4 PM on the afternoon of November 26, sources in Tehran said.
Sefollahi promised that the raids would continue. [Radio Israel, quoting Iranian media accounts, 12/2]
Iranian women are making great strides toward equality - at least, that's what the Asahi newspaper in Japan has reported from its Tehran bureau. Iran daily found the report so enlightening that it reprinted it in full.
Following the approval of a new bill by the Iranian parliament, Asahi reportedly said, a new committee is now studying the problems of women and will write new laws to ensure the equal rights of men and women in the Islamic Republic.
The Tehran authorities have recently been lifting restrictions on women's activities, Asahi added. Today, there are actually 20 women working at the Justice Ministry, "and in future that number will increase."
"The authorities of the Islamic Republic are increasing the number of women in official positions throughout the country," the Japanese report, as quoted by Iran daily, said.
Question: Does that mean there are more than twenty?
Answer: "Recently the authorities even appointed a woman as mayor of a Tehran district." [Iran daily 12/2]
The French News Agency, AFP, sees things slightly differently. Its reporter in Tehran wrote recently that he had personally witnessed the LEF arrest ten women because they were violating the "Islamic" dress code. Two of the arresting officers, operating in Vanak square, were themselves women and sported full chadors, AFP reported. Since then, a new wave of arrests of women for dress-code violations has been reported.
Over the past two years, the Islamic Republic has encouraged Iranian women to wear black chadors , instead of colored scarves, as the most appropriate form of Islamic veil. [Iran daily 12/2, quoting AFP]
Government bureaucrats in Iran have been complaining that they simply can't make ends meet on that government paycheck whereas those in the private sector fare better.
Iran daily recently compared the average salary of a managing director in the private sector (Rls 6,000,000 per month) to that of an ordinary government worker, who earns only Rls 300,000 to Rls. 400,000 per month. At the official exchange rate, Rls 300,000 is less than $100. [Iran 12/2]
As if anticipating the criticism, Jomhouri-e Eslami reported the same day that government salaries would soon be "repaired." [12/2]
The Director General for Political Affairs at the Interior Ministry, Mr. Som-Abadi, recently told a group of security and political officials that the Ministry has chartered the activities of 145 political groups and associations.
Speaking in Bandar Abbas at a meeting of officials from governors general offices around the country, Mr. Som-Abadi said that 85 of the groups were scientific and "specialized" associations, whereas 35 were purely political groups, and 25 were religious societies and associations. [Iran daily 12/1]
The Interior Ministry has frequently aired statistics such as these, but upon closer scrutiny most of the groups turn out to be sporting associations, religious or scientific groups, which do not engage in political activity.
The only groups officially allowed to engage in political debate are the two clerical societies of Tehran (the Jameh-e Rouhaniat and the Majma-e Rouhanioun), the Fedayan-e Islam (which used to be run by "hanging judge" Ayatollah Khalkhali), the Islamic Coalition Society (close to the Resalati faction), and the Mujahidin of the Islamic Revolution, a leftist-Islamic group. In addition, two students groups are active,: the Islamic Union of Iranian Universities, and the Islamic Association of Islamic Universities.
Harassment against Iranian writers and journalists appears to be on the rise. According to a report from the opposition Iran Nation's Party in Tehran, the owner and several writers of a monthly magazine in Tehran have been threatened following the publication of a critical article. The author of the article, Abolghasem Golbaf, is also the owner of the magazine, Gozaresh. Other writers at Gozaresh were also threatened. They were identified by the INP as Mohammad Heydari, Ms. Alaleh Eimani Far, Jahangir Balouch, and Mehdi Jamshid Nia. [INP statement 11/29]
A listener calling in to 24-hour radio in Los Angeles on November 28, said that her brother, a former journalist with Kayhan, went missing in Tehran one week earlier. The journalist, Koroush Babaii, had called his family in Los Angeles from Tehran saying he was about to leave on a foreign trip. Since then, they have heard no more from him and have been unable to contact him. His sister said the family "feared he is dead." [Radio Sedaye Iran 11/28]
The Islamic Students Society has called on President Hashemi Rafsanjani to ensure that journalists and writers are not imprisoned or punished for their ideas, Iran daily reported Sunday. They also asked him to guarantee free speech and free elections before leaving office next year.
"Mr. President, before the end of your term make arrangements so that the freedom and security of the press will be guaranteed," the newspaper quoted a statement as saying. "Provide guarantees so that newspapers aren't closed down and telephone lines are not tapped."
The daily said the group hoped that writers would be allowed to work freely without having to live in exile or fear persecution at home. [Iran 12/1]
Earlier this year, the Islamic Students Society's own newspaper was temporarily banned by authorities for criticism of officials, the Associated press reported from Tehran. [12/1]
The Associated Press report continued:
"Protests and other signs of public discontent have risen as more and more Iranians feel that the ruling clergy has feathered its own nest while doing little to improve the lot of most citizens. More than half of the country's 60 million people live in poverty.
"A survey in May by Freedom House, a New York-based group that monitors political rights and civil liberties, rated Iran as among the 20 countries with the worst record of press abuses. The organization said those countries have virtually no press freedom and the government maintains a high level of control over the news media, including physical threats against journalists. [AP, 12/1]
Minister of Information and Security Ali Fallahian is on the hot seat. Indicted by a Berlin court for having allegedly ordered the slaying of Kurdish leader Sadegh Sharafkindi in September 1992 and wanted by Interpol, it is Fallahian's head that is on the block in the current spat between Tehran and Bonn.
On Monday, Dec. 2, Fallahian addressed the issue in a speech before students at Tehran's Defense University. The international attention accorded to the Mykonos case "reveals that the Americans and the Europeans have decided to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said. ("L'Etat, c'est moi!).
Then he suggested that the German government had recently informed the Islamic Republic through a secret backchannel that it would delay the final verdict of the Berlin court trying Sharafkindi's assassins, if Tehran would release Israeli aviator Ron Arad. [Kayhan 12/2]
That last statement brought angry retorts - first from Bonn, and later from Tehran.
Radio Israel reported the next day that a German government spokesman strongly denied that Germany had made any offer of trading the Mykonos verdict for Ron Arad. The German government would not in any way delay the Berlin court proceedings, the German spokesman said. [Radio Israel 12/3]
Salam daily, which is close to former MOIS boss Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammad Reyshari and Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, said they had received a call from MOIS complaining that Kayhan "has not printed the entire statement" by Fallahian, and that they had asked Kayhan to correct his statement in Tuesday's evening edition. [Salam 12/3]
Kayhan obliged, attributing this additional comment to Fallahian: "The government of the Islamic Republic of IRAN from the early days of Ron Arad's disappearance had stated that it has no information or relation regarding his case" [Kayhan 12/3]
Salam also published an angry comment by one reader wonder "what Iran received in exchange" for having release three German citizens who had been imprisoned in Iran on spying charges. {Salam 12/3]
A pro-government paper, Kar va Kar-e Gar (which is owned by the Jomhouri-e Eslami group) quoted Abdollah Mazandarani, the head of the Organization for Victims of Chemical Weapons in Iran, as saying that Tehran had documents showing that 84 German firms had supplied chemical weapons production gear and technology to Iraq used during the Iran-Iraq war.
"Germany cannot hide its role in supporting the Iraqi industrial potential to produce chemical agents and weapons which were used by Iraqi armed forces during the imposed war against Iranian soldiers and civilians," he said. [12/3]
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i and a key backer of Ansar-e Hezbollah, criticized German prosecutors last Friday for bringing terrorism charges against Iranian leaders and warned them to remember Salman Rushdie, the author Tehran ordered killed for insulting Islam.
"You saw what fate befell Salman Rushdie after his insults and impudence," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in a sermon at Tehran University broadcast on Iranian radio. Jannati said German prosecutors did not appear to understand the consequences of "offending the sacred authorities" of an Islamic society, and implied that they would be hounded by assassination threats, just as Rushdie has been. [Tehran Radio 11/29]
The opposition Constitutionalists Movement of Iran has called on the German government to "stop coddling" the Islamic Republic, following the overwhelming evidence presented in a German court of involvement of high-ranking IRI officials in the 1992 killing of Kurdish leaders in Berlin.
"We urge German leaders to stop supporting the Islamic Republic with trade and loans. We believe that, as a leading democracy, Germany can have an important role in supporting the movement for democracy and human rights in Iran."
The CMI joined calls by other democratic opposition groups, in reminding the German government that "A democratic Iran will restore the good relations that Iran enjoyed with other civilized countries before the Islamic Republic..." [CMI statement 12/1]