|
|
|
Tel: (301) 946-2918. Fax: (301) 942-5341
Copyright © 1994-98, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty began its Farsi-language broadcasts to Iran on October 31, and already has become a champion of Iranian president Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammad Khatami.
The radio sends out a bi-weekly fax report in English, Iran Report, reflecting its Farsi-language broadcasts. The second issue, dated November 23, contains several items indicating a strong pro-Khatami bias, as well as the radio's "soft-line" toward the Tehran regime.
In one article, noting the formation of a new, pro-Khatami party, the radio commented that this was "certainly a sign of political development and maturity," that would lead to "political institutions reflecting Iran's multi-hued spectrum of political, social, and religious opinion." The article made no comment on the spate of newspaper closures, arrests of journalists, or the public assaults on pro-Western members of Khatami's cabinet and on opponents of secular rule that have become widespread under Khatami's rule.
A separate article on the death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie was even more astonishing. In a back and forth discussion of the Rushdie fatwa, quoting a debate in rival Tehran newspapers as to whether Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa was hand-written or typed, signed or sealed, the radio concluded matter-of-factly: "As these accounts demonstrate, the Rushdie issue is still very sensitive for Iranians... But for many devout Iranian Muslims, the issue is not one of politics, it is one of faith. According to different newspapers, in the town of Bahar, a father offered his vineyard as additional bounty [to Rushdie's future killers]; residents of Kiyapay village offered land, dwellings, and carpets as additional bounty; and students in a Qom seminary offered a month's allowance as additional reward."
Our opinion: While that factual account is significant and deserves to be reported, it is astonishing that in a U.S-government sponsored radio, aimed at bringing a different voice to Iranians living inside Iran, there was not a single mention of the international reaction to the Rushdie fatwa, which has been universally condemned and which cost Iran many years of diplomatic isolation from its best allies in Western Europe. Instead, the radio's account gives the impression that the Rushdie fatwa is a "matter of faith" and therefore something acceptable, to be honored, and at the very least understood. This is precisely the message the Iranian government has tried repeatedly and without success to send to the West. It should not be the message the West sends back to Iran.