Reform-Minded Journalists In Iran Carry On Liberalization Campaign From Behind Bars
Afshin Molavi: 2/2/01

Evin prison, the sprawling complex nestled at the foothills of the quiet, brown Zagros mountains in north Tehran, recently admitted a group of high-profile inmates. The inmates - leading reformist journalists and pro-democracy activists -- have turned the prison into a critical base for Iran's faltering reform movement.

One jail cell, measuring 12 square meters, houses four of the most popular (and in the eyes of Iran's conservatives, most dangerous) reformist journalists. Akbar Ganji, the popular investigative journalist, is there. As is Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, the soft-spoken, Islamist pro-democracy editor and Latif Safari, the chest-thumping publisher of several shut-down reformist newspapers. Right next door is another bold pro-democracy journalist, Emadeddin Baghi.

Incarceration has not silenced these journalists completely. In a recent statement made to the Reuters news agency and smuggled out of the cell, Akbar Ganji predicted "an explosion" if Iran's conservatives refuse to listen to the voices of the people, who have displayed their desire for change.

In the statement, Ganji said: "Slowly and step by step, the fascist interpretation of religion will lead to terrorist acts and other crimes which take place for the sole aim of shedding blood and demanding bloodshed in revenge. Future events will act as a detonator for an explosion."

[In a related development, Iranian officials subsequently accused the American reporters who conducted the interview with Ganji - Geneive Abdo, a correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, and Jonathan Lyons, the Reuters bureau chief in Tehran - of illegally interviewing a political prisoner. Abdo and Lyons, who deny violating the law, fled Iran on February 4 as a precaution against possible prosecution.]

Latif Safari, the jailed publisher, told Reuters: "My friends and I are prisoners of conscience cum political prisoners… in reality we are the hostages of our opponents, who have put us in prison because of their control of the judicial apparatus."

Iran's conservatives have used their control of the judiciary to imprison reformist leaders, in particular journalists. In summary trials, the journalists have been given heavy sentences for crimes such as "anti-Islamic propaganda," "activities against national security," and "participation in a conference aimed at undermining the Islamic Republic."

The journalist jailings are part of a wide-ranging crackdown that began last April on Iran's reformist movement. Conservative officials, who still control the key levers of power in Iran's diffuse political structure, have shut down pro-democracy newspapers, jailed journalists and pro-democracy student activists, forced the resignation of a reformist minister, and clipped the wings of the reformist-dominated parliament.

According to news reports, Iranian conservatives increased the pressure on reformists, ordering the arrest on Sunday of Hossein Loqmanian, a member of Iran’s 290-seat parliament. Loqmanian was taken into custody, despite the constitutional provision of immunity to MPs.

President Mohammad Khatami, who was elected in 1997 in a landslide, has pushed for political and social liberalization. But of late, he has admitted publicly his inability to stop the conservative assault on his reforms, and the judicial attacks on leading reformist figures, many of whom are now confined behind the barbed wire of Evin Prison. Khatami's inability to prevent the jailing of journalists who championed his cause and activists who took to the streets to support him has tarnished the once bright image. As such, Iranians who once looked to Khatami to lead the reform movement are turning their gaze toward Evin Prison and the jailed journalists and activists.

There are plenty of them to look to. Behind bars are a who's-who of leading reformists: student leader Ali Afshahri, nationalist journalist Ezatollah Sahabi, clerical dissident Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, journalist Ali Afsahi and a host of students still in jail for taking part in pro-democracy protests nearly two years ago. The jailings, the crackdown, and President Khatami's inability to safeguard reforms has sparked talk among student activists of creating a reform movement separate from the embattled president. As one student put it: "we appreciate what Mr. Khatami did, but he may have gone as far as he is able to do. We need to take over from here."

Other students interviewed at Tehran University said that they will still need leadership from above to guide them. They pointed to journalist Akbar Ganji as the sort of leader they felt they needed. Ganji has been, by far, the most courageously defiant among Iran's reformists. In scathing newspaper reports and a best-selling book, Ganji implicated a cadre of senior conservative clerics in the killings of up to 80 dissidents and writers since the late 1980's. In an interview shortly before his jailing, he said: "The conservative faction have promised us heaven but they have created hell on earth. If they continue to attack reformists, they will face the wrath of the people."

During his trial, Ganji boldly denounced the court as illegitimate and publicly named the names of several of the implicated clerics he had previously withheld in his book. Last week, Iran's reformist-dominated Parliament sent a letter of condemnation to the conservative judiciary signed by more than 150 deputies criticizing the crackdown. In the letter addressed to Judiciary chief Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the signatories wrote: "Your collaborators at the heart of the judicial system have spread mistrust among the population by their illegal actions."

The letter is unlikely to spur a review or any sort of change. Iran's reformist-dominated Parliament, like other democratic institutions in Iran, must operate in an environment with competing authoritarian institutions. Parliamentary laws can be overturned by an unaccountable authoritarian body known as the Guardians Council. An attempt to create a free press law was
overturned by this council. The judiciary largely ignores Parliamentary protests. As a result, Parliamentary deputies, who came to power on a vast wave of support for reform one year ago, have found themselves reduced to writing hollow letters and angry petitions.

Meanwhile, in Evin Prison, the four jailed journalists hope their words and feelings are not lost on the Iranian public. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, the Islamist intellectual and pro-democracy journalist told an associate: "The reformist spirit will not die in Iran as long as the people do not despair and continue fighting for their civil rights. We are in jail but there are millions still out there who want the same things we want."

Editor's Note: Afshin Molavi is a journalist based in Tehran, Iran. His work has appeared in the Washington Post.

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Posted February 2, 2001 © Eurasianet
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