Statement by a group of students regarding the current political conditions in Iran
Said Habibi
(member of Central Council of Office of Consolidation
Yashar Ghajar
(Chair of Islamic Society University of Amir Kabir)
Majid Ashraf
Nejad (Chair of Islamic Society University of Rejai’)
Morteza
Eslahchi (Chair of Islamic Society, University of Allameh Tabatabai)
Behruz
Karimi-Zadeh (Student activist and Editor of Khak Magazine)
Abed
Tavancheh (Member of Central Council of Islamic Society University of Amir Kabir)
In the name of
humanity, justice and truth
People of Iran
Humans have a right to freedom of expression and belief, to criticise their society and to directly intervene in any process that relates to their fate. This is a right derived from the historic movement of humanity and the relations resulting from their entry into a structure called society.
Rulers have always tried to dilute, and where possible remove, the historic and social rights of the ruled unaware that their inhibiting force is frail and destructible when confronted by the huge material force of history and society.
People of Iran;
A serious and deadly danger is step by step casting its shadow on our forever-under-despotic rule land. The danger of war, danger of sanctions, danger of the death of a large number of the people of our country, the danger of hunger, shortage of medicines, newborn and children dying, the danger of thousands and thousands of people who under the false propaganda of two belligerents facing one another do not really know for what reason they are being sacrificed to a new war. The land of Iran is about to be trampled under the boots of soldiers who are defending the rights warmongers inside and warmongers outside the country. Its earth is about to be turned upside down under thousands of thousands of bombs and rockets.
Witnessing deadlines and countdowns in the new international condition, the domestic press is either, as in the past, (voluntarily or under duress) eulogising the regime, or through its silence are impatiently awaiting the external attack. Political parties within the country, inside and outside government, have chosen silence and in their entirety have swallowed their tongue, fearful of a brazen power. Today conditions in Iran are such that we find ourselves forced to speak out, on issues beyond our remit, which many others for a long time have wished to express.
Thirty three years ago, with the payment of the first instalment, the process of building the Bushehr nuclear reactor began. Now 21 years have elapsed since the start of the secret, non-transparent and covert activities of the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the road to acquiring nuclear technology, which they claim is peaceful, and the global society fears might lead to nuclear bombs.
In the entire 8 years of the ruinous Iran-Iraq war, while day-to-day living was the serious pre-occupation of the people of Iran, the government budget was directed to procuring weapons of war and other military expenditures while the people had to endure a variety of limitations and shortages. And later, at a time when the pressures resulting from putting into effect the IMF programmes [1] had destroyed all the comfort, welfare and financial and economic security of the people of Iran, a time when the rentiers and capitalists nurtured by the regime were getting fatter, and the poor more and more destitute, tens of billions of the capital of the people of this country were diverted to the nuclear ambitions of a decision-making minority without appearing in any official budget and without any supervision from the people. This enormous capital, which undoubtedly was at the expense of the living standard of hundreds of thousands of people in our country was spent on huge political and international bribes, purchase of industrial machinery, getting hold of various mysterious items through the illegal nuclear smuggling networks, paying the living costs and monthly wages of thousands of foreign specialists and workers, and underwriting the huge cost of protecting the nuclear installations and the military issues rising from it. Then all of a sudden in a political and propaganda ruse an issue that the people of Iran were in no way privy to the “decision making process” or even of its “existence”, and which had been organised in secret and at the costs of tens of billions of dollars from the development, welfare and education budget of the country is being transformed into a “national questions” and “an indisputable right”!
The government-run press monopolies try with all their might to present nuclear energy as such a unique development that without it the future of the country is bleak, while at the same time the entire world is united in preventing Iran from acquiring it. Their brazenness is such that we are asked to forget that the people of Iran, that is the very people who financed these installations, were the last to be told. The rulers of the Islamic Republic present themselves as the servants and representatives of the Iranian people, but in practice treat the people as strangers. Issues such as this, and the consequent notoriety, always emerge from abroad. The Iranian people hear what developments have taken place in their land and with their money either through the espionage services of foreign powers, the international press or international organisations and institutions. In this particular case only when outsiders and non-Iranians learnt of the secret nuclear activities of Iran, that our rulers reluctantly decided to reveal a corner of these activities. And that only and solely because they needed to make it into a “national” question.
At present, as before, in the absence of free independent and non-governmental press, the people of Iran are being bombarded by propaganda through governmental television, radio, newspapers, mosques, and pulpits without knowing “why” and “for whom” they are being driven as victims down a hugely hazardous path. Political activist have abdicated their social and collective responsibilities faced with the intimidatory setting created by the commanders of the Guard [2] and security forces. They had been warned in advance that “they would cut off the tongue of those who intend to criticise the nuclear policies of the government”. People are left without news and confused.
The Iranian regime has adjusted its budget based on a $38/barrl oil prices [3] and in order to get its hands on immediate sources of income, has accepted an inflation of greater than 34%. Such decisions can take the country into a prolonged and severe economic crisis. The government, by changing its foreign reserves into the currency of the few so-called friendly countries, and by preparing a totally military budget has welcomed war and sanctions. Those officials making decisions on security and nuclear issues openly talk of North Korean regime and nuclear tactics as a model.
Things have come to such a pass that representatives of that enemy which for over 28 years the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran blamed for all their problems, and shouted death to America from every official tribune for years, and anyone who thought differently or dissented politically was accused of being in the pay of that enemy, is now sitting opposite representatives of the Islamic Republic in negotiation and exchanging diplomatic smiles. As if self-made taboos and forbidden limits are being broken by their own priests.
Those in power and negotiating partners are conducting a secret and murky negotiation over the interests, life and future of 70 million Iranians. In our view such negotiations are illegal in the absence of real representatives of the people and a negotiating partner with authority and acceptable international credentials in human and global issues.
“Nuclear energy is our undeniable right”
This is a slogan the regime is desperate to instil into society. The rulers have forgotten, or pretend to forget, that even before nuclear energy becomes our undeniable right, these people have more basic and more important undeniable rights, all of which are being denied them. The right to freedom of belief and expression; the right to directly and fundamentally intervene in determining their own fate; unequivocal equal legal and human rights of men and women in the family and in society; the right to education and free and available heath care provided by the state; the equal social rights of all whatever their ethnicity, gender or belief; the right to form non-government associations and trade unions and many others. Also the right to be kept informed and to supervise government projects such as nuclear energy that are being carried out with their money. Who will determine the priorities for realizing these rights? The people or the rulers? Indeed does such a government that allows itself to coercively decide the priorities, actually believe in, or is committed to implementing the rights outlined above?
We pose another question here. Of the various technological needs of the country today which is more important: nuclear energy or to take an example self sufficiency in petrol production, the improvement and renovation of worn out industries such as oil and textiles; new methods of town planning and building in a earthquake-prone country such as ours; new methods for manufacturing machinery and methods for drilling in our mountainous country rich in minerals; methodology for making and repairing aircraft in a country whose aircraft industry every once in a while records a tragic accident on its books and tens and hundreds of other issues?
Does a country which is importing its needles and cloth from abroad have no other activity worth investing which has priority over the nuclear industries? What was the logic of those who chose nuclear technology at such exorbitant and unconventional costs?
Advanced industrial countries, despite not having any technical, economic or political obstacles in expanding nuclear reactors steer clear of it, and while seriously looking for new, cleaner, energy sources, use fossil fuels in most of their electricity plants. The insoluble environmental and economic problems associated with disposal and safeguarding of nuclear waste, with a potentially lethal shelf life of thousands of years, and the real dangers facing nature and mankind from the spread of these products, and also the widespread opposition by people, green parties and environmentalists to the spread of these harmful technologies has meant that nuclear energy has been removed from the long term development programmes of those countries who possess these technologies, and unlike America, North Korea and Israel are not dominated by military objectives. What excuse do they have for these efforts, and the insistence for unlimited spread of this industry in Iran? If the issue is really medical and other research, which scientific experts claim, then a small reactor with limited investment would be enough. The rulers of the Islamic Republic must speak openly and unambiguously with the people of Iran and the world for the issues to become clear.
The current nuclear dispute, however, has roots in other more fundamental and hidden reasons. Global capitalism which in the 70s planned to oppose the Soviet block by constructing a green belt, encouraged “political Islam” in the fertile terrain of the Middle East and contrived to divert and change the course of such popular movements as the revolution of 1979 in Iran. But the broad and extensive support for political Islam coincided with the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Suddenly political Islam lost its previous raison d’etre and became an obstacle to the system of global rule.
From the vantage point of global capitalism today, political Islam has lost its rationale in the region. Now that the brief period of the success of the capitalist system is past and major economic recession has started in the countries of the metropol, and under the shadow of the re-militarization of global capitalism in the shape of the coming to power of George Bush in the United States, and the necessity of opening up new consumer markets, and extensive energy resources, the American government, representing the largest collection of finance capital, is bent on changing the political map of the Middle East. In the case of Iran a formidable battle is looming. On the one side is the Islamic Republic aiming to preserve itself inside the country and impose itself to the global order. On the other side stands America aspiring to impose an ordinary capitalist state on Iran, acceptable to “capital”. The share of the people is to pay the costs of this battle of conflicting interests. The different claims of either side of this conflict over the nuclear issue in Iran are merely tools to begin this physical, and final, conflict. The battle is over the material interests of two groups owning capital, one to maintain its advantages and the other to extend them.
This capitalist military campaign however needs some aspects of demagoguery. Therefore America, which possesses the blackest human rights record among the world’s nations, has for some time been sending troops to the four corners of the world under the flags of “democracy” and “human rights”. In each country, after tens of thousands of innocent humans have died in the war it has started, having established a satellite state and plundered the national wealth of the country, it goes on to declare that it will not remove its troops for years in order to protect the sapling of freedom, human rights and democracy it had planted.
Two violators of human rights go to mutual war for survival and economic interest and to divert public opinion at home from the state of affairs. One gives its efforts the colour and smell of nationalism and the divine and the second raises the flag of freedom, human rights and global defence.
A government which by intervention and support for the massacre of thousands and thousands of freedom-loving humans in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the hands of such lackeys as Ngo Dinh Diem, Battista, Adoula, Pinochet, Somoza, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Saddam and tens of other large and small lackeys and stooge of imperialism has been busy massacring freedom and snuff out human rights on earth. America is the accountant for the greatest mountains of corps of innocent people in history, an country which was the first and only user of nuclear weapons against defenceless people in the world. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nakazaki is a crime that will forever pose a question mark on America’s claims to support freedom and human rights. America attacks Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan to spread democracy and to press for human rights with the brand of shame of the most savage massacres of women, children and people by its army in Vietnam still fresh on its face.
Murder, plunder, rape, food and medicine shortage, hunger, infanticide, the trampling of the most elementary human rights on the excuse of emergency conditions of war, a war the Americans brought on the country, is the gauge to judge US claims.
Kidnapping and assassination of opponents in various countries; the building and multiplying of secret prisons where torture is rife; interference and overthrow of independent popular governments that opposed American plans such as the lawful, democratic and popular governments of Lumumba in Congo, Allende in Chile etc;. support for the genocide of the Israeli army in Palestine; support for regimes that trample human rights but have close commercial and political ties with America such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and in Iran which according to Madeleine Albright Clinton’s secretary of state the US planned and bankrolled the black coup d’etat of 1953 [4] and helped create the post coup atmosphere of tyranny and repression are mere glimpses of the activities of America in “establishing human rights and spreading democracy” in the world.
We warn the people of Iran, social and political activists, student, labour, women and … activists that our country is now entering a downward slope of a whirlpool of war and violence. The future possibilities, depending on the response and policies of social forces, would be within the following possibilities:
1. Attack from outside
The experience of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that an outside attack on a country, in the first place, causes huge loss of life and the massacre of defenceless people, and in later stages the destruction of the entire developmental and economic infrastructure, and also the reign of an atmosphere of insecurity, violence, terror, kidnapping, murder, plunder, and rape and in deeper stages the radical collapse of social activity. For a long time arid military law will supersede democratic laws, and force and coercion will replace logic. Politics and the economy will be undisputedly a dependency of the rulers of America for a long period.
2. Economic sanctions
History shows that the victims of political and economic sanctions are not governments but the people. Under sanctions government determination to totally repress and dry up any protest reaches its zenith. Instead of freedom people receive hunger, illness and pain as a gift. The more the external pressure the greater the pressure of the rulers on its people. All the veils of shame will be torn asunder. Bayonets rather than tongues speak to the people and human relations will be torn apart.
3. Forced agreement
It is clear and obvious to us that the interests and future neither of these material systems will allow for a total agreement. The issues are the consumer market, natural resources, cheap human resources, and the political existence of two conflicting concepts. There will be secret and murky negotiations. Because the real representatives of the people are absent, it can result in nothing but the squandering of the entire wealth of the Iranian people at the expense of the survival of a way of thought. Such negotiations are therefore basically and fundamentally illegal and unacceptable.
The political space of Iranian society is currently static and in darkness. This atmosphere is the result of ignorance, secrecy and the closed breathing space of the mass media, and more importantly the inactivity and irresponsibility of the so-called intellectuals, activists and political parties.
The majority of Iranian intellectuals, because their thinking has not bubbled up from the lower layers of society, instead of understanding the concerns of their society, inject the ideas of intellectuals from other cultures from the top downwards. They are incapable of speaking in the language of their people. They are therefore unable to move the mass of the people with lucid ideas and to give shape to positive developments in society. They, in their own way, they are responsible for the ignorance and inactivity of society.
The internal political parties and groups, in the absence of political and social freedoms and truly popular parties in Iran, and because of government intimidation or trifling interests which arises from opportunism, have misused their tribunes and enormous resources to impose inactivity on themselves and on society. They must understand that the result of inactivity and silence is the acceptance of one of the possibilities outlined above.
In the end we feel the need to make the following observations:
1. This is not the quarrel of the Iranian people but a clash to decide the rulership on Iran. Therefore the people must not become sacrificial soldiers for either side. People should only enter the arena when the war is over their interests and deals.
2. Nuclear energy is only a weapon and excuse for a battle of interests. Therefore, we not only ask for a stop to the nuclear activities in Iran, but demand the non-nuclearisation of the world and the disappearance of all weapons of mass destruction in all countries including America, Russia, China, Israel … We defend research to find all forms of healthy energy and the use of clean fuels with the least ecological pollution as a substitute to nuclear technologies.
3. Any attack or sanctions is in open conflict with the short and long term interests of the people of Iran and our people oppose anyone who is planning such aggressions. In this we specifically declare our hatred and opposition to the interference and the unilateral and self-centred role of America.
4. The solution to the crises facing Iranian society is only possible under the umbrella of a democratic and popular rule. A government in which the ruled, in a significant and real way, have the ability to impose their collective will on the rulers. The source of such a development can under no circumstances be from outside. An authentic transformation is not something that can be injected from above or outside into society. A healthy and authentic transformation can be on the basis of the movement of the society itself and hence is realisable from inside and from below upwards. If there is to be a model, then this model is not from foreign government or intellectuals, but by the spontaneous and conscious struggle of the peoples of other countries, movements such as the revolt of the students, youth and workers of France.
The people of all countries deserve a better and more beautiful world than the crisis-ridden world of today. We must struggle for this better world and move because a people who do not do act for their own welfare, others will decide for them.
Said Habibi (member of
Central Council of Office of Consolidation
Yashar Ghajar (Chair of
Islamic Society University of Amir Kabir)
Majid Ashraf Nejad
(Chair of Islamic Society University of Rejai’)
Morteza Eslahchi (Chair
of Islamic Society, University of Allameh Tabatabai)
Behruz Karimi-Zadeh
(Student activist and Editor of Khak Magazine)
Abed Tavancheh (Member
of Central Council of Islamic Society University of Amir Kabir)
Addentum
Yashar
Ghajar and Abed Tavancheh were arrested in May 2006
http://www.fidh.org/article.php3?id_article=3395
http://roozonline.com/english/015901.shtml
Fig 1. Poster of campaign
demanding the unconditional release of Yashar Ghajar and Abed Tavancheh
Please contact your support to:
abed_yashar@yahoo.com
Footnote – (translator)
1. Meaning the post Iran-Iraq war period
2. Meaning Revolutionary Guard Corps
3. The government budget was presented before the more recent further hike in prices.
4. CIA-organised coup against the elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh. See
.