The British newspaper The Guardian, likes to present itself as the voice of liberalism. But on October 27 it published an editorial praising St Andrews University for giving ex-Iranian President, Khatami, an honorary degree, conveniently ignoring the brutal crimes this man was responsible for when he was in office. The Iranian Marxists sent The Guardian this letter.
Dear Sir,
Your leader, entitled "In praise of ... the University of St Andrews" (27 October), once again showed the absurd lengths that liberals in the West are prepared to go to in their futile attempt to find someone 'moderate' within the Iranian regime with whom they can engage and do business with. This approach led to two fundamental errors in this piece:
1- You deliberately downplayed the level of repression while Khatami was 'President': when you referred to his eight years as 'President' you somehow overlooked all the people who were executed. According to Amnesty International reports the following numbers of executions took place:
In 1997, 143 executions;
1998, "scores ... were reportedly executed, including at least one prisoner of conscience" (AI does not have precise figures for this year);
1999, 165;
2000, 75;
2001, 139;
2002, 113;
2003, 108 (inc. four stonings);
2004, 159 (inc. flogging to death);
and in 2005, 94 executions (inc. eight who were under 18 when committing the "offence"). In addition to these there were many cases of flogging (e.g., 285 in 2001), amputations (e.g., 11 in 2003) and other medieval forms of punishment. Mr Khatami should be held - at least partially - responsible for the executions and torture from August 1997-August 2005.
2- You took his 'moderate' comments at face value and ignored his previous political career: during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) Khatami held various positions, including Deputy and Head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and Chairman of the War Propaganda Headquarters. At the height of the repression during the war, in 1982-1986, and then again immediately afterwards in the 1989-May 1992, when tens of thousands of political prisoners were executed, Khatami was Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance - i. e., propaganda and censorship. The Iranian newspapers of this period are full of his pronouncements on Salman Rushdie, American culture and civilisation, music and video tapes, the role of women in society, and so on. Since you may find these difficult to trace and verify I will quote a few lines from the New York Times: "An Iranian official was quoted today as saying that the death sentence against the British author Salman Rushdie was still valid and irrevocable.
"The official, Mohammad Khatami, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, was interviewed by the Islamic Republic News Agency on Teheran radio.
"The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini "passed Islam's sentence against Salman Rushdie, and [...] under no circumstances can this be revoked," he was quoted as saying. [...]
"Mr. Khatami's statement was apparently a jab at President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mr. Rafsanjani's success in playing down Ayatollah Khomeini's religious edict led to the restoration of ties between Teheran and London in September, a year and half after being broken over the Rushdie affair." (New York Times, 10 December 1990)
It is clear that Khatami was not only defending the fatwa but doing so at a time when Rafsanjani - who for many years was looked upon as a 'moderate' by many in the West - was trying to downplay it! He was a 'hardliner' at the time.
Khatami also played an important role in setting up suicide squads with the aim of assassinating the regime's enemies outside Iran. The Times reports on two documents obtained by an Iranian opposition group relating to these squads: "Ayatollah (sic) Khatami said he and Mirhashem first took their plans for the suicide squads to Ayatollah Khomeini on May 14 and gained his approval immediately. "Whatever is necessary to destroy them must he done," Ayatollah Khomeini is reported to have said." (The Times, 16 January 1985)
These are just two examples that can be found in English. The important question here is this: how are such errors possible? I believe that these stem from your highly flawed analysis of the Iranian regime. In your haste to find a 'moderate' person within the Iranian regime, a Gorbachev-like figure, that you can relate to and work with before the neo-conservatives launch a new war; you and people like Sir Menzies Campbell (who will confer the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws on Khatami) refrain from looking into the roots of this regime (and its personnel) and assessing whether this system has any room for 'reform' or 'moderate' individuals.
This therefore led you to build up illusions about the 'reformers' and made you unable to respond appropriately to developments in Iranian society (and it also almost cost Geneive Abdo, your Tehran correspondent, her freedom in 2001). Then after seeing that eight years of rhetoric about "reforms" and "civil society" did not bring any fundamental changes, but that Iran seems to have gone full circle back to "Death to America" slogans, anti-Semitic rants and so on, you become dismayed at the prospects of change in Iran and the whole region (as with Mr Freedland in December 2005).
Yours sincerely
Morad Shirin
Iranian Revolutionary Socialists' League,
29 October 2006
Iranian Revolutionary Socialists' League
Liga Socialista Revolucionaria Iraní
http://www.pishtaaz.com/kargar/english.htm
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