Iran: the Republic of Iblis, the Republic of Death

It’s over a year now since I first wrote about Sakineh Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery (Evil Law – 30 August, 2010). She’s still in prison though it seems unlikely that the sentence will ever be carried out, insofar as it’s possible to predict the actions of the vile clerical-fascist Iranian regime. The truth is that it has been sorely embarrassed by the international reaction to this barbarism, embarrassment that opens the door to another story about injustice and oppression.

It’s a universal principle of justice that people accused of crimes have the right to an effective defence, and I place the stress here on effective as opposed to some tame lawyer, who acts as an adjutant to the prosecution. Ashtiani’s lawyers had the courage to defend her to the best of their abilities, the reward for which has been torture and exile. Now the lawyer defending one of her lawyers has been forced to flee for his life.

Safe in an unnamed location in Turkey, Naghi Mahmoudi recently told the Times of the plight of his client, Javid Houtan Kian, formerly the junior barrister on Ashtiani’s defence team. The details are quite chilling. Even if Kian was released today, his lawyer said, “he would never be able to return to normal life because he’s suffered so much physical and mental torture.”

Although Mahmoudi agreed to represent Kian at the beginning of the year, it took several months of pleading before he was allowed to visit his client, being held in the prison at Tabriz. His reaction on seeing him was one of shock: Kain’s teeth had been smashed, his nose broken and his hands and feet showing signs of cigarette burns.

During the three hours the two were allowed together, always in the presence of a guard, Kian compiled a three-page description of the treatment he had received. He was beaten by up to twenty men at a time, as well as being doused in water and left in the freezing courtyard on winter nights. It’s not just his hands and feet that been burnt with cigarettes but also his genitalia.

No sooner had the interview concluded, with Kian pleading that Mahmoudi tell the world of his plight, than the transcript was confiscated by the prison governor, saying that it was all lies. The lawyer was also banned from returning to the prison, though he subsequently learned from others that his client’s condition had deteriorated still further.

Ever fearful for his own safety, and living under constant petty harassment, Mahmoudi decided he had to leave when he received a demand that he present himself at Tabriz, not even pausing to say goodbye to his mother. From his Turkish refuge he said “Lawyers have to defend people however dangerous the situation.” The danger reaches a unique level when the government abuses them merely for doing their job – “It’s a terrible and frightening regime. It doesn’t believe in the law or anything. The only thing they think about is keeping power.”

There is no law in Iran, there is no justice; there is no God, rather ironic when one considers that this is a country that conceitedly refers to itself as an ‘Islamic Republic’. It’s nothing of the kind; it’s the Republic of Iblis, the Republic of Death.

Evil Law

I have no doubt at all that the present Iranian regime is perfectly vile. They trade in concepts of faith and religion that are quite beyond my comprehension. Just imagine if England was overtaken by some fundamentalist Christian cult that wanted to return to the practices of the Middle Ages; people who wanted to restore such legislation as De heretico comburendo, allowing for the burning of heretics. Perhaps someone would like to put this suggestion to the present muddle-headed Archbishop of Canterbury, since he has already expressed his enthusiasm for Sharia Law.

I cannot claim to have any deep knowledge of this barbarous procedure, this nauseating medievalism, but it is under Sharia Law that Sakineh Ashtiani has been condemned to death for her supposed adultery, condemned to death by stoning. The fact that she was already been subject to ninety-nine lashes, and has been in prison for five years awaiting this ultimate fate, defies even expressions like ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’

As I mentioned in a previous blog, stoning is not a quick death; it’s not meant to be. Instead medium sized rocks are chosen to prolong the suffering. Men so sentenced are buried to their waists, and if they are able to get out there is no further punishment. Women, in contrast, are buried almost up to their necks, just in case their breasts show, you understand, which would be outrageous, a clear offence to simple decency. Their chances of escaping are therefore non-existent, as they are effectively tortured to death.

This is carried out in the name of God, in the name of religion. What kind of people are they, I have to ask, who can believe in a God like this, in a law like this? There is no greater danger than the literal, unimaginative interpretation of sacred texts. For centuries women, and it was mostly women, were tortured and burned to death in Europe because of a biblical injunction about not allowing witches to live, which turned out to be a mistaken reading anyway, good news for witches, not so good for poisoners. Nevertheless, I simply cannot imagine even the most unregenerate fundamentalist wishing to return to a barbarous past

But in Iran a barbarous past is a barbarous present. The world-wide outrage over the fate of Ashtiani has – temporarily – stopped execution of her sentence. As a measure of the regime’s embarrassment she appeared on state-controlled television recently ‘confessing’ to both her adultery and to a plot to kill her husband. Her defence lawyer, forced to flee to Turkey in fear of his life, has said that the confession is bogus, that it was effectively tortured out of her, a claim supported by the fact that not even her children have been allowed to visit her in prison since.

When I see that man Ahmadinejad, the international face of the obscurantist tyranny, being embraced by the likes of Castro and Hugo Chavez I know that evil still walks the world, I know that the fate of this poor woman is in the hands of monsters, monsters who claim to act in the name of God. Forgive me if I appear a little less detached, a little angrier than normal, but there are some things that defy dispassion, even for me.

Losing the Mandate of Heavem

All is not well in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The opposition to the outcome of last June’s fraudulent presidential election is proving far more obdurate than the regime can ever have anticipated. Despite months of crackdowns, arrests and trails in kangaroo courts, the violent demonstrations against Ahmadinejad in late December shows if anything that resistance is deepening.

It’s no longer a question of hostility to the outcome of the election; the Islamic republic itself is now under examination. Criticism has moved from the president to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, the face, and the beard, of the clerical tyranny.

The authorities continue to blame foreign powers, anyone but themselves, for the unrest, but with Iran effectively isolated from the rest of the world this is beginning to look increasingly transparent. The signs of opposition are everywhere. Starting at the end of last week the Iranian central bank is refusing to accept notes defaced by extra words. But there are so many of these that it has been estimated that millions of bank notes will have to be taken out of circulation.

There are other transparencies. Previously Khamenei had been able to exercise power and authority out of the sight of both domestic and international opinion, pulling the strings of that grinning buffoon, Ahmadinejad, who was never more than a public front. But the old cleric’s intransigence has brought his role into ever sharper focus. He has even alienated moderate conservatives by his refusal to countenance concessions in the name of national unity. The slogan ‘Death to Kahmenei’, unthinkable only a few months ago, is now increasingly common in the streets of Teheran.

One official government rally called for Hosein Musavi, the likely winner of last June’s election, and his supporters to be executed as the ‘enemies of God,’ a step the Grand Ayatollah is unlikely to take for fear of creating martyrs. Still, the notion of a ‘just ruler’ empowered by divine grace, one that the office of Grand Ayatollah supposedly represents, seems to be dying by painful degrees. The Islamic Republic, it would seem, has lost the mandate of heaven.

Neda Soltan-a True Martyr

I had a very busy summer, first preparing for my finals at university and subsequent to that a trip to India. I tried during this time to keep up with the news of what was happening around the world. I knew about the presidential election campaign in Iran; indeed, I wrote some brief pieces on developments prior and subsequent to this event.

I was aware of the tragic death of Neda Soltan, caught up in the protests against the fraudulent result, which saw that wretch Ahmadinejad return to power. But if I am honest, shocked as I was by footage of her death, taken on a mobile and subsequently downloaded on You Tube, I never really thought of her as an individual, just another ‘victim’ of the repellent Iranian theocracy. I never thought of Neda as an individual, as a real person, if you like…not until tonight, not until I saw a very moving documentary on BBC television.

Neda is a true martyr, a wonderful, beautiful human being, who simply wanted change in her country, wanted the dead-hand of the dictatorship lifted from her life, an ambition she shared with so many others of her generation, young people who wanted a better future, one free from oppression and fear; one freed from ugliness disguised in the hypocritical cloak of piety and faith.

In different circumstances Neda and I might have been friends; she was only four years older than me when she was murdered by one of the police thugs set loose on the people of Teheran by Ayatollah Ali Khameni, the ‘supreme’ leader. Now I can only mourn her, if it’s possible to mourn for an individual one never knew. As I watched the documentary feelings of profound sorrow were mixed with those of deepening anger, anger against a dictatorship that freely murders the brightest and the best.

I understand that Neda means ‘voice’ or ‘calling’ in Persian, and that she is referred to by some as the ‘voice of Iran’. Yes, she is the true voice, not Ahmadinejad and Khameni, both of whom, particularly the latter, bear responsibility for her assassination. That crime was bad enough, but it was compounded by the authorities’ attempts to blame the shooting on the opposition. They even offered to declare her a ‘martyr’ if her mother agreed to accept their version of events. She has refused to accept this corruption of her daughter’s memory, this bargain with Satan.

I do not believe in a personal God; I do not believe in Islamic concepts of reward and punishment in the life to come. It would be a comfort, though, to believe there was such justice, a justice that could not be evaded or escaped, if only to think that Khameni will one day have to face a court that is not deceived by lies and dissimulation. No amount of bowing and praying will wipe the blood of Neda from his hands, a genuine martyr, a martyr for freedom and for justice.

A New Torquemada

It was just so fascinating to learn in the Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph that Amadinejad the Mighty, the pretender president of Iran, is of Jewish ancestry, something that he has kept well hidden…until now. There is a picture of his identity card, showing that his name was changed from Sabourjian, a Jewish surname meaning ‘cloth weaver’, when the family converted to Islam after his birth.

Insofar as one is able to judge these things on the basis of appearance alone, I always thought he looked very Semitic, much more so than the average Iranian. There was always for me something slightly odd about his continuing Holocaust denial and exaggerated hostility towards Israel, a state that has never harmed Iran in any direct manner.

Yes, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial exist elsewhere in the Muslim world, but no leader of any note has stuck to this position in such a public, consistent and wholly egregious manner, even to the point of hosting conferences on the question. Well, now we know; it’s a form of over-compensation, a symptom of those uncertain of themselves and their true belonging. Converts, after all, are often far more enthusiastic about their new faith, and hostile to the old, than those born into a tradition. I would say that this puts him, emotionally and psychologically, on exactly the same level as Tomás de Torquemada, another famous convert and Jew-hater.

Torquemada was the first Inquisitor-General of Spain, confessor to Queen Isabella, and a driving force behind the decision to expel the Jews after the conquest of Granada in 1492. Before that he was notorious for his persecution of the so called ‘crypto-Jews’, those who had converted to Christianity, usually to save their lives, but continued to practice the old faith in private. He was the most ferocious Inquisitor Spain ever had and, as I have said, of Jewish ancestry himself but more Catholic than the most Catholic.

So, Torquemada and Amadinejad, men of different faiths, but a shared passion, the passion of hate and the passion-dare I suggest?-of self hate. In general I believe anti-Semitism, especially when it attains pathological heights, says so much about the people who embrace it than it does about the supposedly malign power of the Jews. It suggests to me that they have something they wish to hide, something about themselves, something about their background and identity. I’m not suggesting that they all have Jewish ancestry like Torquemada and Amadinejad-that would be absurd-, simply that hatred of that kind is not arrived at by any process of rational deduction. It’s merely a sign of some deep-rooted personal insecurity.

Oh, and incidentally, so far as the Holocaust is concerned, by the criteria laid down at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, Amadinejad would most likely have been considered a full Jew regardless of his personal faith. Ironically he may therefore himself, in different circumstances, have been a victim of the very Holocaust that he denies ever took place.

Stealing the Victory: Iran and the Mad Midget

Yes, I would be angry too if I had to face another four years of living in a country governed by that grinning cretin, Ahmadinejad. But we all knew that he was going to ‘win’ the Iranian presidential elections; most Iranians probably new he was going to ‘win’, not least among his opponents.

So, why are people on the streets; why is Iran seeing more violence at any time since that old fright, Khomeini, ousted the Shah all those years ago? Why? Quite simply, rigging an election is one thing and rigging it in such a way as to assume the entire nation is made up of stupid people quite another. That’s what people resent more than anything. If the Mad Midget had received, say, 52% of the vote it might have left his opponents disappointed but resigned. But 62.4% that just says power is mine and I don’t give a toss what you think. Hell, I would take to the streets!

This is a new age, a wonderful new age; the age of the internet, the mobile phone and U tube. Repellent and ugly regimes are finding it more and more difficult to repress their people in perfect isolation from the rest of the world.

I should, on further reflection, really introduce a word of caution here. I suspect that outside observers might be under the impression that something profound is happening in Iran: that a ‘green revolution’ is underway on the same basis as the ‘orange revolution’ in the Ukraine a few years ago. Although I imagine there are some, perhaps many, who would welcome the end of the ‘Islamic republic’, the real issue hinges on the unpopularity of Ahmadinejad, particularly in relation to internal domestic and economic policy. There is no reason to suppose that Mousavi, even if elected, would alter Iran’s direction in any fundamental way.

People change, I know, but consider Mousavi’s past record. As a former prime minister, he was a key ally of Khomeini in the 1980s and an advocate of an anti-western foreign policy. Amongst other things he encouraged Hezbollah in Lebanon in its campaign of hostage taking. There is no reason to suppose, moreover, that he would bring a stop to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, now something of an article of faith among the ruling circles in Iran.

In the end the real power in Iran lies with the clerical throne, currently occupied by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is he who will make or break Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, not the frustrated electorate.

“Lying is the worst sin in Islam”

Something odd is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a presidential election on Friday, though there is nothing odd or unusual in that. The oddity, rather, is that the campaign itself actually has some life, has something of the ruthless cut and thrust of-how shall I say this?-a genuine western-style democracy. Did you hear something? Could it possibly have been the sound of some grim-faced Ayatollah exploding in his grave?

The contest, of course, is between the hard-line incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the one hand, and his reform-minded opponents, Medhi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, on the other. All candidates have had the prior approval of the puppet-master of the regime, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Aly Khameini.

I assume he must also have approved the principle of television debates between the contenders. In any case television debates there have been, and-oh my-what debates! Real debates, yes, with the levels of nastiness and assaults on personal integrity that we in the west may be used to but the denizens of the Islamic paradise are not. It’s drawing huge crowds, truly it is.

The logic is a little difficult to understand, insofar as this is a regime based on a supposition of unity, of consensus on the political and religious fundamentals. Perhaps the thinking was that Ahmadinejad the Mighty would be able to breathe orthodox fire over such alien concepts as modernisation and reform. But the Mighty One did not stick to grand principles; he got personal, and his opponents got personal right back!

Round one opened with Ahmadinejad accusing the wife of Hossein Mousavi of faking her degree, a pretty low punch. Not true, said Mr. Mousavi, who came back with a left-hook, a hard one: the President was a disgrace to Iran, yes, a disgrace, because of his aggressive foreign policy. Learning nothing from this, Ahmadinejad then accused Medhi Karroubi, himself a cleric, of corruption, to which he responded by lecturing the president on his personal vices-“Lying”, he was told, “is the worst sin in Islam.”

This is going down well in the streets of Teheran, where people are not used to such levels of political excitement. One supporter of the reformist movement said, “We’ve never seen anything like it before. To see a sitting president being criticised on television over every single thing that he has done is just amazing. It’s great to watch.” I bet it is!

Will things ever be the same again, one has to ask? Perhaps it’s all the fault of the Great Satan. :-))