Iran Dissident Calls Jailors 'Stalinists'

Eli Lake, The NY Sun:

Jailed Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji has defied the will of his captors, vowing to refuse to end his 26-day hunger strike or to apologize for calling last month's election a fraud.

"I will not take back my word. I will not show remorse. I will not stop my hunger strike until I reach my goal," he wrote in an open letter addressed to "free people everywhere" and published last week on the Persian online political magazine, Iran Emrooz. The letter from Mr. Ganji is only the latest in a series of defiant gestures for the author of the "Red Eminence," a book published in 1999 that alleged a former president, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, authorized a string of murders of Iranian intellectuals in the late 1990s. READ MORE

In the letter, in which he called his jailors "liars" and "Stalinists," Mr. Ganji said if he dies in prison, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will be responsible. "Khamenei will be directly responsible for my death," wrote Mr. Ganji, who says he has already lost 42 pounds from his hunger strike. "I am against Khamenei's unlimited lifetime rule because it is contradictory to the rule of people. I knew my statements would have ramifications, and I was right."

Those statements likely referred to an interview Mr. Ganji gave Emrooz after he was released from Evin prison for medical treatment, in which he urged his countrymen to boycott last month's presidential election. In the interview, Mr. Ganji boldly called for Mr. Khamenei to stand for office, taunting the unelected cleric and saying he may even vote for him.

The case of Mr. Ganji has belatedly attracted the attention of the State Department, which last week released a statement calling for his release. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also taken up his case.

Mr. Ganji has emerged as both a symbol of the democracy movement in Iran as well as one of its leading theorists. On a Web log for Iranian democrats hosted by www.opendemocracy.org, one writer, Nasrin Alavi, posted an essay simply titled "We are Ganji." Last month, Mr. Ganji's wife told the BBC that a violent criminal had been placed in his cell area, leading her to fear for his safety.

The elections that Mr. Ganji urged Iranians to boycott were won last month in a controversial second balloting by Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Three of his rivals for the presidency accused the supreme leader of rigging the ballot in Mr. Ahmadinejad's favor. Last week, five of the American officials taken hostage by Iranian students in 1979 said they recognized the Iranian president-elect as one of their captors. However, other Iranian organizers of the American embassy siege said Mr. Ahmadinejad played no role. Over the weekend, Iran's foreign ministry dismissed the latest round of stories as a "smear campaign." [Yesterday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said the allegations of his involvement in the 1979 hostage-taking are "baseless," according the Associated Press.]

Other aspects of Mr. Ahmadinejad's past may come back to haunt him, though. As The New York Sun reported last Friday, the next Iranian president was the deputy commander for intelligence of the Al Quds division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard between 1989 and 1991. The Al Quds division was responsible for assassinations and reaching out to Sunni Arab terror groups. The division was also likely the main conduit for coordination between Iran and Al Qaeda following America's invasion of Afghanistan.

In his open letter, Mr. Ganji refers to three of the new president's electoral rivals almost mockingly, saying that they now know what democracy means in the supreme leader's Iran. "Even Rafsanjani, Karoubi, and Moin tasted a bit of Khamenei's democracy in this election," he wrote.

The letter, dated June 29, 2005, reflects many of the thoughts of a 10-part manifesto Mr. Ganji wrote in Evin prison in May. Interspersed with references to Western intellectuals like Karl Popper, Richard Rorty, and Martin Lipsett, Mr. Ganji's manifesto is a clinical refutation of the right of Iran's unelected clerics to veto the elected government.

He begins by arguing that many Iranians who reject the constitution of the Islamic Republic - approved in a popular referendum only once in 1980 - are naturally disqualified from the presidential elections because no candidates who called for a vote on a new constitution were allowed to run for the office. Mr. Ganji goes on to dissect how the unelected Guardian Council disqualifies candidates and also counts votes, leaving open the possibility for even more corruption. Mr. Ganji argued for a boycott because "participating in the elections (as candidates and as voters) is the best way to cooperate with, and legitimize, the system."

The manifesto also examines other important geopolitical and practical questions. For example, he takes issue with those in the opposition who believe high-profile acts of civil disobedience will spur America to invade Iran. Mr. Ganji not only opposes an American invasion, but he concludes such an event is unlikely given the heavy deployments of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also says that some American strategists are wrong in thinking that even a bombing of nuclear facilities will break the veil of fear in Iranian society. Instead, the success of an Iranian democracy movement "can pre-empt an American military attack on Iran. With such a movement, a military attack will no longer be an issue," he writes.