Ganji's plight lifts us

Ramin Ahmadi, The NY Daily News:

The movement for democracy in Iran has finally found its voice. Political theorist Akbar Ganji, the imprisoned writer, journalist and dissident, is now past his 60th day of a hunger strike and has become the undisputed leader of a movement that remains disorganized and fragmented.

The unanimous support for his battle with the Islamic regime in Tehran became clear when dozens of political leaders from Iran's domestic political spectrum prayed in solidarity with his family. The international scene witnessed similar expressions of support. READ MORE

Akbar Ganji is a child of the 1979 Islamic revolution that ended more than 2,500 years of monarchy and ultimately brought the clergy to power. Soon after the victory of the revolution, Ganji joined the forces of revolutionary guards and, like many young Muslim intellectuals of his time, served the cause he believed in faithfully.

He became disillusioned after witnessing a decade of war with Iraq, widespread violation of human rights and consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of the clergy. Ganji rose to prominence as a writer and journalist once the reformist President Mohammad Khatami allowed the independent press to flourish in the late '90s.

This newly found freedom was short-lived, but Ganji used the opportunity to show a resolve that was rarely seen among the reformist writers. Gaining access to reliable sources within the revolutionary guards, he exposed the clerical elite responsible for torture and murder of dissidents. He took great risks by identifying the former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as the godfather of the clerical Mafia network, and accusing the supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, as the cleric who ordered the murders.

Ganji's success as an author and his growing popularity eventually led to his arrest. Ganji was condemned to 10 years in prison in 2000 after attending an international conference in Berlin, where he was again critical of the Iranian government.

While the official charges were ambiguous, the reasons for his arrest were clear to the Iranian people: Ganji was being punished for exposing the crimes and corruption of the Islamic State.

Ganji began writing a series of political and theoretical essays in prison challenging the foundation of the Islamic State and advocating for secularism and democracy. In his "Republican Manifesto," he rejected the idea of reforming the Islamic Republic from within and called for a nonviolent grass-roots movement to overthrow the regime. Then, putting his own theory into action, he went on a hunger strike demanding unconditional release from prison.

Ganji's health has seriously deteriorated. His starved and comatose body may not survive. But he has managed to become a new icon in Iranian politics. Iran and the rest of the region need to have secular and democratic role models that can inspire and lead. Ganji and those who will follow him are not only Iran's best hope, but also its best opportunity for a democratic future.

Ahmadi, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, is the co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.