Saturday, June 04, 2005

Week in Review

DoctorZin provides a review of this past week's [5/29-6/4] major news events regarding Iran.

Iran's Presidential Elections:

Iran's trouble making outside of Iran:
Iran's Military:
US Policy and Iran:
Human Rights/Freedom of the press inside of Iran:
Iranian Bloggers:
Popular struggle for freedom inside of Iran:
Popular struggle for freedom outside of Iran:
Iran and the world community:
Must Read reports in the Mainstream Media:
The Experts:
And finally, The Quote of the Week:
Reza Pahlavi, who has lived in the U.S. since his father was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution, said:

Iran was the only country in the world "whose written constitution specifically denies that sovereignty belongs to its citizens."

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 11:55:00 PM  

Saturday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 6.4.2005:

Iran: Toward a Fourth Republic?

The Washington Institute:
For the first time, Iranians are looking abroad for assistance. Specifically, the United States can do three things to signal its support for the promotion of democracy in Iran:
  1. The U.S. government could announce that it will not recognize the results of the June 17 elections ...
  2. The United States could put the spotlight on the human rights situation in Iran...
  3. The United States could focus on Iran's role in sponsoring terrorism... READ MORE
Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 10:47:00 PM  

Iran reformist camp’s dilemma: Change or drop out

The Peninsula:
Squeezed out of power and undermined by religious hardliners, Iran's reformist camp has been thrown into an existential dilemma over whether to seek change from within the system or drop out of tightly controlled mainstream politics altogether. READ MORE

Iran's main pro-reform party, once the darlings of an electorate hungry for change, has only reluctantly decided to contest the June 17 presidential elections, after its candidate was disqualified from standing but later approved.

The danger is that the man bearing the flag of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), Mostafa Moin, could face a punishing backlash from voters who twice elected incumbent President Mohammad Khatami, only to see his brand of "Islamic glasnost" stalled by unelected hardliners.

"People have understood that reforms are not possible within the current system," prominent dissident activist Hashem Aghajari, on the more radical side of the political left, said.

A similar view is held by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who has also opted for a boycott. "As long as there is supervision (to select candidates), I will not take part in any elections," she said.

Activists like Aghajari and Ebadi argue that regardless of who is elected, the real power will continue to be in the hands of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the hardline-controlled judiciary, security apparatus and political oversight bodies. All are unelected forces that can easily dictate the politics of any elected government in Iran.

Added to the bastions of power held by the religious right is Iran's parliament, seized by hardliners after reformists were barred from even contesting the February 2004 elections.

Hence the pressure on the IIPF to join many reformist voters by boycotting the polls altogether, distance themselves from the regime and launch a more grassroots movement that could go on to challenge the regime's legitimacy.

But Khatami is eager to defend eight years of struggle and repeatedly asserts that change must come slowly and from within.

His former vice president. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who quit the cabinet last year over frustration with the parliament, explained that the core problem was "finding an equilibrium" between working within the ideological confines of the regime and satisfying demands for change. "It is this paradox that is the heart of the current political crisis and this frustration," he said.

Frustration is something the reformist camp has become accustomed to.

Reformist newspapers have been shut down, activists jailedand politicians have been barred from elections in calculated plans to keep them from holding any position of power.

Added to that was Khatami's perceived inaction.

The president's brother, IIPF leader Mohammad Reza Khatami, is angered over his sibling's performance, particularly during the crisis that surrounded the candidate disqualifications last year.

"He should have resisted more," Reza Khatami said of the president. "He should have taken the issue right to the end." President Khatami, however, is not a part of the IIPF. His own party, the Association of Combatant Clerics, decided to go through with contesting the February 2004 polls and suffered as a result.

Ahead of the presidential polls, both the Combatant Clerics and the IIPF are fielding their own candidates, Mehdi Karoubi and Moin. The split provides further proof that the Islamic republic's political left is also badly divided.

"There was a divergence of opinion over who had the best chance," Karoubi explained.

The reformist vote could split even further, with some leaning towards pragmatic conservative and ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani may not be sufficiently reformist for most people but is nevertheless seen as having the clout Khatami lacked.

Moin is seen as only having an outside chance, and his defeat may herald a new era for Iran's embattled reformist camp, which may turn out political lobbyists rather than impotent political leaders.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 07:17:00 PM  

Iranians boycott massively the commemoration of Khomeini's death anniversary

SMCCDI (Information Service):
Iranians boycotted massively the commemorative or official ceremonies marking the 16th anniversary of the death of Rooh-Ollah Khomeini. Millions stayed home or used the official holiday in order to go to friendly or familial parties or simply to get out of cities in order to have a moment of joy instead of the regime's promoted cult of death and mourning. READ MORE

The Islamic regime and its leadership faced another fiasco and show of popular rejection of the Islamist ideology and their illegitimate regime. They had to bring in, as they had expected and planned, the same usual professional participants composed of thugs, security and military agents, afraid governmental employees, some elementary or secondary school children or members of the so-called Bassij students (Para military force deployed in Iranian universities).

In Tehran, Capital of the Islamic republic with over 14 million of inhabitants, only less than a hundred thousand of professional or forced demonstrators participated. Hundreds of buses had transferred most of them from various cities in order to able the regime to offer its needed show of popular support.

Even the free food and promises of some welfare were not able to mobilize despite the fact that more than 70% of Iranians are living under poverty level based on regime's official sources.

Same rejective trend is expected for another consecutive commemoration planned for tomorrow and which marks the 38th anniversary of Khomeini's first Islamist rebellion.

Already, massive popular gatherings of expression of joy had tarnished, yesterday evening, the regime's planned or sponsored ceremonies for Khomeini. Many Iranians used, in reality, the occasion offered by Iran's soccer team win over N. Korea in order to show their rejection of the regime, its doctrinal basis and to celebrate the anniversary of Khomeini's death. Women were seen taking off their mandatory veils and dancing or chanting publicly with men despite all the dangers and existing back warded sanctions. Many of them were inured or arrested during brutal retaliatory attacks made by Islamists who used knives, chains, clubs or even acid against their victims.

The founder of the Islamic Republic Regime died on June 4, 1989, ten years after being back from his exile which happened following the Islamist riot of June 5, 1963. The back warded and land owner cleric had promoted a bloody riot against social and political measures instated by the former Imperial regime, such as, the confiscation and distribution of lands to peasants, the secularization of education and justice systems and especially the allowance of Right of Vote to Iranian women.

Wowing revenge, Khomeini will be back to Iran in winter 1979 in order to overthrow the "corrupt and westernized" late Shah's regime and to implement his Islamist ideology. He will promote the idea of "going back to sources" which meant trying to reverse back Iran's path and to adopt many aspects existing 14 centuries ago in the Arabic peninsula.

In his thirst for revenge and absolute power, he won't have any mercy even for those who saved his life, such as, the late General Hassan Pakravan or some of his aids, such as, the power thirsty Sadegh Gotbzadeh. He'll order also the arrest of some of his collaborators or the dismantlement of political groups, such as, the Tudeh Party, Jebhe Melli or Mojahedin of People who helped him to gain power. Thousands of members of such naive groups will be arrested or executed.

The dogmatic and back warded cleric promised heaven and justice but transformed Iran to a minefield of slaughter and butchery from each of its four corners. He promoted a policy of increase of natality and qualified the war with Iraq, which left hundreds of thousands of deaths, as a divine benediction. Young Iranians and children soldiers were sent running on Iraqi mine fields in order to open the way of the Khomeini's Islamist Army for what he was calling the conquest of Jerusalem.

Mothers and fathers having lost a precious child or wives losing a beloved husband, cried out to the heavens as their loved ones were killed or slained at the walls of execution.

Khomeini promised the closing of jails but transformed Iran into a colossal prison in which no thought other than those of back warded Islamists are allowed. He praised the status of women and pledged leading roles for them in an Islamic society but transformed them into black shrouded subjects without any meaningful rights.

The backwarded cleric promised a better economy but transformed one of the most prosperous economies of the late 70's into a total bankruptcy. He promised the divine shine for Iranian youth but transformed thousands of them into hopeless drug addicts or young prostitutes.

Many other promises that Ayatollah Khomeini made turned out to be false promises done in order to lure his naive supporters to commit the biggest mass suicide of the century.

For over 90% of Iranians of our days, Khomeini's name and dark legacy are incarnations of evil, cataclysm, destruction, blood and misery. They know him as the messenger of Satan rather than the God he claimed to represent.

Many compare him to Zahaak, a legendary tyrant of the famous "Epic of the Kings" written by the famous nationalist poet Ferdowsi who was living in 7th century. Based on Ferdowsi's poem, Zahaak was a foreigner and a tyrant who was able to rule in Iran and each day was murdering young Iranians. The fresh blood of his daily victims was used to feed two serpents taking root in his shoulders in order to stop them from killing Zahaak himself. This tale is considered by many Iranians of our days as a prediction which became true with Khomeini's accession to power.

Maybe one of the best commentary about him ever made by western media was written by the London Times, January 1, 2000, which stated:

"Khomeini's rule was, in all significant respects, a disaster.'

'For Iran it was comparable to the Mongoliann invasion of the 13th century.

'For neighboring Islamic nations his effect was to frighten moderate leadership and to paralyze reform.'

'For the rest of the world he bears, in addition, a disastrous responsibility for inspiring and sanctioning state terrorism.'

'All three legacies will be hard to erase. "

Without any doubt, Ayatollah Khomeini will have his place in the dark records of the Iranian contemporary history as a mad man full of hate and ignorance who chose the gradual destruction of a country for fulfilling his thirst of revenge and egocentrism.

The Islamic regime rulers might continue to praise his legacy of doom, devastation and desolation, but the people of Iran have, since years, issued their historical verdict about him by creating a milieu in which the regime is forced to watch over his tomb just to prevent its destruction and defilement. And as Akbar Ganji, one of its first ardent followers who's today expressing redemption, once said in an interview with a German newspaper, " Khomeini will finish in a museum!"

A museum of horror or the dustbin of history: such only choice will be the final sentence of the future Iranian generations on at what degree they'll be able to forget.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:20:00 PM  

Iran: Toward a Fourth Republic?

Mohsen Sazegara, The Washington Institute:
PolicyWatch #1001: Special Forum Report

On May 25, 2005, Mohsen Sazegara addressed the Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. Dr. Sazegara, one of the founders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, held a number of posts in the Iranian government during the 1980s. In 1989, disillusioned, he left the government, after which he completed his studies in History at the University of London and published several reformist newspapers subsequently closed by regime hardliners. Since 2001 he has been a leader in the campaign for a referendum on replacing the Iranian constitution. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute. The following is a rapporteur's summary of his remarks.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has gone through three distinct political stages. The first stage, which began with the victory of the revolution and ended with the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was a period in which the revolutionary regime was established and consolidated. This stage, which also witnessed an eight-year war with Iraq, may be referred to as the Republic of Revolution and War. The second stage, known as the Republic of Terror, correlated with the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This period saw increasing popular dissatisfaction with the regime that led, in turn, to the "silent revolution" that brought Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997. As Khatami's second term draws to a close, the third stage in Iran's post-revolutionary development -- the Republic of Reform -- is also coming to an end. The reform movement has been defeated. The upcoming presidential elections in Iran may thus signal a new stage in Iran's political evolution, with important implications for Iran's domestic political situation as well as U.S. policy toward Tehran.

Upcoming Presidential Elections

Iran's presidential elections, scheduled for June 17, will see eight candidates vie to succeed Khatami as president of the Islamic Republic. The leading reformist candidate, Mostafa Moin, faces a difficult challenge in that he must persuade the people of Iran to relive the Khatami era in attempting to expand the powers of the country's elected officials relative to its unelected rulers. To succeed, Moin will have to bring out Iran's voters in large numbers, as Khatami did when he was swept into office in 1997. That is an unlikely scenario.

The leading contender, former president Rafsanjani, also faces challenges in his bid to return to the office he occupied from 1989 to 1997. Iranians are fond of conspiracy theories, particularly of the idea that there is one central figure behind the scene pulling all of the strings. Many Iranians think Rafsanjani is that figure, to the possible detriment of his candidacy. Furthermore, Rafsanjani's relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, remains unclear. Though they support one another publicly, many feel that Khamenei would prefer someone whom he could more easily manage. Any tensions between the two personalities would extend to their respective factions; many in the security forces and Revolutionary Guard that Khamenei controls blame the country's troubles on Rafsanjani's corruption and mismanagement.

Whichever candidate wins the presidential election, Iranian government policies on matters of strategic importance are unlikely to see any major changes. Strategic issues like the country's nuclear program and its relations with the United States fall squarely under the purview of the supreme leader.

The Significance of Electoral Turnout

The Iranian government currently anticipates more than 40 percent participation in the presidential elections, and it will likely raise its projections as June 17 approaches. Indeed, Supreme Leader Khamenei has in recent weeks repeatedly stressed the importance of a high turnout and urged Iranians to go to the polls. However, unpublished polls have forecast turnout of less than 30 percent. This may well be the case, given the trend of decline in voter participation in Iran's elections. For instance, whereas 83 percent of eligible Iranians voted in the 1997 elections that brought Khatami to power, in the 2001 elections, perhaps as a result of disillusionment over the ineffective political process, turnout dropped to 67 percent.

The turnout on election day will consequently serve as a barometer for those who are calling for a referendum on the Iranian constitution. It will indicate how quickly the people of Iran can be mobilized in favor of the concept of a referendum. The pro-referendum opposition includes groups within Iran, such as the University Students' Office of Consolidation, and members of the Iranian opposition based abroad. If participation on June 17 is low -- anywhere between 20 and 30 percent -- pressure on the regime will increase and progress toward the next stage in Iran's political development will accelerate. A higher turnout would indicate slower, albeit still certain, progress toward political change in Iran.

Implications for U.S. Policy

When President Khatami was elected eight years ago, he ran on a platform of democracy, human rights, civil society, and engagement with the international community. The failure of reform since 1997 has led to a political depression in Iran. Iranians need a renewed sense of hope. In this respect, the West has an important, even crucial, role to play.

For the first time, Iranians are looking abroad for assistance. Specifically, the United States can do three things to signal its support for the promotion of democracy in Iran:

1. The U.S. government could announce that it will not recognize the results of the June 17 elections or any future elections held under the current Iranian constitution, because any contest organized under its terms is certain to be neither free nor fair.

2. The United States could put the spotlight on the human rights situation in Iran. This can be accomplished by, for example, supporting the government of Canada in its investigation of the death of Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi and calling for a trial for Saeed Mortazavi, the Tehran prosecutor responsible for her murder. He is responsible for the closing of more than one hundred journals and the imprisonment of several journalists and politicians.

3. The United States could focus on Iran's role in sponsoring terrorism, which has blackened the name of the Iranian people as well as those officials within the regime who genuinely strive to serve their country. The United States could, for example, launch an international investigation into the regime's support of terrorism against Iranians and foreigners, which would serve to inform the Iranian public of the regime's abhorrent policies while concurrently showing the rest of the world that those policies are in no way indicative of the attitudes of the Iranian people.

These policies, if implemented, would serve to convince ordinary Iranians that the United States is genuinely interested in promoting democracy in their country, and that there will be no deals behind the curtain with the current regime. (The Iranian government is trying to convince Iranians that commercial interests will force the United States to strike secret deals with the current regime, as some Western government have already done.) None of these proposals involves financial assistance, which is not necessary and could in fact be harmful to those advocating political change in Iran. As Iran stands at a political crossroads, America's words and actions -- not its money -- can best serve the cause of freedom and democracy. READ MORE

This rapporteur's summary was prepared by Naysan Rafati.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:18:00 PM  

Iranian Clerics Urge Big Turnout in Leadership Vote

Karl Vick, The Washington Post:
From the pulpit, the ayatollah urged a massive turnout at polling places two weeks from Friday, when Iran will elect a new president. "Our enemies, especially the United States, are saying that the fewer people show up at the election, the less powerful the state will be," said Ayatollah Emami Kashani, addressing several thousand worshipers at Friday prayers. READ MORE

Some reform advocates, however, have called for a boycott of the balloting, a move they contend would highlight the need for fundamental change in a system whose top leaders are unelected.

Profoundly disappointed by the pace of progress during the two four-year terms of President Mohammad Khatami, the reformists say it's no longer worth trying to change Iran's theocratic system from within.

Kashani, a white-bearded cleric whose own senior position was never on a public ballot, is a symbol of the system. He holds a seat on the Expediency Council, one of three appointive bodies that outrank the presidency in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Those elite bodies, each dominated by unelected clerics, answer only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Supreme Leader of the Revolution, Khamenei is at the pinnacle of authority in theocratic Iran, with powers as superlative as his title.

"He has been elected by God," Mohebali Darabie, 56, said of Khamenei from his usher's post at the rear of the pavilion where Kashani addressed the graying faithful. "It's not the people who are electing him."

And that, according to the system's critics, is the basic problem.

"The free election we have here is a mere play, because we've got a person at the top who has absolute power," said Akbar Ganji, a reformist leader just freed from five years in prison. Ganji spoke in his modestly furnished living room, looking vibrant if a bit thin from the hunger strike that preceded his release Monday.

"What I am saying is our priority should be an election for the [supreme] leader," Ganji said. "He's been ruling for 16 years, and he's got a life term. This is not compatible with democratic values. The era of rulers for life is over. Sixteen years is enough for him."

Ganji, a sociologist and journalist jailed after he uncovered the state's role in the murders of prominent reformists, stands out among Iranian activists urging a boycott of the June 17 election.

"I believe boycotting the election will delegitimize the system as a whole," he said. His view is shared by other recently released political prisoners and the most prominent group of student activists, the Office for Fostering Unity.

"We need a referendum on the system," said Mohsen Sazegara, a reformist serving as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "All our efforts must be toward a new constitution."

But talk of boycott concerns others besides Iran's hard-line conservatives, who plainly crave a turnout high enough to be framed as endorsement of their continued rule.

Since polls show a solid majority of Iranians favoring change, low turnout also stands to hamper the prospects of the reformist ticket on the ballot -- a ticket that also supports a referendum to make over Iran's constitution.

"The conditions for such a referendum should be prepared," said Javad Emam, a senior official in the campaign of Mustafa Moin, a former minister for higher education who has emerged as the most prominent reformist candidate. "We need to be inside the system and push the present progress forward, to the point where people can decide whatever they want."

What the people want, in terms of government, is not yet known. But Ganji's demand for election of the supreme leader strikes at the heart of the Iranian system, established in the constitution that was approved in a 1981 referendum.

That document enshrined the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader, ruling as the agent of the messianic Imam Mehdi, who disappeared in the 9th century and whose return many Shiite Muslims believe will signal the day of judgment.

But enthusiasm for a system that puts total trust in the rule of clerics declined steadily after Khomeini, whose 1989 death Iranians will observe in a public holiday on Saturday. Young Iranians, who now account for two-thirds of the electorate, swept Khatami into office in 1997 in part because of his promise to reduce rigid religious oversight of personal lives. But the mild-mannered former librarian's efforts to expand executive powers were thwarted by the appointed mullahs.

The clerics also used their authority to shutter more than 100 newspapers and last year disqualified most reformists from running in parliamentary elections. This year, appointed clerics disqualified Moin from running for president, only to be overruled by Khamenei.

The decision to allow Moin to run may enliven a moribund race. Polls show the field of seven candidates is led by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a wealthy businessman invariably described as "pragmatic." Rafsanjani's long, checkered history includes two terms as president.

Moin, who enjoys a squeaky-clean reputation and good relations with student activists, is being marketed "as a symbol of progressive reform," Emam said. Moin's running mate is President Khatami's younger, bolder brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, who this week was quoted as saying, "In our country we have two power structures, and preserving the democratic one is a major step toward establishing democracy."

Four of the five remaining candidates are conservatives, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hard-line mayor of Tehran elected two years ago when barely 10 percent of voters turned out and the conservatives' small base carried the day.

On Friday, Ahmadinejad left weekly prayers at the leafy University of Tehran campus in a small scrum of supporters chanting, "Greetings to the Prophet! Here comes the real follower of the Leader!" The group pushed through the crowd of mostly middle-age worshipers -- few young people attend Friday prayers in the capital -- and a vendor peddling CDs promising to unveil the corruption of the reformists.

"We want to make a good impression so that other nations know what path to take," Ahmadinejad told the throng. "This is the Prophet's promise. This is what will happen. There will be a global state of Islam."

As the scrum moved off, an old man shouted, "Pray for him! This is the most effective weapon we have. Just pray, and he will become our president."

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:16:00 PM  

EU, US Stand Firm on Iran Abandoning Nuclear Fuel Cycle Work

Agence France Presse, Yahoo! News:
The EU and the United States remain committed to Iran giving up uranium enrichment work that could be used to make atomic weapons and want to clear up any confusion over this with Tehran, diplomats said. A trio of European Union negotiators, Britain, France and Germany, are to try to clear up an apparent misunderstanding over the US position on uranium enrichment as explained by President George W. Bush on Tuesday, diplomats said.

A US and an EU diplomat told AFP the statement may have misled the Iranians into thinking Washington is open to their being able to enrich uranium to low levels. READ MORE

These diplomatic moves come with Iran saying it has not yet decided whether to grant a two-month delay in talks with the EU over its nuclear ambitions.

The talks are deadlocked over Iran's insistence on its right to enrich uranium, a process which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but which can also be the explosive core of atom bombs.

The United States charges that Iran is using its civilian atomic program to hide the development of nuclear weapons but is backing the EU initiative to get Iran to definitively abandon enrichment in return for trade, technology and security incentives.

Bush told a press conference Tuesday in Washington that US policy is that Iran has violated international nuclear safeguards "and therefore they're not to be trusted when it comes to highly enriched uranium or highly enriching uranium."

"And therefore our policy is to prevent them from having the capacity to develop enriched uranium to the point where they're able to make a nuclear weapon," he said.

The EU diplomat, who asked not to be named, said Bush's talking of highly enriched uranium instead of low enriched uranium, which would not be weapons-grade, may have emboldened the Iranians to try to accelerate negotiations with the EU.

The diplomat said "Bush's stance (of apparently not ruling out low-level enrichment) has encouraged the Iranians to ask for more. He has served them on a silver platter something that goes even beyond the EU-3's wording," which is to permanently give up all enrichment activities.

But a US diplomat said the Iranians had "completely misunderstood what the president said."

"The United States government believes Iran must not be allowed to retain any sensitive nuclear fuel cycle capabilities, which includes enrichment, conversion, reprocessing and heavy water reactors," the US diplomat said.

The diplomat said the Europeans were "going to make the US position more clear to the Iranians" and the EU diplomat confirmed this.

The EU diplomat said Iran had on Thursday told ambassadors in Tehran from Britain, France and Germany that Iran wanted the talks aimed at guaranteeing Tehran is not secretly developing nuclear weapons to resume soon, with a major meeting within one month.

Iran had agreed last month to halt talks for two months, until August, which would be after its presidential elections on June 17 and after the EU comes up with concrete proposals at the end of July on cooperation with Tehran.

The EU diplomat said Iran's saying this calendar was not acceptable "was really a big surprise" to the EU-3.

But Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Agha Mohammadi said in Tehran Saturday: "We are in the process of examining the European proposal, to hear the latest things that the Europeans have to say to us, and we will give a response next week."

The EU diplomat said Iran also insisted that its enriching uranium be part of any talks or agreement with the European trio.

Iran has temporarily suspended enrichment but insists it has the right to carry out this process within the framework of a peaceful nuclear program.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:15:00 PM  

Iran Political Prisoners Plan Hunger Strike

Iran Focus:
Political prisoners in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison announced yesterday in a joint statement that they were going to go on hunger strike to protest what they called the “sham undemocratic [June 17 presidential] elections” and the “lack of respect for human rights in Iran”. READ MORE

The political prisoners said they were defending “the right to speak”, “the right to write freely”, “the right to belief”, and “freedom of all political prisoners without any questions”.

They said that their hunger strike will begin on June 10 and will continue for one month until July 9.

The prisoners called for a general boycott of the elections and invited political prisoners from elsewhere throughout the country to join them in the strike.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:13:00 PM  

Iranian Video Highlights Nuclear Ambitions

Tom Brokaw, NBC News:
Launch the video - Iran is so determined to arouse national pride in its nuclear efforts it has released a surprisingly detailed video. NBC's Tom Brokaw has the story.

Iran is so determined to arouse national pride in its nuclear efforts it has released a surprisingly detailed video that NBC News was able to purchase. It shows, complete with music and a dramatic narration, a very sophisticated operation — from uranium mining to the controversial big plant in Natanz, south of Tehran. READ MORE

"This video clearly gives the impression that Iran sees its nuclear program as a national treasure, that it's going to be very resistant to give up," says David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "It's not. It's a little bit like asking Britain to give up the crown jewels."

It is this Iranian determination to be part of the nuclear club that has the West so concerned. Uranium can be enriched for a weapons program, and Great Britain, France and Germany met last week in Geneva with Iranian officials in an effort to control Iran's efforts — so they don't lead to nuclear weapons.

President Bush remains skeptical.

"They're not to be trusted when it comes to uranium or highly enriching uranium," said Bush at a news conference on May 31."Therefore, our policy is to prevent them from having the capacity to develop enriched uranium to the point where they're able to make a nuclear weapon."

Iranian students may not like the personal oppression of Iran's political system, but they like the idea of nuclear weapons.

"It's a right for us," says one.

I asked another student if Iran should develop nuclear weapons.

"Of course," he told me. "Why not? We want to become famous in the world."

American nuclear experts examining the Iranian video purchased by NBC News agree that Iran has an advanced system and the video shows equipment they've never seen before.

"You can see what looks like a gas centrifuge cascade," says Albright as he watches the video. "There is a lot of piping and then through the pipes it looks like what you can see is the centrifuges. And there's not been public photos of that pilot plant before."

Iran continues to insist this is all for peaceful purposes, for nuclear energy, not weapons. But Iran is one of the richest countries in the world when it comes to oil and gas, so why does it need nuclear power as well?

That's a question that goes well beyond a promotional video.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:11:00 PM  

Iran Remains a Study in Contrasts

Tom Brokaw, NBC News:
Launch the video - NBC's Tom Brokaw takes us to Iran, a country that purports to be a democracy but whose politics have a higher power.

Tehran is a city of great contrasts in a land with a split personality. Is Iran a country prepared for the 21st century or one stuck in the last 30 years?

It pretends to be a democracy, with presidential elections in two weeks. But in Iranian politics, there's a higher power. Whichever candidate wins the presidential election on June 17, one man still will have all the power. READ MORE

He is Said al Khamenei, the keeper of the flame of Ayatollah Khomeini and the nation's supreme religious leader. The politicians have elections; Said al Khamenei runs the country.

One of the political clerics claims he can change that. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is a conservative former president who is now talking vaguely about improving relations with America.

But Iranian students I spoke with expect no real change.

"Many people in Iran don't want to vote in this election," said one.

They've heard promises of reform before. Will they vote?

"No, of course not," said another. "It's not in the way of democracy."

If the young and other progressives don't vote, the unelected mullahs will have even more power.

At Friday prayers, the invocation is, "marg bar amrika." In case you don't recognize the chant, it is "death to America." We first heard it in 1979, when Iranian students seized the American Embassy and took hostages in a long and dangerous standoff. That was the end of U.S.-Iranian relations and the peak of power for Khomeini.

Today, the old walled-off embassy is a headquarters for the Revolutionary Guard and a billboard for anti-American slogans. But it draws little attention.

The Iranian economy is a much larger issue. With its rich oil and gas deposits, Iran should be one of the most prosperous nations in the world, but everyone agrees the Iranian economy is a mess. It's a combination of corruption, state mismanagement, high unemployment and hyperinflation.

A handful of rials, the currency of Iran, in 10,000 denomination bills is worth less than $200. There are a million young Iranians entering the job market every year and only half that many jobs. And no one has any answers.

"Inside Iran there is a kind of apathy, rather than a will to do something about it," says Shirzad Bozorgmehr, editor of Iran News. "They are resigned to the fact that this is it and they're going to have to live with it. And they’re hoping that things will change gradually."

There is a shrine to Khomeini south of Tehran — the burial place of the man who started the Islamic revolution that continues to reverberate throughout Iran and the rest of the world. Every day the faithful approach Khomeini's burial site with reverence and emotion — but their numbers are modest and it's hard to know if they think of him as their future as well as their past. It is being built to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The more pressing question for the Iranian people is if the Khomeini era comes to an end, how will it come to an end?

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:08:00 PM  

Profile: Life for Women in Iran Today

NBC News, MSNBC:
KATIE COURIC, co-host:

Now to a glimpse behind the veil: life for women in Iran. It's a country that President Bush labeled part of the axis of evil, a nation hostile to this country for more than 25 years. Recently our own Tom Brokaw traveled there to see what life was really like.

Hey, Tom, good morning.

TOM BROKAW reporting:

Katie, it's hard to get into Iran these days, and what I wanted to do was to show what life is like on the streets. And in this country, while we're paying so much attention to the runaway bride and Paris Hilton ,the women of Iran really have a different set of problems of an entirely different magnitude, and we want to share some of that with you this morning.

Iranian women have a special place in their country's life. Unfortunately, it's at the back of the bus. That's the law. Or on the back of a motorbike where the only helmet is on the male driver. READ MORE

This is how Iran's mullah's would like their women to dress. But many women in this country, especially in the cities, have their own ideas. This is the season of pink, a dash of color added to the blackness.

You wear lipstick.

Unidentified Woman: Yes.

BROKAW: Do they tell you not to wear lipstick?

Woman: No, it's not to this...

BROKAW: It's not as bad as it was.

Woman: Yes, yes. These days it's usual thing. Make up and these things, it's usual.

BROKAW: But for Iranian women, it's about a lot more than wardrobe.

Ms. AZADEH MOAVENI: You have a generation coming up that's incredibly secular, that's very individualistic in its outlook, that really is all about me, me, me, and how do I take myself forward in this sort of urban jungle. And so it's definitely gone hand in hand with the corrosion of, you know, the old revolutionary ideology.

BROKAW: Azadeh Moaveni is an Iranian-American raised in California. She went back to Iran as a writer for Time magazine and wrote about the secret life of her Iranian friends. She called the book "Lipstick Jihad."

I spend a fair amount of time in this part of the world. The women that I see on the streets of Tehran, for example, are like you. Their hair is showing. The head scarf is loose. How much farther can they go, though, before the theocratic leaders begin to crackdown on them?

Ms. MOAVENI: I think this is pretty much as far as it's going to get in terms of women's dress. But in terms of private life and what they do behind closed doors with drugs and with sexuality, I think it's going to complete extremes. So really the question is how far more can it spill over into public?

BROKAW: Laleh Seddigh is fighting the system in her own way. She's become a top Iranian racecar driver, and we were invited to watch her and other women train at a track. However, the male manager stepped in, restricting our access, lecturing Laleh for getting too much attention. She wasn't happy, but she complied, even refusing to answer questions in English, a language she knows well.

You prefer to speak Persian because...

Ms. LALEH SEDDIGH: Because I'm Persian.

BROKAW: Do men sometimes get jealous of your skills?

Ms. SEDDIGH: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Man #1: (Translating) Yes, I think so.

Unidentified Man #2: That--that is to be expected.

BROKAW: Laleh is 28, talented, feisty, and a daughter of a wealthy industrialist, so these should be the glory years. Iran's male leaders would have you believe these are the glory years. They released this official video of Iranian women training as police cadets, but in full Muslim outfits.

Ms. MOAVENI: Life here for this young generation of women is so incredibly frustrating. Their expectations have been raised, and none of the opportunities that are really available to them when they come out of school and university are commensurate with what they've been told they can now expect. So the pressure for them is particularly acute.

BROKAW: Katie, they're really stuck between the past and the future that they would like to have fully realized. They are highly educated. Many of them go to universities there.

COURIC: Must have been a fascinating trip. Meanwhile, I know, Tom, you were saying during the tape piece to me that the elections are going to be in two weeks.

BROKAW: Right.

COURIC: So will any of this change or...

BROKAW: The women and the young people are not voting. They've been promised reform before, but every one of them that saw said, `We're not even going to go to the polls. It won't make any difference.' The mullahs, who are the supreme religious leaders, and the guardian counsel are not elected. They can veto anything that a president does or that the parliament does. So these young women are giving up the best years of their lives stuck there in a place and not knowing how it's going to turn out.

COURIC: That video of them scaling that--that building was...

BROKAW: Yeah. Well, that was a handout. You know, they were trying to make--try to show that they've got something else going on for them. A lot more tonight on "Nightly News," this time about the nuclear question and the relationship between Iran and Iraq. It's--it's an important country in that part of the world, obviously.

COURIC: All right, well we'll be watching.

BROKAW: OK.

COURIC: Thanks, Tom, so much for coming in this morning.

posted by DoctorZin @ 6/04/2005 06:07:00 PM  

Iranian Bloggers Find Freedom Online

OhMyNews.com:
Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people's daily lives. READ MORE

Farsi has become the third most prominent language of bloggers on the Net, despite the fact that Farsi speakers around the world number just 100 million (including Afghans and Tajiks who speak Farsi).

A look at some statistics may shed light on why this phenomenon is so important for Iranians. The statistics are from Persianblog, the biggest weblog service provider in Persian, established two and a half years ago by three young college students.
  • 600,000 daily views (nine months ago it was 380,000)
  • Over 370,000 registered weblog and 63,000 active weblog
  • Over 2,000,000 visitors and 18,000,000 views per month
  • 1.7 posts and 6.2 comments per minute
Now if you look at the statistics of the publication of books (between 2,000 to 5,000) and newspapers (between 50,000 and 150,000) or know that Denmark has just 1,000 bloggers you can see why weblogs are so important and attractive.

If we want to know why Iranians are so determined to write weblogs, we must categorize them into five general categories:
  1. Personal weblogs
  2. News and political weblogs
  3. Expert weblogs
  4. Social weblogs
  5. Fun and entertainment
These categories can be divided into individuals' weblogs and group weblogs.

Iranians have an ancient civilization with a glorious historical legacy. And like many other very old cultures, they have attributes in their soul which you can't find very easily.

Thousands of years ago Iranians had little squares in their villages and cities. After their daily work people would congregate, speak about daily events, social engagements and problems and give their opinions. In this way they forged a culture based on agreement and unison.

This is a part of the Iranian soul and seems to be the primary reason for their approach to weblogs; they are carrying out this tradition in a modern way.

Here is a question for you. Why aren't Italians, who have a similar history of community and closeness, interested in weblogs? The biggest reason is that Iranians don't have modern backgrounds and some of their needs haven't changed. But they have modern amenities like the Internet.

Most Iranian weblogs are personal and are written from the heart; they even discuss just simple events in people's lives. And the comments that readers post are the same.

The other reason is Iran's unique social and political situation.

After the government shut down many reformist newspapers -- which up until then had promoted a free atmosphere of debate in Iranian political life -- newspapermen, reporters, photographers and other influential people gravitated to the Internet, because in this arena they could be their own editor; self-censorship was not necessary, or at worst was a minor factor.

Weblogs were so well-received that the Iranian Vice President started to write his own weblog.

News and political weblogs cropped up and after a while some visitors who had the ability to write news and political analysis decided to write in this category. The category enlarged so fast that now a news story in a relatively obscure weblog can come to be mentioned on television or in the newspapers.

A key example of this was the time Iran's first blogger, journalist Sina Motallebi, was arrested. In just a few hours this made the news. After foreign countries caught wind of the story, Motallebi was released.

Or another example is when National Geographic decided to change the name of the Persian Gulf in its new atlas to the "Arabian Gulf" without any justifiable reason. Iranian bloggers took issue with this and set up a petition that garnered 90,000 signatures in one week. Soon after, National Geographic reversed its decision.

Some Iranian bloggers are being hired by news agencies and newspapers, a trend that no one expected.

A lack of Persian content on the Web is the third reason Iranians have rushed to the Internet. Expert weblogs have been created for this reason, publishing information and articles on informatics, medicine, the environment -- even cooking.

When you look for a keyword in Persian on search engines, weblog results appear at the top of the page. Chat rooms, competitions, seminars, meetings and other similar activities are common in these types of weblogs.

The activities of art weblogs are particularly eye-catching. Most young Iranian artists publish their work on the Web because big publishers say they can't trust them. On weblogs they can fix their names in the minds of visitors and publish their artwork.

And also you can find the translation of novels and poems that can't be published legally in Iran for religious or moral reasons.

And in the case of social weblogs, they play an important role in networking. In fact, with analysis and news from social life they are publishing their ideas in business, philosophy and religion realms and are finding many friends and enemies in the process.

Entertainment is the last reason for the popularity of weblogs among Iranians, a common reason for Internet surfing in general that requires no further explanation.

There is one weblog category that is very critical of Iran's government and even discusses shutting it down, among other "sinful" ideas. This category is forbidden, but due to the nature of these issues and the large population of young people in Iran (70 percent are under 30) these weblogs get the most visitors.

These are the reasons, now here is some further information about Iranian weblogs.

One common happening in Iranian weblogs is the use of pseudonyms -- more than 90 percent of bloggers don't give their real names. Iranian sociologists believe that this stems from fear of persecution, causing people to equivocate, pursue anonymity and find a new identity.

Of course, some bloggers believe that people use pseudonyms because they think it is not important who you are but what you have to say. Iranian weblogs may be mirrors of Iranian society, but not necessarily full-length mirrors.

posted by Anonymous @ 6/04/2005 05:33:00 PM  

Hashem Aghajari, defiant dissident who faced the hangman

Yahoo News:
If there is one man who can testify to the dangers of challenging Iran's clerical rulers, it is Hashem Aghajari -- the dissident who dared to say Muslims were not "monkeys" and nearly paid the ultimate price. READ MORE

"I had been in prison for four months when the intelligence men came to take me to the judge. Then he read the verdict," Aghajari recounted in a rare interview.

His crime was a speech to students in the western town of Hamedan in 2002. He had called for a popular reformation of Shiite Islam and Muslims, he told the gathering, do not need to "blindly follow" religious leaders like monkeys.

For regime hardliners it was blasphemous, a full-frontal attack on one of the central pillars of the Iranian regime -- the position of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a supreme leader who cannot be questioned.

Eager to keep Iran's "red lines" intact, the court delivered the sentence in November 2002: Death by hanging.

The assistant judge even took pleasure in telling Aghajari that "I'll put the rope around your neck myself". One cleric even labelled him "worse than Salman Rushdie", the British author sentenced to death by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"When my mother came to see the provincial head of the judiciary," Aghajari said, "she was told that she would be better off forgetting she ever had a son."

But Aghajari, a quiet, balding intellectual who lost a leg fighting for the survival of his country during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq' war, refused to beg for mercy.

"I fought the shah. I fought Iraq. I was 42 years old, and I had lived 20 years more than I should have. I was ready to die," he told AFP.

Signalling that his faith was in God, and not in man, "I told those who were interrogating me that if I must die, it was not them, nor anyone else no matter how powerful they are, who will decide."

His challenge was not merely targeted at the hardliners running the small provincial court, but the regime as a whole -- who he still believes conspired to see him strung up as an example to anyone thinking of openly challenging the clergy's hold over the quarter-of-a-century-old regime.

"Everything was carefully orchestrated in Hamedan, Qom (Iran's clerical capital) and Tehran," he said, before reeling off a list of names of top Iranian ayatollahs.

The plot to see him die went right to the top of the regime, he signalled.

"When I asked the (then reformist) president of the parliament to intervene with the head of the judiciary so that I could be transferred to Tehran, he replied that he could do nothing. They were too powerful," he said.

But what Aghajari could also count on was widespread revulsion that, under a reformist government fronted by President Mohammad Khatami' and his brand of "Islamic democracy", a man can still face execution for speaking out.

"I knew that the world had changed and would not be indifferent," he said, revealing his thoughts during the long days, weeks and months of solitary confinement in a grotty cell.

The first out were the students of Tehran University, determined to show they would stop the state from killing their popular history professor.

Clashes with members of hardline vigilantes, called out by the clerics in times of need, threatened to spiral into all-out rioting.

Eventually, the supreme leader himself was forced to intervene by ordering a new trial, and Aghajari's jailors had to make do with making his spared life as dire as possible.

"In prison I was not physically tortured. They stopped that after Khatami took office in 1997. But I spent 10 months in solitary," Aghajari recounted.

"They sometimes let me out into an empty prison courtyard that was so freezing cold that I was banging on the door to get back inside, and then they locked me out. The hygiene was deplorable. I had gangrene where my leg was amputated."

Last year the hardline judiciary held yet another re-trial, and reduced the charges to "insulting religious sanctities", "propagating against the regime" and "spreading false information to disturb the public mind".

With Aghajari also cited as a possible Nobel Peace Prize winner, the authorities appeared to decide it was better off dropping the matter altogether: the death penalty was commuted to five years in jail, and Aghajari was freed on bail on a summer's evening in July 2004.

He is again in front of his students, teaching on one of his other favorite topics -- the history of Iran's 16th to 18th century Safavid era.

Occasionally puffing on his pipe, Aghajari mulled the June 17 presidential election.
"People have understood that reforms are not possible within the current system," he said. "I'm not sure if I'll be voting."

posted by Anonymous @ 6/04/2005 05:29:00 PM  

Iran: Students Wonder Whether They Should Vote

Payvand.com:
As candidates for Iran's 17 June presidential election begin campaigning, some student activists are advocating an election boycott. This is not an irrelevant matter -- some two-thirds of Iran's population is under the age of 30 (46 million out of a total population of 69 million) and the voting age is 15. Plus, eight years ago young Iranians helped a relatively liberal dark horse win a landslide victory. READ MORE

Although a boycott could show disaffection with the country's deeply flawed political system, it is unlikely to have any real effect.

The students have not been bashful. In mid-May students at several universities staged sit-ins to show their unhappiness with the country's stifling political climate. Leading members of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the country's most well-known student organization, met in Tehran on 19 May, "Eqbal" reported on 21 May. During this meeting they expressed unhappiness with the restrictions placed on them. They also suspended the branch from Saduqi University in Yazd because it has expressed support for the candidacy of Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The Office for Strengthening Unity leadership noted that this stance contradicts its ban on political involvement.

Soon thereafter, 35 university student associations issued a statement expressing concern about the course of political developments in the country. Their statement said, according to the reformist "Aftab-e Yazd" newspaper on 23 May, that students are questioning the effectiveness of elections given the authoritarian trend in the country. They warned of a social explosion and delays in the democratization of the country. They warned the hard-line political figures that sooner or later the people will realize that they have a right to choose and elect candidates freely. The students wrote that they see it as their duty to resist the country's authoritarians.

The students did not have to wait long to fulfill what they see as their duty. They spoke out after the Guardians Council, an unelected body that vets prospective candidates for elected office, rejected the eligibility of all but six out of 1,014 applicants for the presidential race. The students were particularly unhappy with the rejection of the reformist Mustafa Moin, who had served as Science, Research, and Technology Minister (effectively, the higher education minister) in President Mohammad Khatami's cabinet. At a 23 May protest meeting speakers asked how a man who served in three presidential cabinets and also served in the legislature could be deemed ineligible for the presidency. The next day, some 300 students staged a brief march, until police herded them back on campus. Coincidentally, the Guardians Council reinstated Moin's candidacy.

Abdullah Momeni, a representative of the Office for Strengthening Unity, told Radio Farda that many students have a negative view of the election because of the restrictions connected with the country's legal system. Momeni said the Guardians Council's rejection of presidential candidates is driving the country into crisis. Momeni went on to say that although the students intend to boycott the election it does not mean they are indifferent to the rejected candidates. Meanwhile, 1,500 people participated in a sit-in at Hamedan University.

At the medical university in Shahr-i Kurd, furthermore, there were several days of protests and students clashed with security personnel. The students are objecting to the rejection of nearly all the presidential candidates. Furthermore, activist Arsh Kuhi told Radio Farda on 27 May, the students are objecting to the on-campus presence of security personnel, which is illegal. Kuhi noted that the students at Shahr-i Kurd are backed by organizations at the country's other medical universities, as well as the Office for Strengthening Unity.

An unaffiliated student organization called the Republic Students of Yazd staged a sit-in to protest the university administration's restriction against the group, "Eqbal" reported on 29 May. The security forces broke up the protest.

This student activism is encouraging, but the numbers are not. The total university student population is 1.2 million, which seems like a small number of people when the total population is around 69 million. Other factors, such as tactical differences, state repression, and the resulting lack of leadership, also limit the students' potential.

Students are divided on the political role they should play. The Office for Strengthening Unity (Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat) is divided into two wings. The majority "Allameh" faction wants to withdraw from the political system and generally advocates an election boycott, whereas the minority "Shiraz" faction generally favors participation and operating within the current political framework. Another student organization, known as the Tabarzadi Group for its founder, the oft-imprisoned Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, advocates a more radical approach to politics. In the 1980s, furthermore, the regime created the University Jihad and the Student Basij, and 1998 legislation created a Basij unit in every university.

State repression also has dampened young people's political ardor. For example, police arrested some 4,000 people after June 2003 demonstrations over the possibility of paying tuition. Individuals associated with July 1999 demonstrations are still in jail. An ominous phenomenon that has emerged in the last few years is the detention of activists by unaccountable security agencies at undisclosed locations.

A few brave students continue to come forward, occasionally to lead but at least to show solidarity. The overall lack of forceful and consistent leadership, nevertheless, hinders their ability to effectively express themselves or to oppose the system. Moreover, the Office for Strengthening Unity, specifically, and young voters, generally, are disappointed by the result of the elections. The individuals they voted for -- President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001, and reformist legislators in 2000 -- could not accomplish anything substantive because their efforts were countered by unelected but powerful institutions and individuals.

Under these circumstances, the student activists' tactical approach has changed. By early 2000 they had adopted the policy of "active calm" (aramesh-e faal), in order to avoid a violent crackdown by the security forces and their vigilante allies. By March 2005 there were calls for a boycott of the presidential election from a wing of the Office for Strengthening Unity. In early May, more than 500 critics and dissidents signed a letter saying they will not vote in the June polls. These calls have picked up steam, and at least one of the mainstream political parties, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, threatened to boycott the election if its preferred candidate, Mustafa Moin, was not allowed to run.

Most of the candidates have, at one time or another, met with student groups in an effort to gain their support. Moin is the only candidate who counts on student support, particularly from the majority faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity, according to an analysis in the 16 May "Etemad." The minority faction of the student organization tends to back another candidate, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karrubi. It is noteworthy that after his candidacy was reinstated, Moin said the Guardians Council actions caused unhappiness in the country, "especially among the students," "Eqbal" reported on 25 May.

Moin will have to do more to earn the students' support. Hadi Kahalzadeh, a member of the central council of an organization that represents former Office for Strengthening Unity members, said on 1 June: "We are waiting for Moin to declare his sensitivities about the violation of human rights and democracy in a more tangible way, because merely issuing a statement cannot convey his sensitivities to society," ILNA reported. Kahalzadeh denied that his organization backs Moin and said, "We still believe in not taking part in the elections."

Whether or not they boycott the election, opponents of the current set-up, including the students, face a no-win situation. The victory of a hard-line candidate -- and this includes front-runner and former two-time President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani -- is almost certain if most Iranians do not vote, because the hard-liners have well-mobilized constituencies. In the absence of neutral election observers, furthermore, the regime can manipulate the figures to show a high turnout. The regime will describe a large turnout as popular support and a sign of its legitimacy. In the unlikely chance that a pro-reform candidate is elected, his ability to implement meaningful changes is sharply curtailed.

posted by Anonymous @ 6/04/2005 05:12:00 PM