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RIGHTS-IRAN: Dissidents Encouraged to Go Into Exile
By Kimia Sanati
TEHRAN , Sep 6, 2007 (IPS) - The Iranian establishment has an unstated policy to deal with rising dissidence among academics, artistes and political activists - encourage them to leave the country and go into self-exile.
Activists claim that this policy follows a pattern established well before the 1978 revolution that overthrew the Shah regime.
"Opponents are made to choose self-exile to minimise the costs of holding so many prisoners of conscience. Before 1978, the Shah openly told dissidents to leave if they didn’t want to abide by his rules. Dissidents could choose between leaving and imprisonment or death. History seems to be repeating itself in this case," a reformist politician in Tehran, requesting anonymity, told IPS.
Jailed political activist and former student leader Abdollah Momeni is among those the regime wants out of the country. His wife was recently quoted by ‘Advar News’, the student website, as saying that her husband had managed to tell her that his interrogators kept asking him why he had not chosen to leave the country.
Momeni was incarcerated two months ago in a wave of student arrests and has since been incommunicado. He was allowed to briefly exchange some words with his wife when he was taken to his home by security agents who wanted to search through his documents and belongings. He looked alarmingly thinner and there were bruises all over his body, his wife was quoted as saying by Advar News.
Frequent arrests and imprisonment of dissidents, students, women’s rights activists, workers, journalists and academics in recent months have, in recent months, triggered protests by such international human rights organisations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders, besides the European Union.
Typically detainees, like transport union leader Mansour Osanlou, academics Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, and Kurdish civil society activist and journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kaboudvand, are accused of jeopardising the country’s national security.
If a court finds the accused guilty, heavy sentences, even the death penalty, may follow. In recent months two women activists were sentenced to jail and lashes for participation in peaceful demonstrations while two Kurdish journalists were sentenced to death.
Non-conformism to state ideology can also result in such punishments as deprivation of education or state employment. The hardline government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stopped many students from entering graduate schools and reintroduced ideological screening in government offices.
"A former classmate passed the graduate school entrance examination last year but the university refuses to register him. He was recently told by the ideological screening people of the higher education ministry that he had no chance of continuing his education here in Iran. This person was simply deprived of the right to continue his education because he is not considered ideologically fit to get a higher degree and be a candidate for a government position some day," a graduate school student of Tehran University, requesting anonymity, told IPS.
"Pressure on university professors too has increased following the arrests and televised confessions of academics like Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh. In several universities professors have been ordered to report all their foreign trips, including for participation in seminars and conferences, to the authorities," she said.
"Several professors, including three prominent reformists, were recently expelled from state universities. This is a signal to everyone: be silent or you’ll lose your jobs," she added.
Suppression extends to areas such as the arts. Every art work has to go through ideological appraisals to get permission to be published, exhibited or performed. Many artistes find it easier to leave the country to be able to continue working. Iran’s award-winning filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf chose self-exile a few years ago to protest limitations imposed on him.
"In the past they would normally refuse passports or exit permission to troublemakers for the fear of providing them with the opportunity to make propaganda against the regime abroad. They are no longer concerned with that. They want to close the country to the outside world in whatever way possible and to rule without domestic opposition. So, in the past couple of years, political dissidents and activists have been granted permission to leave the country while still under trial or right after getting out of jail," the reformist politician said.
"While in prison, Akbar Ganji (journalist and writer) went on a hunger strike and nearly lost his life. He was constantly in the news, international and domestic. He was allowed to leave soon after his release from jail (March 2006). Ramin Jahanbeglou (academic and intellectual) was also allowed to go abroad soon after he was released,’’ the politician pointed out.
But the policy of encouraging people to leave was best seen in the case of a former student leader who fled the country while on short leave from prison to attend the funeral of his brother, also a student leader, who had died during a hunger strike in prison.
‘’Apparently the guards who accompanied him to the funeral in his hometown were ordered to shut their eyes and let him go. By making these individuals leave, the regime is cutting them off from society. Also, now that they are gone, the regime finds it easier to accuse them of serving foreign interests,’’ the reformist politician added.
(END)
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