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RIGHTS-IRAN: Scholar’s Long Detention, Warning to Dissidents

Majid Darinoush

TEHRAN, Jul 20 2006 (IPS) - Nearly three months after Iranian scholar Ramin Jahanbegloo was arrested, academics and civil society activists here are protesting that he has not yet been formally charged and that he is being used as a scapegoat to frighten other intellectuals.

”When you take someone like Ramin it says to everyone you could be next,” said one analyst who did not want to be identified. “(His arrest) was a message to the activist community that the red lines have been pushed back.”

“Activists are watching themselves more,” he added. “They attend seminars that involve foreigners either less often or not at all.”

Jahanbegloo, an Iranian philosopher and writer who holds Canadian citizenship, was arrested late April at the Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran. He was on his way to attend a conference sponsored by the German Marshall Fund and had just returned from a teaching programme in India.

Although Jahanbegloo has not been formally charged, the hard-line Iranian newspaper Resalat (mission) reported on Jul. 15 that he has confessed on film to being on a mission to participate in a ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Iran.

The daily said the film was shown to a group of individuals at a ‘cultural centre’. In the film, Jahanbegloo explained how he had been in touch with certain individuals in Canada and infiltrated anti-revolutionary groups through an European ambassador, according to the newspaper.

The report comes several weeks after Iran’s Minister of Information Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ezhei claimed Jahanbegloo was working to bring down Iran’s system of Islamic rule.

“Ramin Jahanbegloo was one of the people detained concurrent with U.S. efforts to stage a velvet revolution in Iran,” the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Ezhei as saying. “The U.S. was planning to launch a velvet revolution in Iran, and Jahanbegloo had a role in this respect.”

Many Iranian activists have wondered at this accusation, saying Jahanbegloo is an apolitical philosopher who has advocated nonviolence and intercultural dialogue. He has written several books in English, French and Persian on culture and philosophy, and he is now the director of contemporary studies at Iran’s Cultural Research Bureau.

Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad also told reporters last month that Jahanbegloo was being held for security reasons.

“His case is a security-related one, and according to the Iranian judicial laws, only the investigating judge can allow the defendant’s lawyer to see and study the case during the investigation process,” Karimi-Rad said.

Activists, however, say Jahanbegloo does not yet have a lawyer. They say he has been held in solitary confinement, usually in one room, with the light always on. They add that he does not have regular access to calling his family or regular visits.

The analyst who did not want to be identified surmised that the reason Jahanbegloo has not been formally charged yet is that “once there are formal charges, you have a lawyer, and a judge gets involved. Right now he has absolutely no access.”

The analyst listed possible reasons for Jahanbegloo’s arrest. He said perhaps the new, conservative-led administration wants to investigate intellectuals close to the previous, reformist administration; more members of the new government belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and intelligence community, who trust fewer people; and perhaps Ahmadinejad’s government is genuinely concerned that the wave of “soft overthrows” around the world could hit Iran next.

Whatever the reason, some Iranians believe Jahanbegloo’s detention is part of a wider trend of mounting pressure on their country’s civil society since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as president last August.

Since last December, Mansoor Ossanloo, the president of the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran Bus Company, has been in jail after helping organize demonstrations against bus drivers’ working conditions.

Ali Akbar Moussavi Khoeini, a former member of Parliament, was arrested last month at a rally organized by women’s rights activists.

No formal charges have been brought against them. In protest, hundreds of Iranians around the world held a three-day hunger strike last week, calling for the release of Jahanbegloo, Khoeini and Osanloo.

“The new administration has a policy, according to our own estimates, that they are gradually turning against us and squeezing all the intellectuals,” said Ebrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister who now heads the Freedom Movement of Iran, a leading opposition group.

Hojjat Allah Sharifi, a member of the Office to Consolidate Unity, a reformist student movement, said university students whose views oppose those of the government have also been facing more limitations.

“A lot of limitations for university students and people who are active in civil society existed before, but in the past year these actions have been more coordinated,” he said.

Some Iranian intellectuals and activists say the country’s human rights situation is being overshadowed by the international dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme, which Tehran says is purely peaceful. At the same time, some of them warn the Bush Administration against exploiting cases like Jahanbegloo’s as an excuse for pushing ‘regime change’ in Iran.

“We criticize violations of human rights and the deficit of democracy in Iran, but the solution is through ourselves, not foreign troops,” said Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, at a news conference earlier this month..

Canada has called on Iran to immediately release Jahanbegloo. Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay, has also sent a letter to his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, asking him to facilitate a consular visit or to permit a visit by a third party such as the Red Cross or a U.N. representative, according to Rodney Moore, a spokesman at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

He added that Mottaki has yet to respond to the letter.

Some activists have called on Canada to send a stronger message by cutting its diplomatic relations with Iran. Jahanbegloo’s arrest has further strained bilateral relations, which deteriorated after Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in detention in Iran’s Evin prison in 2003.

Moore, however, said Canada already downgraded relations with Iran after Kazemi’s death by limiting official contacts to three subjects: the Kazemi case, Iran’s human rights performance, and Iran’s nuclear program, in addition to no longer promoting bilateral trade. He said that a further reduction of relations would harm – rather than help – Jahanbegloo.

“Our relationship is already limited and it is difficult to see how to reduce it further without completely breaking off diplomatic relations, which would not help professor Jahanbegloo and would inhibit our ability to really transmit our messages to Iranian officials about Canada’s concerns,” he said.

Some Iranians who know Jahanbegloo say that his continued detention will harm the Islamic Republic not only by tarnishing its image but also by discouraging other intellectuals from promoting Iran’s engagement with the international community.

“Ramin always advocated non-violence and international engagement with Iran,” said one. “No matter how critical he was when he spoke, he said the only solution is engagement with the international community.”

“The regime should know that by taking people like Ramin, it gives disincentives to those who promote engagement with the regime,” he added. “When you start hitting at them, they’ll start saying, ‘Maybe isolation and pressure are better.’ This is not cost free for the regime.”