Transcript

Host: This is “On the Line,” and I'm Eric Felten.

Four Iranian-Americans are being held against their will by the radical clerical regime in Iran. Two of them, Middle East scholar Haleh Esfandiari and social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh, were paraded on Iranian state-run television and forced to confess to vague crimes against the state. The other two American citizens, journalist Parnaz Azima and peace activist Ali Shakeri, have also been charged with threatening Iran’s national security.

The United States is calling on Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to release all Americans currently being held on groundless charges. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U-S is appalled at their mistreatment:

McCormack: "These are people who have devoted large chunks of their lives to building bridges between the Iranian and the American people. So to prevent these kinds of people from especially leaving Iran really sends a negative message and is an unfortunate comment about the nature of this particular regime."

Host: Americans, of course, are not the only political prisoners in Iran. Iranian democratic activists and protestors are routinely arrested and beaten by police and government-sponsored vigilante groups. Delaram Ali was among some seventy women's rights activists arrested for taking part in a peaceful demonstration in Tehran in 2006. They were protesting Iranian laws that discriminate against women. Though most of the women were later released, Delaram Ali was held for a year before being convicted of the so-called crimes of “propaganda against the state” and “disrupting public order.” She was sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned for another three years.

Those imprisoned in Iran include journalists, student activists, labor leaders, and even dissident Muslim clerics. Amnesty International reports that Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi has been sentenced to death, supposedly for waging war against God. He was arrested in October 2006 after calling for the separation of religion from politics.

According to the U-S State Department's latest human rights report, Iran's government "flagrantly violated freedom of speech and assembly, intensifying its crackdown against dissident, journalists, and reformers -- a crackdown characterized by arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, disappearances, the use of excessive force, and the widespread denial of fair public trials."

Joining us to talk about the state of human rights in Iran and U-S policy toward Iran are Fakhteh Zamani, director of The Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran; Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran; and Heba El-Shazli, regional program director for the Middle East at the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. Welcome, and thanks for joining us today. I appreciate it.

Boroumand: Thank you.

Host: Roya Boroumand, let's start by talking about the Americans who are being held in Iran right now. What's going on with that?

Boroumand: These Americans -- Iranian-Americans have done nothing illegal, nothing that the government did not know about. They've been carrying out projects for years, authorized by the government. So what is happening right now is that the government has a general policy of cutting contacts between the Iranian people and the West and America in particular. And these people are one of the vehicles -- important vehicles of these contacts. And so they are deterring people to continue these contacts by giving this treatment to Haleh and Kian. So Haleh and Kian are paraded on television after being held months incommunicado, without visitation, without family visitation, nor an attorney, and they've been interrogated. And this is a practice that goes back to the inception of the Islamic Republic, where critics of the government or people whose agenda did not specifically match the ones of the government, be they revolutionary or monarchists or secularists or whatever, this treatment was given to them so that they stop associating and they stop speaking up. And so we have a parade of leftists, of religious people, of students, of activists -- of all kinds of activists on television after months of torture and months of detention incommunicado.

Host: Fakhteh Zamani -- this a common thing in Iran, this kind of forced confession on television?

Zamani: Yes, with minorities, you see that Arabs -- They had some activists. They were tortured. Baluchis were tortured to confess on T-V. And, also, Azerbaijanis after the May [2006] demonstrations -- They tortured some young activists, forcing them to admit to receiving money from U-S government or Israeli government to organize demonstrations, while all the blame should have been directed on insulting Azerbaijanis in a state-run newspaper. This is also happening with the students in minority regions. It's a common practice.

Host: So, among Azeri-Iranians there had been in a state-run newspaper -- There had been cartoons insulting Azeri-Iranians in the Iranian newspapers, and there were protests among Azeri-Iranians that the government cracked down on and then took the people who had been protesting and forced them to confess to being agents against the state of some sort?

Zamani: Yes, we know that. We all know that, in all the state-run newspapers, everything is checked thoroughly, and there’s a censorship that has been going on since the start of revolution. But they managed to get a cartoon out with an Azeri depicted as a cockroach. And they had ten ways of killing these cockroaches. And this insult was distributed throughout the region in this newspaper. And people came out to demonstrate -- not just for that, but years of insults that have been going on in the state-run newspapers and T-V. And we saw what happened.

Host: Heba El-Shazli, how does this practice of forcing confessions and televising confessions affect activists who are engaged in labor relations?

El-Shazli: In our particular situation with the labor unions, this goes back for the last two to three years, starting with the attempt to celebrate May Day in 2004 in Saghez by a group of a number of unions there, independent unions. Leading them were the bakery workers. They were beaten. They were not allowed to have their manifestation, their celebration, if you will, of May Day. Then we have the seventeen thousand bus drivers in Tehran. Tehran is a very congested city. The bus drivers are the main arteries of people’s transportation within the city. They have a very, very hard job. They were asking for very basic things -- the recognition of an independent union, parity of their wages with public employees, having two sets of uniforms for the summer and the winter – we’re talking basic things -- having an assistant in the bus to help them. So [they were] economic requests, if you will -- economic demands. What has happened is their leader was beaten, taken to jail. A knife was taken to his tongue, where now he has a permanent lisp, because they cut a piece of his tongue. Not only the leaders of this union, but their families, their children. They came into their homes in December of 2005 and while people were sleeping, to avert a large demonstration, hundreds were put in jail. Slowly, they've been released. And today, again, Mansour Osanloo is now still in Evin prison.

Host: Roya Boroumand.

Boroumand: And I have to say, there is something that links the minorities to the union drivers -- the unionists to women activists to student activists is that all these people are trying to have some sort of associative life outside of the government and independent from the government. And you have to realize that, in 1979, we were coming out of a dictatorship. However, we had some degree of autonomy in association. The bus union drivers were very important -- the union, and some other unions. The government dismantled everything. Even the bar association was dismantled. And so slowly, in the year 2000, these people have tried and believed that it may be possible to start again. And so the government is trying to get rid of that. These are horizontal movements that have no particular allegiance to the government and are worried about their own rights -- the right to associate and the rights associated to their work or their future or their studies. And they have found solidarity, as you can see, outside Iran horizontally -- not with the states, but with their peers. And the government cannot tolerate that.

Host: Fakhteh Zamani, does the government see any kind of association as a threat to the regime?

Zamani: After the revolution, for minorities, they had given more rights in their constitution farther than what used to be. But for minorities, it's different, in their constitution, they had given them rights, but for people asking for implementation of their own constitution, it gets people arrested like Abbas Lisani. He's in prison for over a year. One of the things he asked for was the implementation of constitution, and now he's in prison, he was tortured, and his family's been threatened. And others, as well -- even having a sign in minority areas asking for implementation of Article Fifteen or Nineteen gets you long prison terms and torture. And all the court orders in Iran -- none of them are according to Iranian law. Everything is made up. Only vague crimes are written down in these court orders. And sometimes, they even have court orders with an accusation like “browsing the Internet,” or "six months for browsing the Internet," or voting for candidates that they have selected for people to vote for. And young activists like Mohammad Reza Evezpoor is imprisoned for writing. He's a Turk -- he has been in and out of prison since [he was] fourteen and he was tortured. You see that there's this thing going on, as you see that none of them are committing any crimes, they are not breaking any Iranian laws, but at the same time, asking for their rights that they have had given to them in the constitution, [they are] imprisoned.

Host: Heba El-Shazli, is the Iranian government succeeding in keeping people from having relations with other people in association, in civic organizations, whether they be labor or ethnic or some other kind of combination?

El-Shazli: No. The outpouring has been amazing. February 15, 2006 -- in sixteen different countries around the world, on that day, everyone stood in global solidarity. The global labor movement stood up and said, “No, this is not acceptable.” So, precisely as Roya was saying, this is appealing to their peers, to the labor movement, to workers, men and women around the world, who are standing up and saying -- and supporting their brothers and sister in Iran, irrespective of what governments are saying or doing, because we're talking about fundamental core labor standards that are exactly like you see in the human rights declaration and that are accepted universally. And Iran is a member of the International Labor Organization. It has a duty to respect those fundamental rights. So, on August 9th – There’s another call for action for a day of solidarity for both Salehi from Saghez and for Mansour Osanloo from the Sherkat-e Vahed bus drivers -- so absolutely not. It has been absolutely amazing -- the number of workers around the world who have stood up to support their brothers and sisters in Iran.

Host: Roya Boroumand, let's talk a little bit about how people in Iran are trying to associate with one another and how they're trying to communicate. One of the things we've seen that the regime does regularly is that not only has there been a crackdown on protests against the regime, peaceful protests, but also a crackdown against anyone who would report on those protests. And of course, in the West, perhaps the best-known case of this is of Zara Kazemi, who was an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who was taking pictures of the protest outside Evin prison and then was herself dragged into Evin prison, where she was raped and murdered. And the Iranian government has still not accounted for that. How do people try to get information to one another in this kind of environment?

Boroumand: Information is very difficult. Since journalists cannot write freely, people cannot read freely. So of course, the role of people outside Iran becomes crucial, because this is how people from inside Iran give information to people inside Iran, because they can't do it necessarily like this, so they have to go around and go through the outside. That's why the Internet is so important. Web logs are important. Cell phones are important. So the information circulates, no matter what -- no matter the filtering, no matter the repressive measures, because there are too many Iranians, and the technology is too advanced for the government to totally block it. We are not in the ‘80s. We are not the Soviet Union of the ‘60s. It’s impossible to close them. And the Iranians know, and the Iranian regime wants to appear less closed than it really is. So it can't just say, “Okay, I'm Saddam Hussein, and I just shut off the Internet. There is no Internet.” They don't want to do that. So then they're stuck, because they arrest someone and they torture him, and a journalist like Adnan Hassanpour in Kurdistan -- There is a boycott movement. The Iranian government doesn't want the international public opinion to know that the Iranians are heavily boycotting the presidential election. So once the elections are over, they go after the activists who have promoted the boycott. One of them in Kurdistan is killed in a very brutal manner. People pour into the street to protest. They are shot at. So the journalist, who is not a revolutionary, has never promoted regime change or anything, reports on the demonstration. The newspaper gets closed. He goes in. He gets kept in for months, beaten, tortured. He comes out with a bail and a sentence on him. And then he gives an interview to V-O-A because people are sick of it, you know? They feel like they have nothing to lose. And so no matter what you do -- They may be silent for a few months, but they start again, because they have no hope. So the government cannot close down communication. It can just make it difficult.

Host: Fakhteh Zamani, we've seen among Azeri-Iranians the same effort to lock up journalists who have reported on the issue. Has that worked among Azeris?

Zamani: No, it would never work. When I started this work, I was amazed at how difficult it was to get information when I was starting it, but now it is, at least for me, is very easy. Because they arrested Sa'id Metinpour, who's a journalist, I have teenagers who know how to use computers. They would never suspect them of reporting, and there are teenagers that -- they are sitting in [Internet cafes] and then they are sending all the reports and information. And these reports are forwarded to all the human rights organizations. They would never succeed because the whole society -- the Azerbaijani society -- they are tired of this government restricting everything, and they're trying to control every aspect of their lives. And teenagers are the ones that are doing a wonderful job writing reports, and they are getting information. And the secret police is unable to track down everybody.

Host: Heba El-Shazli, at this point, is the Iranian regime acting from strength, or are they acting from weakness?

El-Shazli: I think from absolute terror. They're terrified. The daily economic life of average Iranians is very difficult. They cannot make ends meet. They cannot provide for their sofre -- the “sofre” is the table -- to provide food on the table. There's mass privatization going on. People are losing their jobs. People are on contracts -- temporary. They don't know whether they'll have a job today or tomorrow. Prices are going up -- the oil -- we've seen -- the petroleum, prices of gasoline -- and the natural reaction that happened on the street in Tehran and other places. So the day-to-day life of Iranians is increasingly becoming very difficult. And what these workers are asking for is the right to negotiate, to bargain, the right to be able to advocate and to form an independent union. And I'm sure many other organizations would like to do the same. These are basic economic rights, and they're being forbidden. They're being stopped. But the government will not succeed.

Boroumand: And it's the same for the students. They started very close to the reformers, the associations. These associations had been formed by the revolutionaries, so their loyalty went to the regime and the revolution. And then they started to think about what's wrong and suggest: “Maybe this is wrong, and this shouldn't happen, and this shouldn't happen.” And before you knew, they were being punished for it. And then again, they would say, “Well, this doesn't work. The elections are not fair.” Punishment -- I mean, I have a list of how many students have been tried, thrown out of university, disciplined, thrown out of the dormitories just because they are calling for little reforms. So these students -- They get in. They get out. They don't want to see the regime anymore.

Host: Given the ruthlessness with which the regime regularly responds, what are the prospects for these various groups within Iran calling for change, calling for reform of some sort, to be able to get together and stand against the regime?

Boroumand: I really believe that people will continue. There are a lot of brave people in Iran, and they will continue to do so, but they need visibility from the outside world. And the visibility -- The media is instrumental in giving them visibility. As long as they have this visibility by the civil society, their peers outside Iran, and the media, the government will not touch them.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word for today. We're all out of time. But I'd like to thank my guests -- Fakhteh Zamani of The Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran; Roya Boroumand of the Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran; and Heba El-Shazli of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For "On the Line," I'm Eric Felten.