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Weekly Commentary
Zahra Kazemi’s
Legacy: Standing up to the Mullahs
Alas, it had to be Zahra Kazemi’s life to again bring the
world’s attention to the barbaric treatment Iranians,
particularly women, get from Iran’s ruling regime. Still, it is
very quiet out there. There was no condemnation and no serious
international response to hold Tehran to account for its
murderous conduct in light of new appalling revelations.
The 54-year-old Iranian-Canadian photojournalist was murdered in
prison in June 2003. She was arrested outside of Tehran’s
notorious Evin prison while taking photographs of the families
of young Iranians arrested during student protests against the
ruling theocracy.
According to a former Iranian army doctor who examined her
before she died in a military hospital emergency room, Kazemi
was beaten, tortured and raped. Dr. Shahram Azam, who recently
received political asylum in Canada, has told Canadian media
that Kazemi was brought from Evin prison unconscious with
bruises all over her body. She had a skull fracture, two broken
fingers, missing fingernails, a crushed big toe and a smashed
nose, deep scratches on the neck and evidence of flogging on the
legs and back.
Still Western capitals from Washington to London, were
intentionally silent in condemnation of Tehran’s barbaric murder
of Kazemi. The EU’s faltering nuclear negotiations with Tehran,
it seems, has left them speechless in denouncing the mullahs’
blatant murder of Kazemi. Washington, eager not to appear
hindering the EU-Tehran meaningless nuclear talks, has kept a
low profile on this and other rights violations in Iran.
Canadian government’s statements in light of new revelations
amounted to nothing more than a rehash of its previous
positions. Human rights organizations have not faired any
better.
Kazemi’s case opens a window into the role Iranian women are
playing against the tyranny of mullahs. Make no mistake, as an
Iranian woman who in her capacity as a journalist defied the
mullahs, her gender was the main reason to arouse the barbaric
wrath of the theocratic establishment. Her tragic murder made
Kazemi the face of thousands of Iranian women who have died or
have been tortured in the hands of mullahs for daring to make a
stand for freedom and resisted their tyranny.
Kazemi’s brave defiance of the mullahs by no means was an
isolated case. From the 1906 Constitutional movement to the 1979
anti-monarchic revolution to the nationwide resistance to the
ruling theocracy, women have always been a key component of
anti-dictatorial movements in Iran.
Misogyny is the lynch pin of the fundamentalist ideology ruling
Iran. Institutionalized violence is carried out in the name of
God. No other government in the world has executed as many women
as the Iranian regime has since the 1979 revolution. A common
method of punishing women in public is by stoning them to death.
At least 14 women have been sentenced to stoning or stoned to
death since 1997 when Mohammad Khatami came to office. Iran has
had the highest number of female prisoners in the world.
The women in Iran, of course, have persevered. When they rise
against oppression, they shake the regime to its foundations.
Just last month, an anti-government riot erupted in Tehran
following a soccer match between Iran and Japan. Women who are
banned from attending soccer matches actively took part in this
riot calling for the overthrow of the mullahs.
It is outright unconscionable that as the new revelations about
Kazemi’s murder made it through international media, the
mullahs’ president Mohammad Khatami received a red-carpet
welcome in Austria and France. Eager to strike new lucrative
deals with Tehran, the EU has made of a mockery of its long-held
claim to be the land of upholding human rights. When it comes to
choosing between commerce and Zahra Kazemis of Iran, the EU
capitals made their choice a long time ago: Euro over human
rights.
The most meaningful comment about Kazemi’s case was probably
made last week by her son, Stephan Hashemi. "I'm continuing what
my mother has started by standing up to the Iranian regime," he
said. And that is exactly men and women of Iran will do to bring
the ruling tyrants down. (USADI)
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The Wall Street Journal
March 31,
2005
Iranian
Opposition Group Cites Reactor Concerns
An Iranian opposition group claims Iran has accelerated
construction of a heavy-water nuclear reactor in the western
part of the country that, when completed, could be used to make
fuel for atomic weapons.
If true, yesterday's charge by the National Council of
Resistance of Iran could further complicate talks between Iran
and the so-called EU-3 -- France, Britain and Germany -- to
secure "objective guarantees" Iran isn't pursuing nuclear
weapons.
The Council's claims couldn't be independently verified, and the
group's largest member, the People's Mujaheddin of Iran, is
listed as a terrorist entity by the U.S. and Britain. U.S. and
International Atomic Energy Agency officials have expressed
skepticism about a number of the Council's more recent claims.
However, in August 2002 it exposed the existence of the Arak
site and an extensive covert Iranian program to enrich uranium.
Those claims were confirmed by the IAEA, the United Nations'
Vienna-based nuclear watchdog.
According to the Council, Iran aims to complete a heavy-water
production facility at the Qatran Complex in Arak by August,
after gas leaks and other technical problems delayed an earlier
target date of November 2004. Heavy water is used to control the
nuclear reactions in a reactor.
In addition, the group claims Iranian officials have ordered
work speeded up at another part of the complex -- a planned
40-megawatt heavy-water research reactor -- and that workers are
operating in double shifts. Iran says it is building that
research reactor for civilian purposes, but the plutonium waste
from heavy-water reactors can be used to make weapons fuel.
Work on the Arak facility is legal and wouldn't breach the
letter of Iran's deal with the Europeans, under which Iran
suspended all activities related to its uranium-enrichment
program, another potential route to weapons-grade fuel. Arak has
been of less concern because the foundations for it only
recently were laid and Iran is still some distance from
producing plutonium waste, a Western diplomat in Vienna said.
However, according to a British official familiar with the
nuclear talks, confirmation that Iran is accelerating work at
Arak would breach the spirit of the negotiations. The problem,
this official said, is that while the Europeans are trying to
secure permanent "objective guarantees" that Iran isn't pursuing
nuclear weapons, completing the Arak facility "would be a jigsaw
piece in an overall puzzle -- the Iranians having at some stage
in the future a capability to produce material for weapons
use."…
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The Sunday Times
April 3, 2005
Iran offers cash
for bombs to break Palestinian truce
PALESTINIAN fighters have revealed that Hezbollah, the militant
Lebanese group backed by Iran, is offering to pay for attacks
aimed at shattering the fragile truce with Israel.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, has made it clear that
one suicide bomber in Tel Aviv could prompt him to abandon
negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and may even delay
Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, which is planned for July.
In the first concrete evidence of Iranian interference in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict the men, all on Israel’s most
wanted list, said they had received payments of up to $9,000
sent by Hezbollah to the West Bank for attacks against Israel
during the past four years.
They said that most of the money from Hezbollah had been sent to
Islamic Jihad, the militant fundamentalist group that has sent
suicide bombers into Israeli cities. The men, members of the al
Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — the military wing of Fatah, the secular
group founded by Yasser Arafat — knew of the payments because
they liaised with Islamic Jihad in their area, near the West
Bank city of Nablus.
“They would send Islamic Jihad money in amounts of something
like $4,000,” said Ala’a Sanakreh, the 27-year-old leader of the
group. “It’s easy — they just use Western Union.”…
Sanakreh said that although he was not privy to politics on any
senior level, he believed from his discussions with local
Islamic Jihad members that the money offered for fresh attacks
came from Iranian intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard.
The money from Hezbollah, which takes its orders from Tehran,
appears to be evidence of Iran’s desire to stop a negotiated
peace between Israel and the Palestinians…
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Agence France Presse
April 4, 2005
Iran's press
denounces John Paul II for compromise with Jews
TEHRAN - Iran's hardline press on Monday accused the late pope
John Paul II of compromising with Jews, pointing out that the
Jewish state was not only an arch enemy of the Islamic republic.
"Not only did the pope never condemn the crimes of the Zionist
regime in the territories, the Vatican officially recognised its
existence," the Jomhuri Islami newspaper complained.
The paper also cautioned that the expansion of Islam "was a
constant worry" for a pontiff it said "compromised with the
Zionist regime".
The Hamshahri newspaper, also on the right wing, complained that
the late head of the Roman Catholic Church "caved in to pressure
from the Jewish lobby", despite "Jewish responsibility for the
death of Christ".
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