And one more 8-8-02: Analysis: A gloomy day for Iran reformists
By Modher Amin
From the International Desk
Published 8/8/2002 9:21 PM
upi.com
TEHRAN, Iran, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Reformists in Iran experienced yet another gloomy day on Thursday when they saw two of their newspapers banned and two prominent figures in their camp detained by the courts dominated by hardline conservatives.
The daily Ayene-ye Jonoub (Mirror of the South) was ordered closed after only a week of its publication. The daily, rising from a local weekly in southern Iran to a nationwide newspaper, was suspended on charges of publishing articles "contrary to the law" and a previous sentencing to jail of its editor, Mohammad Dadfar, a reformist member of Iran's parliament.
In a preemptive measure, the same court asked Minister of Culture, Ahmad Masjed Jamei, to prevent the publication of the daily Rouz-e No (New Day) which was due to hit Iranian newsstands shortly. The court argued that the paper was intended to replace the recently banned No-Rouz (also meaning New Day).
"According to statements published in the press, which have explicitly cited Rouz-e No as a replacement for No-Rouz...and given the similarity between the two in name and logo, the publication of Rouz-e No is considered as contradicting the press law until the six-month suspension of the daily No-Rouz expires," said the court in a letter to Masjed Jamei, adding that a complaint had been lodged against the would-be editor of the newspaper, Mohammad Naeemipour, who is also a leading reformist MP.
The suspension of these two newspapers brings to 24 the number of dailies suspended in the past two years or so by the judiciary, a bastion of conservative clerics. During the same period, the courts have jailed scores of journalists, activists, and intellectuals.
The controversial pro-reform journalist, Hashem Aghajari, who caused a stir in June after calling for religious restructuring in Iran, was detained in the western city of Hamadan on Thursday, according to the Iranian news agency IRNA.
A war veteran, a university lecturer and a leading member of the pro-reform leftist Organization of the Mujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution, Aghajari had angered the country's clergy when he criticized the Shiite principle of Taqlid (following religious leaders in religious doings), saying that Muslims "should not blindly follow" clerics like what he called "a monkey's mimicry."
Following several sessions of interrogations and a July 14 hearing behind closed doors in Hamadan where he delivered his speech, Aghajari had been released provisionally after posting a big bail. He, however, was later accused of "insulting the prophets", a charge which may carry a death penalty.
And yet to the disappointment of the reformists for the appeasement of the factional tensions, a prominent lawyer was arrested on his way to his office late Wednesday, according to a quote from a member of family.
Nasser Zarafshan, the family lawyer of the secular opposition leader Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh, who were murdered in 1998 by rogue intelligence agents, had been sentenced to five years in prison and 50 lashes, the Farsi-language Iran newspaper said Thursday. The charges included revealing state secrets and possession of weapons and alcoholic beverages, the use of which is illegal in the Islamic republic.
Zarafshan was tried by a military court earlier this year and an appeals court upheld in July the jail sentence and the flogging. Besides Zarafshan, three other lawyers have also received jail terms and deprivation periods of legal practice.
Despite a continuing struggle for change, Iran's reformists have become increasingly frustrated by conservative attempts to immobilize the reform movement initiated by Mohammad Khatami when he was first elected president in 1997.
"The present situation is not permanent at all," Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president's younger brother and leading reformist parliamentarian, said last month.
"There are three ways for our society, the first is victory for the Islamic republic through reform, the second is dictatorship under the cover of the Islamic republic which cannot be permanent...The third way is revolution and unrest." he said.
With the president seen as being unwilling or unable to challenge successive hardline crackdowns, a number of reformists have even hinted they might quit the regime, a threat which received harsh reactions from conservatives when it was openly announced a couple of weeks ago.
Disillusion has reached the ruling clergy itself. It is not more than a month since a popular cleric, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri, resigned his post of Friday prayers leader in the central major city of Isfahan in protest to what he called a chaotic situation in Iran. The cleric's resignation, which was handed in through a strongly worded letter to the nation, became a source of heated factional debates for some time.
President Khatami, on the other hand, is quoted as having said that he prefers a slower pace of reform to avoid unrest. He, however, has been accused by some of his allies of bowing to hardliners.
In his latest remarks on the tense political situation of the country, Khatami pointed out the risks of public dissatisfaction and warned hardliners that trying to eliminate opposition groups could send them underground.
"No problem will be solved through the superficial elimination of a group with a specific tendency, because it has been proved that tendencies which are suppressed cannot be eliminated," he told an academics' meeting Tuesday, two weeks after some 30 liberal dissidents received jail terms of up to 10 years and their political party, the Freedom Movement of Iran, was banned by a revolutionary court.
A group of 151 reformist members of parliament also issued an open letter at the weekend denouncing the grouping's ban and the prison sentences of the dissidents.
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