Akbar Ganji Stays Alive in Tehran
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Iran is a nation where democracy has struggled for a foothold—and come excruciatingly close to gaining one—many times in the last sixty years. Today, Akbar Ganji is among the loudest of the few remaining vocal dissidents in Iran. He has outspokenly denounced the dictatorial nature of the Islamic Republic from a cell in Evin Prison since April 22, 2000. Here is his story.
Of all of the totalitarian countries in the world, Iran is the one with the strongest democratic undercurrent. We’ll pick up the story of this movement in 1997, when reformist President Mohammad Khatami was swept into office much to the surprise—and chagrin—of the ruling mullahs, whose own candidate lost despite the routine rigging of the election. The fact that Khatami won despite electoral fraud demonstrated just how popular he was—and how unpopular the repressive practices of the conservative mullahs were. Khatami proceeded to introduce the liberalizing reforms he had promised during his campaign: a freer press, relaxed social and religious restrictions, fair municipal and parliamentary elections, and easier access to communications technology (internet cafes and satellite dishes).
In a matter of months, however, the shocked mullahs regained their balance and returned to their old repressive tactics. Dozens of pro-reform newspapers were banned; activists were tried in closed-door trials without jury; and hundreds of students, journalists, and activists were beaten, arrested and held without bail or contact with the outside world.
Enter Akbar Ganji, a journalist and writer. Surprisingly, Ganji enters the scene as a soldier in the Revolutionary Guard, the brute squad of the recently christened Islamic Republic. Throughout the 1980s Ganji rose through the ranks of government service, becoming Iran’s cultural attaché to Turkey in 1985. The repressive techniques of the regime were already disturbing an increasingly troubled Ganji. While in Turkey, Ganji dissuaded the youth of Turkey’s Islamic Rafah Party from pursuing their own Iranian-style Islamic revolution. After returning home in 1988, Ganji began to write for a prominent journal of modern Islamic theory and philosophy. It was there that he met the other intellectuals—many of whom were disillusioned government officials, like himself—who would solidify his conviction that the Islamic Republic needed reform.
Originally, like his intellectual coworkers, Ganji supported the idea of reform from within. But by the time a browbeaten Khatami was wrapping up his first presidential term in 2000, Ganji was convinced that internal reform could never succeed. Although still a devout Muslim, he began to insist that religion and the state must be kept separate in a just political system. He began to promote a nationwide referendum as a means of restructuring the government.
In early April 2000, he attended an academic conference at the Heinrich Boll Institute in Berlin entitled “Iran After the Elections.” There he openly discussed Iranian political and social reform with fellow scholars. Earlier in 2000, he’d also published a book, Dungeon of Ghosts, which placed blame for the 1998 murders of five writers and intellectuals on former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and leading Iranian politicians. Ganji was arrested upon returning to Iran on April 22, 2000.
Ganji has been in prison ever since, now having spent almost six years in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Last summer, he went on a hunger strike for almost three months. During his hunger strike, Ganji wrote two “Letters to the Free People of the World” in which he outlined his plight and condemned the abuses of the Islamic Republic’s dictatorship. The letters were smuggled out of prison and have been circulated around the world.
Sadly, Ganji is speaking up in a country where most others have been cowed into silence. Emboldened students staged massive protests at the beginning of Khatami’s presidency, but were forcefully quashed by the government-controlled militia. Khatami initially condemned these attacks on peaceful protestors, but after a rap on the knuckles by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, he quickly fell in line with the mullahs. Subsequent protests from 2000-2004 failed to evoke meaningful support from either Khatami or any of his fellow “reformists” in Parliament. By February 2004 the mullahs were in full control again, and when the radical Guardian Council rejected 2400 of the 8200 Parliamentary candidates (throwing out all of the incumbent reformist deputies), hardly a peep was heard from civilian protesters. Most had heard the mullah’s message loud and clear: challenge us and we will crush you.
Ganji, however, refused to listen. In March 2002 he released a Republican Manifesto laying out blueprints for building a real democracy in Iran. He added to the Manifesto in May 2005, ahead of the presidential elections “won” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In both parts, he urged the Iranian populace to boycott the unfair elections. These writings, along with his “Letters to the Free Peoples of the World,” joined three books of collected articles that Ganji had written before his imprisonment.
Ganji knows that he may die in his quest to bring freedom to the Iranian people. (During his imprisonment he’s been tortured, threatened with assassination, and lost fifty pounds through his hunger strike.) But he continues to speak out, because “this candle is about to die out, but this voice will raise louder voices in its wake.”
The silver lining to Ganji’s story is that his quest has risen, phoenix-like, from the rubble of the Iranian democratic reform movement. Although many others have been silenced, Ganji carries on. And he is helped along by the Iranian expatriate community, one of the largest in the world. Many of these Iranians are staunch democrats who escaped during the Revolution. They and their children are spreading Ganji’s story across the globe, translating his letters on web logs and telling his story to anyone who will listen. Parts of the world have noticed. Ganji is an Honorary Member of the Canadian, English and Lichtenstein PEN Centers, and a recipient of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression 2000 International Press Freedom Award. In July 2005, the White House called on Tehran to release Ganji “immediately and unconditionally,” denounced Iran’s human rights record, and urged the U.N. to take up the case.
This public spotlight may be one of the reasons that Ganji is still alive. Many less famous journalists weren’t as “lucky,” if that’s the right word. As long as Ganji is still alive, he will continue to denounce tyranny and fight for liberty in his country. Ganji is a beacon for Iranians whose political leaders buckled when it mattered most. Under his guidance, Jefferson’s “tree of liberty” still has a fighting chance in Iran.
