Who’s forgetting Iran?
Francis Sedgemore, Monday 17 May 2010
Terry Glavin complains that the recent judicial lynchings of Iranian Kurds, together with a general strike in Iran’s eastern towns, have gone all but unnoticed in the west. And he’s quite right. After the heady days of post-election demonstrations in Tehran and other cities, media and public attention outside Iran has drifted to more domestic concerns. Mine has too, truth be told.
Kurdish schoolteacher Farzad Kamangar and his pupils. Sentenced to death following a trial that lasted all of five minutes, Kamangar was on 9 May 2010 hanged by the Iranian regime for being an ‘enemy of God’.
So what’s been happening in Iran? Its leaders’ bellicosity has ratcheted up a notch, as if that were possible, and during the weekend before last they gave the international community a single digit salute by hanging 11 citizens, five of whom were Kurdish community and political activists. In addition to sending an ‘up yours’ message to the world, the intention of the Tehran regime is to discourage people from demonstrating against the government on the 12 June anniversary of Mahmoud the Mad’s ‘re-election’ to the puppet-presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In the west, barely a peep has emanated from those supposedly concerned about human rights and international social solidarity, and the media have largely buried their news reports, if they’ve bothered to cover the stories in the first place. A few NGOs, Human Rights Watch among them, have noted recent events in Iran, but their efforts have either been mute, or the media have for whatever reason decided not to bite.
Who’s forgetting Iran?. My question might imply that not everyone is turning a blind eye to the plight of our Persian, Kurdish and Arab brothers and sisters, and to a degree that’s true. The US State Department and its secretary Hillary Clinton have recently been highlighting Iran, although I haven’t noticed anything about the recent executions or general strike. America’s focus is largely on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and wider geopolitical influence.
As for the European Union, I imagine that the Commission’s de facto foreign minister Catherine Ashton and her department remain bogged down with such matters of overriding import as human resources and departmental budgets. The European Commission’s shiny new External Relations department has so far this month issued scores of press releases, but when it comes to the Middle East all eyes are on Israel. Maybe in the deluge of press material I missed a robust denunciation of the Iranian regime for lynching its citizens.
If it carries on like this, I can see Iranians ritually burning the EU yellow stars flag in Tehran’s Azadi Square, and waving the American stars and stripes in celebration. Maybe I should combine my international solidarity efforts with exploiting this as a business opportunity. Times are hard.
Feed the writer! 
Tuesday 18 May 2010 at 01:18 GMT
Er, respecting diversity of responses to public order issues in other cultures…
Don’t want to set an example of destabilising a strategically important country at this sensitive juncture…
Jews don’t seem to be to blame (though we’ve not read Counterpunch yet)…
Tuesday 18 May 2010 at 09:54 GMT
Boyo – Ashton will be offering you a job if you carry on like this. And maybe that would be a good thing – a chance to extend the influence of the Cymru Rouge into the very heart of the EU.
Tuesday 18 May 2010 at 19:55 GMT
“In the west, barely a peep has emanated from those supposedly concerned about human rights and international social solidarity.”
Does the Guardian speak for this crowd? Because Milne has already said that the vote in Iran was essentially free (and better, he said, than in some western countries), and no one should encourage the overthrow of a democratically elected leader who had the support of his people.
Just sayin.
Then there’s this:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article7124388.ece
Wednesday 19 May 2010 at 00:48 GMT
The inner of the EU are something the Rouges would like to expose. Wound on a stick, if possible.
Wednesday 19 May 2010 at 13:26 GMT
I don’t think it would be fair to single-out the Grauniad for special criticism. After all, in its favour the paper published some extensive live blogging of the post-election demonstrations in Iran. Blog fodder aside, comment articles by Seumas Milne or whoever do not define the Guardian as a whole.
Apologies for being so uncharacteristically reasonable; normal service will be resumed in due course.
Monday 24 May 2010 at 16:26 GMT
Francis, i’d be interested to know what you hope to achieve with these albeit perfectly laudable expressions of solidarity with the iranian opposition.
Outsiders that seek to “put pressure” on the regime obviously run the risk of playing into the regime’s hands.
And this is not to be another 1989 moment. A velvet revolution is not about to be ushered in. If an uprising takes root the old fault-lines between islamic zealot and communist zealot may open up again as they did in the years following 1979 (communism rather than social democracy is still something of a rallying point for the opposition).
What i am getting at is: do you see military intervention as the inevitable and desirable end-game, even if aimed only at destroying their nuclear programme?
Monday 24 May 2010 at 17:52 GMT
What do I hope to achieve? I’m not sure what I can personally achieve, but expressing solidarity with the Iranian people is a moral action, and this surely requires no justification.
As for outsiders putting pressure on the regime, this is a complete non-argument, which, if accepted, would have ruled out any international solidarity in those cases where said pressure helped avoid, or minimise, violence in the replacement of dictatorial regimes with democratic government.
I have some personal contact with Iranians, and they have said quite clearly that they value active solidarity from people outside Iran.
As for military intervention, the only way to answer your question is by saying: I hope it doesn’t come to that. But if it does, such intervention may well receive widespread support in the Arab world, to the extent of Arab states providing Israel with military and logistical support. It’s a funny old world, innit?