Ahmadinejad’s skeptics were right

By HAMID KHOSRAVI

INSTITUTE FOR WAR & PEACE REPORTING

TEHRAN, Iran — During an appearance at Colombia University in the United States in September, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that Iran was one of the freest countries in the world.

But a look at the recent wave of arrests and the ongoing harassment of those critical of the regime show that his New York audience had every reason to be skeptical of his claim.

The government appears to have targeted six specific groups — students, political activists, trade unionists, journalists, women’s rights advocates and ethnic minorities — during the most recent crackdown.

While news on the government’s actions is hard to come by domestically, news outlets based overseas have been regularly reporting on what appears to be a systematic campaign against the regime’s opponents.

Student activists, in particular, have attracted government attention.

Three activists at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, arrested in May for complaining about the government’s human-rights record, were sentenced in October to up to three years in prison for insulting Islam and clerics.

And in November, three more prominent student activists were arrested for protesting the detention of their fellow students.

In addition, dozens of members of the Office for Fostering Unity — the main student association here — have been detained within the last few months. The Iranian Graduates’ Organization has also had its office closed and its leading members detained.

Meanwhile, with tensions growing in advance of the March parliamentary election, political foes of the current administration have also been the subject of the government crackdown, especially in the cities of Qom, Esfahan, Qazvin and Tabriz.

Labor leaders who have protested the government’s economic policies have also been arrested across the country. And journalists who have attempted to report on the growing crackdown have been stifled by the government.

Women’s rights advocates have been a particular target of the regime, especially those involved in the Campaign for One Million Signatures, a group pressing for changes to discriminatory laws. The authorities routinely raid meetings of women activists around the country.

Of all those currently the subject of the government crackdown, ethnic minorities have received some of the harshest treatment while attracting the least public sympathy. Even the execution of three members of an Arab separatist group in November sparked little public protest.

While reformers and human rights activists express concern about the apparent pattern of widespread detentions, they say they’re equally troubled by a high level of public apathy toward the curtailment of human rights.

Some blame the absence of media coverage of the crackdown for the lack of public interest.

But as one youth in Tehran put it, “You need to behave with discretion if you want to avoid being singled out.”

X Hamid Khosravi is a political reporter in Tehran who writes for Mianeh, a project of The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services