Jun. 09, 2010 - Issue #764: Hot Summer Guide 2010

Issues

Where is the movement?

The silencing of Iran's Green movement

For a few weeks last June, the post-election protests in Iran dominated international headlines. They began when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner within a few hours of the polls closing. The official results were significantly different from the polls that had been taken just days before the election, and various reports emerged suggesting large-scale electoral fraud.

Iranians took to the streets in massive protests that were quickly met with brutal violence. Within days, hundreds of people were rounded up and anti-riot police and Basij forces raided Tehran University's dormitory, firing tear gas and attacking students. The people's biggest show of strength was on June 15, when approximately three million rallied peacefully on the streets of the capital city, many of them carrying green symbols and signs that read, "Where is My Vote?"

A year later, it seems like many aren't quite sure what to make of the recent events in Iran. Has the Green Movement, as a movement for social and political change, disappeared? This certainly seems to be the opinion of some in the American political elite, and a position held by a range of people from political analysts Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett, to Washington Post columnist Thomas Erdbrink. Others, including comentators such as Paul Craig Roberts, Phil Wilayto, Edward S Herman and David Peterson, ask why the world ought to pay any attention at all to Iran's political upheavals, preferring to view what conflict there is as "internal matters," and none of the world's business. The former view lacks a sense of history, while the latter threatens to legitimize the violence and repression carried out by the Iranian state on its own people.

Iranian history, with its century-and-a-half of anti-colonial and democratic struggles, has never seen the Islamic Republic meet the popular demands of the protestors but, instead, suppress them. Since the election, even slightly critical newspapers have been shut down, two of the main opposition parties have been banned and scores of dissident figures have been kept in jail. In the meantime, no one has been held responsible for dozens of protestors who were killed in last summer's protests or under torture in prison.

Nevertheless, the demands resurface on different occasions, as does the broad dissatisfaction with the status quo. Despite the violent repression of dissent, the Green Movement has created a space in Iran's real and virtual public sphere where various groups are negotiating their demands and finding common ground with other groups.

The Leverett/Erdbrink view fails to see the different forms and expressions that the movement has taken. Students, women, religious and ethnic minorities and workers are engaged in a laborious grassroots activism articulating neglected and particular demands. The recent general strike in Iran's Kurdish areas is only one example. Another example was a May Day statement by a coalition of labour organizations demanding the right to form independent labour unions, as well as the right to "strike, protest, march, assemble and speak freely." There has also been a rigorous discussion among Iranians both inside and outside of the country about the role of religion in politics and its relation to the state.

Along with the idea that there is no popular movement for dissent within Iran comes the idea that "crippling sanctions" are justifiable. The proposed measures, it is argued, are meant to discourage Iran from continuing and expanding its nuclear program.

In addition, the Obama administration has continued to entertain the "military option"—including a nuclear strike—against Iran; a policy option that is vocally endorsed by many politicians in Israel. The new military threats aren't simply rhetorical. They include a recent increase in the US missile build-up in the Persian Gulf, as well as the shipment of hundreds of bunker-buster bombs to the occupied island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Even though a few notable Iranian academics and political commentators outside of Iran have endorsed the call for sanctions, it seems that the majority of Iranians are against any military or economic threats coming from outside. Many leading opposition figures from Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist candidate in last year's elections, to Shirin Ebadi, Iran's leading human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner and Akbar Ganji, award-winning journalist who spent six years in the infamous Evin prison, have strongly opposed economic sanctions as measures that would "only hurt the Iranian people." They are also joined by many individuals and groups inside and outside of the country.

In an open letter to the heads of state for the G5+1 (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China), a grassroots women's organization called Madaran-e Solh (Mothers for Peace) reminded those leaders that the victims of sanctions against Iraq were overwhelmingly Iraqi civilians, particularly children. The letter further stated, "Iranians have willingly paid the price for achieving democracy and progress, and they embrace the empathy of global public opinion. Sanctions and economic pressures, however, will prevent the Iranian people from achieving their rights. The heads of the these states know full well that their interventions and economic pressures play a significant role in the reinforcement of conditions of violence and oppression."

Opposition to military and economic threats against Iran is also coming from another corner. Even as many progressives and anti-war activists have simultaneously opposed war mongering and economic sanctions while also standing in solidarity with the Iranian people's democratic struggle, some opponents of the empire's hegemony have simply dismissed the movement. This is the line taken by commentators such as Roberts, Wilayto, Herman and Peterson. Dismissing the protest movement as the internal matters of Iran and disregarding it entirely threatens to legitimize the state's violence and repression—further endangering Iran's people.

For decades, aggression and occupation by the United States and its allies in the Middle East has been facilitated and justified by the systematic demonization of Iranians, Arabs and generally of Islam, and of the Orient. To challenge this static, backwards and dark picture it is critical to pay attention to the local voices and to take note of the grassroots movements that are unfolding in that region. To misread Iran's indigenous movement as another (failed) colour revolution, or to dismiss it as something "internal" to another country and another people perpetuates the same picture that many Iranians are today fighting to change. V

Siavash Saffari is a founding member of Solidarity with Iran's Democratic Movement - Edmonton (SIDME). 

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