See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil: Iran regime issues confidential gag order to press on eve of November 4 mass protests

The Iranian regime has sent a warning to the country's press to censor their coverage of mass protests planned by the Green Movement on November 4, according to a confidential letter published by opposition web site Mowjeh Sabzeh Azadi. (A translation of the complete letter is available at the end of this article.)

November 4 is the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, and for thirty years the Islamic regime has celebrated the date with demonstrations against what it calls 'world arrogance,' a catchphrase which usually denotes America.

But this year's events are attracting unwanted guests as the opposition movement has announced plans to exploit the official ceremonies to organize its own protests around the country. The tactic has proven successful on two prior occasions, Tehran Friday Prayers in July and Ghods Day in September.

In a letter stamped 'urgent' and 'top secret,' Deputy Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Alireza Malekian warned against steps taken by 'groups opposed to the regime' which may 'deviate public opinion from the ceremonies on the national day of struggle against world arrogance.' The missive was dated October 22 and addressed to the directors of national newspapers, news services, and web sites.

Malekian, who is in charge of press and information affairs, called on the media outlets to not publish 'any news, photos, or topics' which may provoke tension or breach public order.

Alireza Malekian

Malekian spent much of the 1980s as a student leader at the University of Medical Sciences. He did not advance beyond an undergraduate degree since his energies appear to have been focused on his role as a political commissar and mobilizer of the student jihad for the Iran-Iraq War. He came late to the world of journalism, having first been rewarded with the position of deputy head of the University of Medical Sciences, before transferring to the conservative Keyhan daily as deputy editor. Keyhan is directly controlled by the office of Leader Ali Khamenei.

Malekian stressed that his letter was classified and should be safeguarded as such. At least one of his correspondents failed to heed his orders.

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The following is a translation of the letter:

Islamic Republic of Iran
Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance
Deputy Minister for Press and Dissemination of Information Affairs

[stamped] Urgent
[stamped] Top Secret

To all honorable directors of newspapers
honorable general managers of domestic news services
Internet web sites.

With greetings,

Given the possibility that groups opposed to the regime may engage in actions on the eve of November 4, the anniversary of the seizure of America's den of spies, and may deviate public opinion from the ceremonies on the national day of struggle against world arrogance, and given that some domestic political factions, in continuation of the post-presidential election issues, possibly intend to politically exploit the situation and disrupt the peace, following up on past correspondence and stressing that the outcome of the tenth presidential election has been confirmed by official and legal authorities, I request that you refrain from disseminating any news, photo, or topic which can lead to tension in the society or breach public order.

With the assurance that this letter belongs in the category of classified documents and correspondence, please apply the proper attention to safeguarding it.

Alireza Malekian
Deputy Minister

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Mehdi Karroubi's video message following attack at the press fair

Opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi visited the Tehran Press Fair on Friday afternoon. After being loudly acclaimed by a large group of supporters, he was attacked as he left the exhibition hall. For footage and a report on the attack, please go here. Karroubi released this video message concerning those events yesterday. He appears unfazed and, despite reports that he was injured by a projectile on Friday, his forehead bears no marks. A translation of the message follows the footage.



Mehdi Karroubi:

In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.

Three points must be stressed concerning the events that took place at the press fair last Friday: One has to do with the circumstances, another with the motives, and the last with myself.

As for the circumstances... I have always gone to exhibitions and continue to do so. This time when I visited, on the one hand the people generously expressed their kindness and I would even turn around and ask them not to chant slogans, and on the other, a few individuals began - and they're the ones who started it - saying 'Death to the hypocrite,' trying to provoke the people. The great mass of the people was standing and chanting, and the other individuals chanted too, and then we left the exhibition after a while. But on the way out, and this is the scheme that certain individuals had planned, they guided us in a direction through which the people behind us could not freely follow us, and in this manner they became a bit more radical.

The second point is about the motives. This is not the first time. During my visit to Masoumeh's shrine on the occasion of Imam Sadegh's martyrdom... Wherever I go, such actions are becoming commonplace. Fortunately, the people are responding spontaneously. Their intention is to prevent me from attending gatherings and to isolate me, in the same way that They closed the offices of the party and [inaudible]. (NB The offices of Karroubi's political party, the Etemad Melli Party, and his newspaper, Etemad Melli, were shut down in early September. For a report, please go here.) They want me to sit at home and not venture outside. So they're taking these steps to prevent me from going outside.

The third point that I want to mention is that I'm amazed that they're carrying out these measures with respect to me. I'm not new to these actions and I haven't started making these types of comments recently. In 1989, after the death of Imam Khomeini, I clashed with the 3rd Majlis, I denounced the deviation of the Assembly of Experts... In all those cases, I maintained a clear position, I constantly spoke out, and I went through difficult situations. Even back then, many of my friends were summoned daily to the Special Clergy Court or normal courts. I stood strong and endured those hardships. (NB Karroubi is cutting to the heart of the Islamic regime's identity and the notion of velayateh faghih - guardianship of the jurisprudent - from which the Supreme Leader derives power. As Karroubi mentions, this philosophical point has bedeviled the regime since the death of Khomeini: What is the exact role of the Assembly of Experts and, consequently, how much unquestioned power does the supreme leader wield? Hardliners believe that the Assembly of Experts should not exercise any oversight over the supreme leader and that it does not so much elect as reveal the person who becomes the supreme leader.)

On top of which, in those days, I was isolated and the people were not aware of the issue of oversight and the Assembly of Experts... But today, the people are standing as one, or at least a majority of the people are and they have a position and are standing firm.

In such circumstances, I shall be present on any stage... Be it a demonstration, the commemoration of the 22nd of Bahman (NB Date of the victory of the revolution, February 11, 1979), or Ashura (NB Religious holiday marking the martyrdom of Hossein). Whatever the day, whatever the place, we shall be present. But we're going to take an additional step. Previously, we wouldn't tell our friends where we'd be going and other details. Now we announce it, though we may be the object of our friends' criticisms. We will not retreat. Keeping in mind our pact with the Imam and the people, we remain loyal to the Islamic Republic and the constitution. We are standing firm on this path, with God's blessing, and we fear nothing.

God willing, we shall see who has remained true and who has not. In appropriate conditions, when either both factions are in power or neither one is, we shall see who has to repent and who does not need to. When you have one faction in power and the other faction has nothing at all, they can talk about repentance as much as they want. Those who need to repent are the traitors to the Islamic Republic who have deviated it, who have emptied it of its Islamic nature and destroyed its republican identity, and left nothing but its name.

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Opposition leader is attacked at Tehran press fair

Mehdi Karroubi, the leader of the Etemad Melli Party and the most vocal critic of the Iranian regime, was attacked at the Tehran Press Fair this afternoon after being loudly cheered by supporters, according to Iranian media reports.

The following footage shows the crowd shouting 'Long live Karroubi! May Mousavi stand long!'


Parleman News, the news site of the minority Imam Line Faction of the Majlis, said that the assailants intended to inflict bodily harm on Karroubi. Karroubi had announced his intention earlier in the week to attend the fair.

The opposition leader was acclaimed upon his arrival at the trade gathering. He was charged by unknown assailants minutes later and his turban was knocked off. The following footage shows participants cheering Karroubi, then chanting 'Basijis have become savage! Basijis have become savage!'


In further footage, the crowd shouts 'Hemmat and Bakeri were true Basijis!' (Two famous revolutionary martyrs)

(For more footage, click twice on the videos on this page and consult the channels of the YouTube posters)

The semi-official Fars News, close to the Revolutionary Guards, headlined its article on the attack with 'The people chased Karroubi from the exhibition as they chanted "Death to the hypocrite!"' Fars News posted a photo that looked suspiciously Photoshopped and showed a shoe striking Karroubi in the head. Earlier this week, a shoe was thrown at former Culture Minister Saffar Harandi as students protested his presence in Tehran University.

Fars News also claimed that one of Karroubi's bodyguards had opened fire into the air as Karroubi was rushed into a car. 'One of the bodyguards of this failed presidential candidate fired into the air to disperse the crowd, an act that is rarely carried out by bodyguards of personalities in this country,' said Fars.

The 16th Tehran Press Fair was closed to the public by authorities fearing that the green movement would take advantage of the gathering to launch protests.

The fair's organizers took the unprecedented step of setting up a stand devoted to complaints against presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, according to Kalemeh, Mousavi's official news site.

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'Who is holding my son? What are the charges?': Blogger Hossein Derakhshan's father sends open letter to judiciary chief

The father of a prominent Iranian blogger has written an open letter to Iran's judiciary chief Sadegh Amoli Larijani almost a year after his son's arrest.

Hassan Derakhshan, father of Hossein Derakhshan, expressed concern that he and his family had yet to be informed of which authorities are holding his son or the charges against him. A translation of his letter can be found at the end of this article.

Hossein Derakhshan was arrested at his family's home in Tehran on November 1, 2008, but news of the detention did not reach foreign media until later that month. He had returned to Iran in October.

The Internet activist's prior trip to his homeland had been in the summer of 2005 to cover the presidential election which brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was detained for a week during that visit and made to sign a letter of apology for writing about 'taboo subjects.'

Hossein Derakhshan is known as the 'Blogfather' for his key contributions to popularizing blogs in Iran, initially as a digital culture journalist for two reformist newspapers which were shut down and subsequently as a popular blogger also known as Hoder. He published a seminal guide on how to create Farsi weblogs on Blogger after moving to Canada in 2000. Iran has become one of the top ten blogging nations in the world since then.

Derakhshan has advocated the use of blogs as instruments of political and social activism. In 2003, he began a campaign against Internet censorship in Iran. (To view a video of a seminar on the topic of reform, youth, and technology in Iran, presented by Derakhshan at Umea University, Sweden, click here.)

He made a highly publicized trip to Israel in 2006, which may be one of the reasons for his arrest. Of that visit and its goals he wrote:

This might mean that I won’t be able to go back to Iran for a long time, since Iran doesn't recognize Israel, has no diplomatic relations with it, and apparently considers traveling there illegal. Too bad, but I don't care. Fortunately, I'm a citizen of Canada and I have the right to visit any country I want. I'm going to Israel as a citizen journalist and a peace activist. As a citizen journalist, I'm going to show my 20,000 daily Iranian readers what Israel really looks like and how people live there. The Islamic Republic has long portrayed Israel as an evil state, with a consensual political agenda of killing every single man and woman who prays to Allah, including Iranians.I'm going to challenge that image. As a peace activist, I'm going to show the Israelis that the vast majority of Iranians do not identify with Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, despite what it looks like from the outside. I'm going to tell them how any kind of violent action against Iran would only harm the young people who are gradually reforming the system and how the radicals would benefit from such situation.

An Israeli television report made during that trip includes interviews with Derakhshan in English:


Later that year, Derakhshan posted a number of articles in defense of Iran's nuclear program. He also strongly denounced the U.S.'s bellicose stance towards the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The more the clash between the west and Iran escalates, the more convinced I become that the west's real problem with the Islamic Republic of Iran is not its nuclear activities, its level of democracy, its human rights record, or its support for "terrorist" groups. [...] Increasingly, a lot of secular Iranians, like myself, are figuring that even if Iran is turned into the most democratic, secular, fair and peaceful state on earth, there is no guarantee the US won't find another excuse to try to overthrow its government. It will start bullying Iran for its "devastating role" in climate change, or animal rights, or - who knows? - for obesity. I'm not saying this as a fervent religious man with sexy Ahmadinejad's posters on my wall. In fact, I am an atheist and this can easily get me into serious trouble in any Islamic country. I did not vote for Ahmadinejad and I would do anything to democratically bring him down. [...] I am even a victim of the paranoid state of Iran that censors criticism and punishes dissent for fear of foreign-backed revolt. [...] Of course I do have the dream of an open, free, fair and secular Iran, run by competent and representative officials, and in peace with the whole world, obviously including Israel. However, I believe the Islamic Republic is a valuable cause, worth defending and, at its worst, is way better than anything that the United States or anyone else can bring to Iran. If the US waged a war against Iran, I would absolutely go back and defend Iran.

Derakhshan further lost support among Iranian reformists because of his grudging respect for Ahmadinejad. He ridiculed the New York Sun's call for Ahmadinejad to be kidnapped while attending the UN General Assembly in September of 2008. As reported in The Times, Derakhshan wrote, 'They don't know how big this man's balls are.'

But despite his turbulent and complex worldview, Derakhshan's democratic credentials and dedication to his country are difficult to dismiss.

While he has wasted away in an Iranian prison cell, his orphaned blogs have disappeared from the cyberspace he had championed so passionately. A visitor to HoderInIran is informed that the domain name expired on October 9, 2009, and is pending renewal or deletion. Hoder.com has also expired.

Another free Iranian voice has been silenced, at least for now.

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The following is a translation of Hassan Derakhshan's open letter to judiciary chief Sadegh Amoli Larijani:

In the name of God.

Ayatollah Amoli Larijani, Honorable President of the Judiciary,

With greetings and respect,

One year has gone by since the arrest of my son, Hossein Derakhshan.

In the months, days, and hours that have passed, my hope and that of my wife and family has been to see my son's case treated accordingly by religious rulings and in the shadow of Islamic justice's benevolence.

This letter is our first publicized reaction in twelve months, which shows the extent of our hope that the legal framework would be respected within the borders of our dear country. It goes without saying that on numerous occasions we rejected the requests of foreign media for news about Hossein's situation, even when the worst rumors about his mistreatment were reported in semi-official media outlets. No authorities would deny these extremely distressing news reports -- not to comfort the turmoil in our hearts, but to protect the independence of justice in this case.

In all this time, we have visited our child on only two short, minutes-long occasions. Imagine, a few minutes every six months! I declare that we have no knowledge of his legal situation. No trial has been set and it is unclear which security authority or body has custody of him. We have tried many times to obtain detailed information about his situation, but have not succeeded.

Is this the result that must be expected from the composed and respectful behavior of a prisoner's family? In his remarks and writings, my son has expressed his desire to serve his country and he returned to Iran of his own free will to respond to the accusations against him. Is this a suitable way to greet a person who has returned to the bosom of his beliefs and homeland?

Our complaint is not against the enforcement of the law, but rather is directed at the state of uncertainty and ignorance we have been kept in and the lack of attention to the law. The accused have rights. The families of the accused have rights. In the same manner that the sovereignty of society is to be respected, and order and rules are precious.

I request that you order that my son Hossein Derakhshan's family be informed of the state of his case. Which authority is holding him? Which judge is overseeing his case and what are the charges against him?

I am sure that Your Excellency would agree that one year of detention is not an appropriate greeting to a person who has voluntarily returned to the bosom of Iran and dear Islam. My wife, my family, and I await your just deportment.

With respect, (handwritten)
Hassan Derakhshan

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The banality of evil: Shocking video of a man being lashed in Iran

It is hard to put a face to the torturers and murderers that have filled our common psyche in the past months. What exactly does a human being who beats another to death look like? In what dingy outpost of civilization do these deeds occur? Are filthy, dark cellars the only province of deliberately inflicted pain?

But harder still is the jarring realization of what philosopher Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, that great oppression is carried out by legions of functionaries who may pull a prisoner's nails out with pliers, then go home and kiss their children goodnight. Normality in the name of a premise, an ideology, a religion.

Much as our sanity demands it, we cannot relegate evil to groups of fanatics operating in the stifling heat of a detention center, overcrowded and reeking of urine and feces and fear.

It can be seen in the jovial face of Hamid Rasai, Majlis representative from Tehran, as he compares Mir Hossein Mousavi with MKO leader Massoud Rajavi and says that anyone who stands in the way of the goals of the Islamic Revolution must be eliminated. And it can be heard in the words of former health minister, Kamran Lankarani, a poster boy for youthful idealism, as he claims that Mohsen Rouholamini died of meningitis, not because he was bludgeoned so severely in jail that his jaw had been shattered. Or in the fatherly figure of Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the supposedly moderate former head of the judiciary, as he pleads that he could have done no more than sign a watered-down moratorium on stonings after Jafar Kiani had been buried in a pit and stoned to death in Takistan.

And as the footage posted on the bottom of this page shows, evil can occur under the leafy green canopy of a tree on a sunny day, the tinny sound of a radio playing soothingly in the background, an old man watching dispassionately from a row of chairs along the garden wall. The banality of evil.

The exact details of the footage are unknown now, but they are immaterial. The place is Iran, the time is recent enough for the video to have been filmed with a mobile telephone. 'Please don't film me, I'll be dishonored,' the prisoner wails, clutching at his tattered dignity. 'I'm not filming,' the other man responds. 'This is my handset.' Primeval barbarity meets modern technology.

The man is tied to a tree, his back bare, and he is methodically lashed 76 times. The sentence lasts six minutes, during which time the man screams and pleads to no avail. Justice must be done.

As a child in the Shah's time, I knew a man, a family friend, whose eyesight had been damaged at a torturer's hands. A clamp had been placed on his head and the screws tightened until he had shrieked and his eyeballs had almost been expelled from their sockets. He had rebuilt his life, but was forced to use a magnifying glass to read. It was a cruel daily reminder of prison days for such a voracious reader. I asked my father about him once, only once because even a child knows that some personal horrors cannot be delved too easily. But the truth still pierced my cloistered existence and has stayed with me since.

But what of the present Iran? What have the pious overlords created? What hope for the future generations? Over 230 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of the year. Iran is the only country in the world to kill juvenile offenders. Torture and brutality had become common practices, even before the recent unrest.

When the highest authorities in the land set the tone, the rest of society follows. The murder rate rose an astonishing 11% last year, according to official statistics, which can be suspected of being below the true figures. The number of people killed by relatives increased by 10% and the murder of parents by their offspring was up by 3%. Bank robberies ballooned by 36%. Violence and death beget more of the same. As prominent thinker Abdolkarim Soroush said in a blistering open letter to Leader Ali Khamenei recently, 'All your celebrations have become mourning ceremonies.'

This culture of violence must come to an end. The regime and its functionaries have committed many crimes, but the day that they are removed, the cycle of vengeance must be broken. They must be tried in open courts and capital punishment must forever be banished from Iran. Only then can the country become a champion, rather than a violator, of human rights. The land which spawned the Cyrus the Great cylinder, considered by some to be the first human rights charter in the world, can aspire to nothing less.

Many years ago, Elie Wiesel, a concentration camp survivor and author, recounted a parable at a gathering. A man lives in unjust times. He comes to the town square every day and speaks of justice and tolerance, but no one takes notice. In fact, brutality and corruption become the norm. Yet, every day, he returns to the square and, as the years go by, speaks louder and longer. Finally, an exasperated passerby asks, 'Why do you come every day and speak louder and longer? You are not changing anyone.' The man responds, 'I speak louder and longer so that I may not change.'

We must speak out. We who hold no power must speak out lest we become like them if ever we do wield power.

We must speak out to retain our own humanity.

(Viewer discretion is strongly advised)

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