|
Home | News | Archive| RSS
twitter | facebook
|
| Payvand Iran News ... |
|
|
01/27/10
|
|
|
|
|
Iranina Feminist Attorney, Shadi Sadr, Critiques Mehdi Karroubi's Five-Point Plan
|
|
Source:
Iranian Progressives in
Translation
Translator's Note: On January 11, 2010,
Mehdi Karroubi, one of the two reformist presidential candidates who have
challenged the fraudulent June 2009 Iranian election, issued a statement in
which he offered five ways for the Islamic Republic to exit the "current
extensive crisis." The next day, Shadi Sadr, feminist attorney and human rights
activist, issued a critique which focused on the first point of Karroubi's
five-point plan. Large excerpts of this critique follow. For translations of
other statements by Shadi Sadr, please see
www.iranianvoicesintranslation.blogspot.com
Shadi Sadr
On the Meaninglessness of
Forgiveness: A Critique of Mehdi Karroubi's Five-Point Plan
Author: Shadi Sadr
Original source:
emruz news
Translated by Frieda Afary:
Iranian Progressives in
Translation
January 12, 2010
. . . The call for investigating human rights violations and identifying their
agents and perpetrators, which became a focal demand of the new people's
movement after the expose of the murders, tortures and rapes, has been
completely ignored in Mousavi's statement. [Reference to a
statement and
five-point plan issued by reformist opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi on
January 1, 2010-tr]. Karroubi however, devotes the first point of his
five-point
plan to this subject.
According to Karroubi, the first solution is for "the oppressors to confess and
repent and demand forgiveness from the people." Employing the language and
discourse used by Elm al-Hadi, the Friday Prayer Imam of the city of Mashhad,
who calls the leaders of the revolt, "enemies of God,"(1) Karroubi asks those
who have been oppressing the people, to repent. He considers repentance by the
oppressors to be the first way to restore peace in the country. He writes:
"Those who must repent are not the ones who offered martyrs for the realization
of their right to vote. Those who must repent are the perpetrators of the acts
of cruelty committed on Ashura Day and the events after the election [Ashura is
a Shi'a day of mourning which was turned into a massive anti-government protest
on December 27, 2009--tr]. Those who must repent are the ones who have put our
country's wealth up for auction, used other people's money to give generous
donations, and left the people in a state of poverty. Those who must repent are
the ones who endorsed incompetent people, rejected competent individuals,
deprived people of the right to choose, issued permits to change the votes of
the people, and answered their protest with bullets. Those who must repent are
the ones who deprived university students of an education and placed uneducated
people in positions of authority. Repentance by the oppressors is the first way
to restore peace in the country and console those who have lost loved ones. The
people of Iran are not too demanding. They can forgive those who repent and
confess to their crimes. However, they will not forget their oppressive acts. No
one is interested in taking revenge. Revenge is not a remedy for the acts of
cruelty already committed" (2).
Although Karroubi addresses the issue of "acts of cruelty" committed against the
people, his analysis and especially the solution he offers, demand serious
criticism . I will try to address some of these issues below:
1. Mr. Karroubi must certainly know better than I do, that "repentance" is a
religious act which concerns the human being's relationship to God. The "servant
[of God-tr]" returns remorsefully to his God (3). Those who oppress the people
however, must above all be answerable to the people who have been oppressed by
them. Furthermore, suppose some oppressors confess to the fact that they have
beaten innumerable victims, or tortured five people directly, or were involved
in the murder of someone, or witnessed or ordered or committed rape. Now after
committing all these acts which by any legal definition constitute crimes, they
have repented and expect the people to forgive them.
First, what guarantee is there that the act of repentance has been thorough and
exact? Secondly, what guarantee is there that the repentant individual will not
break his/her vow? More importantly, what difference is there between
forgiveness or lack of forgiveness when the lack of independent mechanisms for
enforcing justice, allows all oppressive institutions or agents and perpetrators
of human right violations, to continue to stay in power and remain in the
position of not needing forgiveness or not having any concern about the lack of
forgiveness on behalf of the victims. Forgiveness only means something when lack
of forgiveness has meaning. In the absence of guarantees for enforcement, we can
call repentance and forgiveness meaningless.
Another question remains: How can Mr. Karroubi be so sure that "the people of
Iran" will forgive the repentant ones who have confessed to their crimes? Has he
interviewed each and every one of the victims of brutality, torture,
imprisonment and rape, and the relatives of those murdered in the streets and
prisons? Is his general rule, backed by a comprehensive judicial investigation?
Or is it simply that a "guardian jurisprudent" uses his political position as
the owner of his "peasants" lives, property and honor, to represent the people's
demands without having asked them about their demands.
For example, would Neda Agha- Soltan's mother or Sohrab Aarabi's mother ,
forgive the agents and perpetrators of the crimes of their children, if they
simply confess and repent? [ Neda Agha-Soltan who has become a symbol of the
Iranian democratic opposition movement is known to most readers as a young
female philosophy student who was shot dead by government forces at a mass
protest following the fraudulent June 2009 election. Sohrab Aarabi was a young
male student activist who was also killed by government forces in June 2009-tr.]
If the mothers are willing to forgive, is the confession and repentance of the
rapists whose names and faces are not known by their victims, an adequate permit
for the rapists to walk safely and freely in the same streets that they have
made unsafe for many others?
2. In the introduction to this statement, Karroubi writes: "Anyone who has
dishonored Ashura is to be condemned. Clearly, those who commit such a crime
should be investigated by a competent court. The offenders must be punished in
accordance with the country's laws." However, Mr. Karroubi who believes in
putting the violators of Ashura on trial, writes the following when it comes to
those who have been victims of oppression: "No one is interested in revenge, and
revenge will not remedy previous crimes committed against the people." Just like
that, he substitutes "revenge"-- a tribal method for restoring justice-- for
punishment, a modern institution accepted by all human rights based systems. He
does not even recognize the right of the victims to justice within the framework
of the existing laws.
The following question arises: Does Mr. Karroubi distinguish between someone who
hits or injures someone else in a brawl, and someone who injures a number of
people at a demonstration? Is there a difference between a criminal who kills
his creditor with a knife, and an oppressor who shoots demonstrators? If both of
these actions are legally considered "assault" and "murder," then why is it that
members of the first group, i.e. common criminals, receive prison sentences and
punishments in kind or the obligation to pay blood money, but oppressors do not?
Enforcing punishment which is considered praiseworthy when applied to common
criminals, turns into revenge which is considered abominable when applied to the
oppressors In my opinion, there is a fundamental difference between these two
groups of criminals. The first group consist of common people who have common
motivations and often commit crimes accidentally or out of desperation. However
they are judged and punished ruthlessly and without any sympathy. The second
group consist of professional criminals who consciously and systematically
violate basic human rights, and receive political, economic and social benefits
as a result. Precisely for this reason, they should be more heavily punished
than the first group.
Labeling the demand for the enforcement of justice, as "revenge seeking" or
"extremism" constitutes a type of false reasoning that will have dangerous
consequences. These consequences were not taken seriously when Taghi Rahmani, a
nationalist-religious political activist published a note to the Mournful
Mothers (4). [Reference to a group of mothers of opposition activists and
political prisoners who have been holding weekly vigils at a park in Tehran. For
more information in English, see http://mothersoflaleh.blogspot.com/ --tr.] The
mothers had demanded "punishment for the perpetrators and agents of the murder
and torture of their children." . . . By equating the demand for justice and
just trials, with brutality, Rahmani suppresses that demand and calls on the
Mournful Mothers to "compromise" in order to end the violence. Now, once again,
the suppression of this popular demand manifests itself in writing in Karroubi's
statement.
3. When many political and civil rights activists such as Karroubi and Taghi
Rahmani, refer to revenge and the continuation of brutality, they seem to have
in mind, the existing criminal justice system which is based on punishment in
kind, i.e. a life for a life and an eye for an eye. This system is rooted in
individual or tribal revenge-seeking. Based on this definition, the demand for
justice, trials and punishment for the agents and perpetrators of human rights
violations, is defined within the framework of the existing system which
consists of execution, torture and amputation of body parts. Based on this
inverted definition, the demand for justice leads to more crime, torture and
brutality, and therefore, is to be condemned.
However, a look at similar experiences in other countries reveals that
responding to continuous and systematic human rights violations, by establishing
a justice-seeking process, is a pre-requisite for the realization of democracy
and the only guarantee for stopping the cycle of violence. The following are all
processes that have been tested and can lead a society to peace and
non-violence: a social discourse concerning justice-seeking; the formation of
truth-finding commissions to gain collective awareness of the reality of murder,
rape and torture, and its effects on victims, their family and society; the
establishment of open and public courts with objective standards for judgment.
Without these processes, "compromise," "pardon" and "reconciliation" will only
mean "covering over" and "obfuscation." Even worse, this type of forgiveness or
pardon, will never lead to reconciliation, because the oppressors will feel
confident that they will be immune from search and punishment, regardless of the
degree to which they violate the rights of the people and continue committing
acts of brutality.
South Africa is one of the best and most vibrant examples of a national
reconciliation process . . .Although we have not had this grand experience, we
have learned from other nations. The responsibility of civil society activists
is to learn from the successful experiences as well as defeats of other
countries, in order to not let made-up interpretations of non-violence, render
the people's movement sterile. On the contrary, all of us have to do our best to
prepare society for the following: Hearing the truth, however bitter;
reconstructing collective-historic memory, however difficult; traversing the
process of guaranteeing the prevention of systematic human rights abuses,
however long. More than anything, we need to look at the mirror on a daily basis
and stare ourselves in the eye and say: The demand for compromise and pardon
from a mother who does not know where her child is buried or how she/he was
killed, is in reality another act of suppression. Let us not forget that
suppression and brutality are not only defined by truncheons that hurt the body.
1.
www.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8810091487
2. http://sahamnew.org/?p=226
3. Alameh Tabataba'i Al-Mizan fi tafsiri'l-Qur'an. Volume 4, p. 379.
4. http://www.autnews.de/node/4176
... Payvand News - 01/27/10 ... --
|
© Copyright 2010 NetNative
(All Rights Reserved) |
|
Join Payvand's Facebook Page
|
