Back to Brief on Iran
Human rights - by which we mean basic, fundamental civil liberties - are not bargainable commodities. There are two rather obvious reasons for this. First, without such fundamentals as free speech or basic property rights, human progress and prosperity would grind to a halt. Second, such bargaining simply doesn't work. It only erodes the credibility and character of the bargainer.
This week's example - and we seem to be able to find many nowadays - is Salman Rushdie… Last week, Britain and Iran announced that Mr. Rushdie's decade-long nightmare was over… In exchange for this… Britain renewed its diplomatic ties with Iran. And Foreign Minister Robin Cook added that Her Majesty's government "understood and regretted the offence the book The Satanic Verses has caused to Muslims in Iran and elsewhere in the world."
No phrases about freedom of speech escaped Mr. Cook's lips; nor was there any remorse from the Iranian foreign minister for the decade's worth of misery caused. The fundamental issue of whether a human has the incontrovertible right to say what he thinks remained unaddressed. Only Mr. Cook's gentle appeasement filled the vacuum, a small victory for those who would use violence against free thought.
A philosophical pragmatist might regard this appeasement as a small price if Mr. Rushdie were truly released from fear. He is not. This week, three senior ayatollahs said the death sentence was still on… The death sentence, say these religious leaders can never be revoked, because only ayatollah Khomeini could revoke it and Mr. Khomeini is no longer among us.
If anyone in the British government is surprised by this turn of events, he ought to be fired for willful naivete. For appeasement on fundamental values follows a very predictable pattern…
It is a bargain with the devil, and western leaders who make it betray the nature of the democracies they represent.
Election Body is Protested, BBC World Service, October 5
President Khatami of Iran is reported to have protested to an electoral body which disqualified most of his supporters from standing in a crucial election this month.
No details have been released, but Mr. Khatami is believed to have expressed his deep concern about the way the body screened candidates for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical council which has the power to appoint and dismiss Iran's supreme leader - currently Ayatollah Khamenei.
President Khatami is also reported to have had emergency talks with Ayatollah Khamenei on the issue…
Tehran Warns It Is Running Out of Money To Pay Staff, Agence France Presse, October 5
TEHRAN - The Iranian government will run out of money to pay its employees by next week if parliament does not endorse an emergency plan to compensate for a 6.3 billion dollar budget shortfall, a senior official was quoted as saying Monday.
Mohammad-Ali Najafi, the head of the Budget and Planning Organization, issued the warning in a parliamentary debate Sunday on the government's plans to tackle the budget shortfall resulting from the collapse in world oil prices, Tehran newspapers reported.
He said the government was now selling each Iranian crude at 10.7 dollars a barrel against 16 dollars anticipated in the budget for the current fiscal year which runs from March 1998-1999.
"Because of this situation only 60 percent of the revenues forecast in the budget have been realized," he said.
"So far we have been able to pay for 20 percent of the expenses for development projects and 39 percent of the current expenses.
"If the present trend continues, it is expected that the government will not be able to meet the rest of the expenses for this year," Najafi warned.
Iran Tells Writers Not to Organize - Reports,
Reuters, October 5
TEHRAN - Iran's Islamic authorities have told a group of prominent writers to give up efforts to re-activate an independent association of authors, Iranian literary sources said on Monday.
The measure came after several outspoken newspapers and magazines were banned last month by the conservative-dominated judiciary and a number of their journalists were arrested.
Newspapers, including the dailies Zan and Abrar, have carried brief reports on the action against the writers. The reports said the group also included Ali Ashraf Darvishian, Kazem Kardevani, Mansour Koushan, Mohammad Mokhtari, and Mohammad Pouyandeh.
The writers were part of a group which recently published a call to re-activate the association which had an active role in the movement against the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's government which was toppled by the 1979 Islamic revolution.