Iran International
The 2009 Green Movement leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s rejection of the reform option in the Islamic Republic has been met with admiration and antipathy alike.
In a rather short statement entitled “To Save Iran” Saturday, Mousavi who has been under house arrest along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard since 2011 underlined his recognition of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement and called for a fair and free referendum to decide whether the present constitution should be amended or completely replaced.
He also called for elections to appoint a constitutional assembly to decide the future form of government as well as a further vote to decide whether the new constitution is acceptable to the people or not.
Such a referendum would very likely put an end to Velayat-e Faghih (rule of the Islamic jurist) which gives a cleric such as Ali Khamenei extraordinary powers including the power to overrule all elected bodies and officials and hence, people’s choice.
This comes in contrast to his position in 2009 when in a highly disputed election result he was denied the presidency running against the incumber Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At that time although millions of people poured into the streets to support him, he refrained from seriously challenging the regime and its leader Ali Khamenei.
Mousavi admitted that he did not know who should decide to hold a referendum, since the current rulers would not, but called for cooperation among all political forces and figures who believe in preserving the country’s territorial integrity and non-violence to clarify these points.
“There were two types of reformists in Iran. Some neither desired nor thought it possible to overthrow the misery [caused by the clerical rule] and sought a share of power. A minority including Mir-Hossein Mousavi believed that the misery of the clerical rule was reformable and could evolve into democracy. Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s courageous new statement showed that he has given up the dream of reform,” US-based academic Abbas Milani tweeted.
Some reformists, including seven prominent political prisoners and over a dozen figures of the ‘religious intellectual movement’, and its mentor Abdolkarim Soroush, have welcomed his proposal, others have strongly rejected it.
Speaking to Iran International, Soroush said Mousavi’s supporters and opponent agree that he “bears a weight” that cannot be ignored.
The political prisoners who have supported Mousavi’s new move have said that they will do their best to advance his proposal to bring a “peaceful and non-violent transition to a completely democratic and developed Iranian structure."
Many of Mousavi’s opponents say as a former prime minister (1981-1989) he is responsible for much of the regime’s wrongdoings and atrocities including mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 and the Cultural Revolution to expurgate universities from Marxists and militant political groups such as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization.
Arguing that Mousavi has never denounced the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini and his ideology, and still admires him and his “golden era”, pro-monarchy journalist and activist Morteza Esmailpour said in a tweet that Mousavi himself should be put on trial because “the regime was always criminal”.
The prison executions were carried out based on a fatwa by Iran's then-supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, against the MEK which carried out a wave of bombings in Iran and struck an alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war. “Showing mercy to those who take up arms against the Islamic government is being naïve,” Khomeini said in his fatwa.
In June 2010 Mousavi claimed, in a meeting with a group of journalists and political activists, that not only he, but also other top officials -- including the president, chief justice and the speaker as well as Khomeini’s designated successor Hossein-Ali Montazeri – were unaware of what was happening in prisons and blamed the prison purge on others including a former warden of the infamous Evin Prison Assadollah Lajevardi.
He also admitted that many of the prisoners who were executed had not committed any crimes or if they had, they were already serving their sentences. “We even knew some of them, from before the revolution and after that… They were poets, they were writers … They had not taken up arms,” he said.
Iran Human Rights group in a tweet immediately on Sunday announced that the amnesty claim is a “deceitful” step by Khamenei, demanding that all protesters should be freed “unconditionally”, and instead those responsible for repression should be tried in courts.
Protesters were exercising their right to peacefully demonstrate and arresting them had no legal bases, Iran Human Rights said.
Government media reported Sunday that Khamenei had “agreed” with a proposal by the country’s Judiciary to free those who were “misled” and took part in protests.
It is still not clear how many or which prisoners will be pardoned and whose sentences will be reduced. While thousands of young and teenage protesters were arrested in street demonstrations, hundreds of political activists, journalists and writers or artists have also been detained.
Khamenei’s move came days before the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Republic, as a move to rescue the regime’s image amid a grim economic crisis and mass public rejection of the political system he presides over.
The hardliner judiciary has attached so many pre-conditions for any prisoner pardon, that no one knows how many will be freed, while some state media claimed “tens of thousands” will be released.
Some of the conditions for being pardoned were mentioned in the announcement, including no record of spying for a foreign country, no connection with foreign intelligence services, not facing a charge of murder and no accusation of destroying public property. The regime’s security forces and courts, meanwhile, have held thousands of detainees exactly based on these sorts of charges.
A lawyer defending several detained protesters tweeted that Khamenei’s move was nothing more than “imposing the fake version of reality by the regime,” which attempts to switch the guilt from itself to the victims.
Almost all court proceedings have been held behind closed doors, after many detainees were tortured to confess to trumped-up charges. Also, in most cases defendants were not allowed to have their lawyers in the court or even have access to case files.
A former political prisoner Hossein Qashqai tweeted, “It is us who should issue pardons, not you, who carry the blood of our dearest and best children on your hands. We will never forget and forgive.”
Prison interrogators often demand that detainees to sign self-incriminating apologies and pledge not to engage in antigovernment activities. Shahriar Shams, a former prisoner, quoted one his friends who is still behind bars that if the authorities free them unconditionally, it would be fine, but if they demand any letter of remorse “we will not give them anything. We should be the ones to pardon them.”
A Dutch member of the European Parliament tweeted Monday that “Freedom shouldn’t depend on a dictator’s whims. This is hypocrisy and we won’t be fooled.”
European countries have exhibited tough reactions, compared to the past, to Islamic Republic’s bloody suppression and the hanging of four protesters after sham trials. The European Parliament last month passed a resolution demanding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union.
Some Iranian conservative supporters of Khamenei have been surprised by the international backlash and admit that the regime is now more isolated. But Khamenei seems to be determined to make no real concession. In one of his recent speeches he said, “In the old days when wounds did not heal, they cauterized them.”