By Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, February 19, 2012
While building solidarity between activists in the U.S. and Iran can
be a powerful way of supporting social justice movements in Iran, progressives
and leftists who want to express solidarity with Iranians are challenged by a
complicated geopolitical terrain. The U.S. government shrilly decries Iran’s
nuclear power program and expands a long-standing sanctions regime on the one
hand, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes inflammatory
proclamations and harshly suppresses Iranian protesters and dissidents on the
other. Solidarity activists are often caught between a rock and a hard place,
and many choose what they believe are the “lesser evil” politics. In the case
of Iran, this has meant aligning with a repressive state leader under the guise
of “anti-imperialism” and “populism,” or supporting “targeted” sanctions.
As members of a feminist collective founded in part to support the
massive post-election protests in Iran in 2009, while opposing all forms of US
intervention, we take this opportunity to reflect on the meaning and practice
of transnational solidarity between US-based activists and sections of Iranian
society. In this article, we look at the remarkable situation in which both
protests against and expressions of support for Ahmadinejad are articulated
under the banner of support for the “Iranian people.” In particular, we examine
the claims of critics of the Iranian regime who have advocated the use of “targeted
sanctions” against human rights violators in the Iranian government as a method
of solidarity. Despite their name, these sanctions trickle down to punish
broader sections of the population. They also stand as a stunning example of
American power and hypocrisy, since no country dare sanction the US for its
illegal wars, torture practices and program of extrajudicial assassinations. We
then assess the positions of some “anti-imperialist” activists who not only
oppose war and sanctions on Iran but also defend Ahmadinejad as a populist
president expressing the will of the majority of the Iranian people. In fact,
Ahmadinejad’s aggressive neo-liberal economic policies represent a right-wing
attack on living standards and on various social welfare provisions established
after the revolution. And finally, we offer an alternative notion of and method
for building international solidarity “from below,” one that offers a way out
of “lesser evil” politics and turns the focus away from the state and onto
those movement activists in the streets.
We hope the analysis that follows will provoke much needed discussion
among a broad range of activists, journalists and scholars about how to rethink
a practice of transnational solidarity that does not homogenize entire
populations, cast struggling people outside the US as perpetual and helpless
victims, or perpetuate unequal power relations between peoples and nations.
Acts of solidarity that cross borders must be based on building relationships
with activists in disparate locations, on an understanding of the different
issues and conditions of struggle various movements face, and on exchanges of
support among grassroots activists rather than governments, with each group
committed to opposing oppression locally as well as globally.
The spectrum of protest
Numerous protests and actions took place over the week of Ahmadinejad’s
UN visit in September 2010, with at least eight activist groups organizing
protests on the day of his General Assembly address--all claiming to
speak in the interests of the Iranian people. However, despite some
commonalities, these voices represented very different political approaches and
agendas. Whether clearly articulated or not, one major fault line was on the
question of the appropriate US and international role in relation to Iran,
especially on the issues of sanctions and war.
The protests gaining the most media attention were organized by a
newly-formed coalition called Iran180 and by the Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI). Both
take a hard line, pro-sanctions position on Iran. Iran180, launched by the
Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, organized a press conference
under the banner “human rights, not nuclear rights.” The PMOI on the other
hand, held a large rally of reportedly 2000 participants from far and wide. The
PMOI is an organization known for its militant opposition to the Iranian regime
and its anti-democratic, cult-like structure; it has been largely discredited
among Iranians and is also listed as a “terrorist” organization by the State
Department. Speakers included former mayor Rudy Giuliani, former US ambassador
to the UN John Bolton, and British Tory MP David Amess, all calling for a hard
line on Iran and apparently positioning the PMOI as the legitimate diasporic
alternative to the current Iranian leadership.
By contrast, Where Is My Vote-NY (WIMV), an organization
formed to express solidarity with Iranian protests after the contested election
in 2009. They mobilized around a platform that called for holding Ahmadinejad
accountable but also took an explicit no war and no sanctions position, making
them the only organization to do so. WIMV’s strong anti-sanctions stance has
been controversial among some human rights activists in the US who have
supported sanctions that are supposed to target individual Iranian human rights
violators. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International pulled out of a
WIMV-organized protest in September 2009 because they refused to endorse the
WIMV platform. Below we size up the efficacy of “targeted” sanctions that claim
to be in support of the human rights of Iranians.
The record of “targeted” sanctions
From 1990 until 2003, a United States-led United Nations coalition
placed what amounted to crippling financial and trade sanctions on Iraq in an
ostensible effort to weaken Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. Sanctions,
we were told, amounted to a humane way of combating intransigent
authoritarianism around the world while avoiding mass bloodshed. The results of
that strategy should have shattered these illusions for good. The complete
collapse of the Iraqi economy during thirteen years of sanctions coupled with
the inability of ordinary Iraqi people to access banned items necessary for
their day-to-day survival--such as ambulances and generators--led to over half
a million Iraqi civilian deaths. Furthermore, the sanctions were an utter
failure in their purported primary goal—thwarting the Hussein regime while
avoiding full-scale war. Not only was Hussein not dislodged by the sanctions,
but he also managed to consolidate power throughout the ‘90s while resorting to
increasingly autocratic means of suppressing dissent. Finally, in March 2003,
the United States and a small “coalition of the willing” began a full-scale
military intervention in Iraq, which has shredded the fabric of Iraqi society
and left a network of permanent US military bases--and Western oil
companies--behind.
Despite the benefit of this hindsight, we are being told
again to trust in the human rights agenda of a state-sponsored sanctions effort
as an alternative to war, this time against the Islamic Republic of Iran. In
fact, some form of sanctions against the Islamic Republic have been in place
with little effect for over thirty years. But since President Barack Obama took
office, the sanctions have been amped up to new heights. In June of 2010, a
US-led United Nations coalition passed the fourth round of economic and trade
sanctions against the Islamic Republic since 2006. The stated goal: limiting
Iran’s nuclear program. Soon after, the European Union imposed its own set of
economic sanctions. A month later, President Obama signed into law the most
extensive sanctions regime Iran has ever seen with the Comprehensive Iran
Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA).
It should not be surprising, given the United States’ historic
attempts at controlling Iranian oil, that CISADA’s primary target is the
management of the Iranian petroleum industry. These sanctions would penalize
any foreign company that sells refined petroleum products to Iran, which are a
necessity for Iran’s primary industry as well as for the everyday functioning
of modern life. This winter, shortages of imported refined gasoline forced the
Iranian government to convert petro-chemical plants into makeshift refineries
that produce fuel loaded with dangerous particles. As a result, the capital
city of Tehran has been plagued by unprecedented levels of pollution, shutting down schools and businesses for days at
a time and leading to skyrocketing rates of respiratory illnesses and at least 3,641
pollution-related deaths.
Further, Iran’s ability to import and export vital goods has been
profoundly curtailed because the most powerful Western-based freight insurance
companies—many of which worked with Iran until these most recent sanctions—can
no longer do business with any company based in the Islamic Republic. Without
insurance coverage, most international ports refuse any Iranian ships entry
because they are not covered for potential damages. The current round of
U.S.-led sanctions have had the effect of cutting off more of Iranian
businesses because foreign companies are simply unsure of whether or not their
business is sanctioned. As a stipulation of the US, EU, and UN sanctions, no
corporations or private individuals can do business with the majority of
Iranian banks or industries. Parts and supplies for a great deal of machinery—and
not only those potentially associated with nuclear industry—are denied entry
into Iran; indeed, one of the deadly examples of the effects of these sanctions
in recent years has been the spate of commercial Iranian aircrafts that have
crashed due to faulty or out-of-date parts. These measures have already had
disastrous effects on the Iranian economy and the health ordinary Iranian
citizens, adding to historic levels of inflation, unemployment and
pollution-related illness.
Despite mounting evidence warning against the humanitarian disaster of
unilateral, state-engineered sanctions, many people outside of Iran are still compelled to support them as a diplomatic alternative to war. The operating principle behind
such a belief is that these sanctions—unlike those wielded against Iraq, which
limited all facets of the economic life of the nation—only target certain
individuals, groups, and aspects of economic life. In the case of the Islamic
Republic, the argument goes, these individuals and groups are directly linked
to the state, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC--or Sepah
Pasdaran) and the paramilitary Basij forces, which do indeed command much of
the economic resources of the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, the reality of
even “targeted” sanctions is not nearly so rosy. To see why this strategy is
almost certain to be a failure, we consider the recent example of Zimbabwe.
Since 2001, there has been a similar set of so-called “smart”
sanctions in place against Zimbabwe in an effort to weaken President Robert
Mugabe and to force him to join a coalition government with his principal
political opponents. In the decade after the imposition of these sanctions,
Zimbabwe has suffered enormously, experiencing one of the most cataclysmic
instances of hyperinflation in history, skyrocketing unemployment rates, a
startling lack of basic necessities, a rapidly growing income disparity, and
the rise of a black market for goods that only an elite few can access. Indeed,
the story in Zimbabwe is remarkably similar to that in Iraq: in both cases the
authoritarian state only increased its power as a result of the economic
stranglehold on the country due to its monopoly over all of the available
wealth and resources in the nation. As the Iraqi and Zimbabwe cases demonstrate,
sanctions are not an effective means to avoid war, nor do they inevitably
undermine repressive and authoritarian states. Most importantly of all, they
further immiserate the very people they claim to be helping.
Often, these failed examples are countered by one historic success
story, namely, the divestment and sanctions movement against apartheid South
Africa--a very compelling instance of international solidarity with a mass
domestic opposition movement. Is this an apt analogy for the Iranian case? A
crucial difference is that sanctions against South Africa came only after a
divestment campaign led by South African activists, which succeeded in
convincing a great deal of private capital to flee the country before US or UN
involvement. As a tactic developed and deployed within South Africa, sanctions
were not the result of power machinations between antagonistic states or a
strategy that enhanced US global dominance.
Iran presents a very different situation. No member of any Iran-based
opposition group—from leaders of the “green” movement, to activists in the
women’s and student movement, to labor organizers—have called for or supported
the US/UN/EU sanctions against the Islamic Republic. On the contrary, leaders
from virtually all of these groups have vocally opposed the implementation of
sanctions precisely because they have witnessed the Iranian state grow
stronger, and the wellbeing of ordinary Iranians suffer, as a result. Imposing
sanctions in the name of “human rights,” as the US did for the first time this
fall, doesn’t alter these outcomes. The US government’s long record of either
complicity with or silence regarding the treatment of dissidents in Iran--from
the 1950s when it helped train the brutal SAVAK torture squads right through to
the post-election crackdown in 2009--makes it nothing if not hypocritical on
the issue of human rights in Iran.
The spectrum of support
In stark contrast to the range of groups protesting the Iranian
president and the Islamic Republic’s policies, some 130 activists from
anti-war, labor and anti-racist organizations took an altogether different
approach in September 2010, attending a dinner with Ahmadinejad hosted by the
Iranian Mission to the UN. According to one attendee,
the goal of the dinner was to “share our hopes for peace and justice with the
Iranian people through their president and his wife.” During two and half hours
of speeches, activists embraced Ahmadinejad as an ally and partner in the
global struggle for peace and, with few exceptions, ignored the fact that his
administration is responsible for a brutal crackdown on dissent in Iran (click here for one notable exception).
Rather than listening to the millions of Iranians who protested unfair
elections and political repression, these activists heard only the siren song
of Ahmadinejad’s “anti-imperialist” stance, his vehement criticism of Israel
and his statements about US government complicity with the September 11th
attacks. Their credibility as consistent supporters of social justice has been
shipwrecked in the process. Many of these groups are numerically small
organizations with histories of denying atrocities carried out by heads of
state that oppose US domination.[1] But some attendees are national figures,
such as former US Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate
Cynthia McKinney, who has been a beacon of principled opposition to
neo-liberalism and the “war on terror.” While it is important not to lump all
of the groups and individuals together as sharing the same set of political
ideologies or organizing strategies, we need to investigate the reasons that
these activists showed up to express support for the current Iranian regime.
Below we take up the most common reasons attendees expressed for standing with
the regime--that it has populist economic policies benefiting workers and the
poor, is anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine.
Do Ahmadinejad’s policies support Iranian workers and
the poor?
One of the most bewildering misrepresentations of Ahmadinejad outside
Iran has been around his economic policies, which are often represented by the
US left as populist or even pro-working class. In reality, the extent and the
speed of privatization in Iran under Ahmadinejad has been unprecedented, and
disastrous, for the majority of the Iranian people. The International Monetary
Fund (IMF)’s report on the Iranian state’s neo-liberal policies glows with approval, confirming once again that
the Fund has no problem supporting undemocratic attacks on the living standards
of ordinary people. Privatization in Iran has happened under
government/military control. State-affiliated actors, mainly Sepah, have bought
a huge share of the country’s economic institutions and contracts--from small
companies all the way to the largest national corporations such as
telecommunications, oil and gas. Recently, despite vast opposition even from
the parliament, the government annulled gasoline and food subsidies that have
been in place for decades. Gas prices quadruped, while the price of bread
tripled, almost overnight. This is an attack on workers and the poor of
historic proportions that had been in the works for many years but was delayed
due to fear of a popular backlash. It was only under conditions of extreme
militarization and suppression of dissent that Ahmadinejad’s administration
could finally implement this plan. Arguing that subsidies should go only to
those the regime decides are deserving, the government will now be able to use
this massive budget to reward supporters and/or buy loyalty. The massive
unregulated import of foreign products, especially from China, has made it
impossible for agricultural and industrial domestic producers to survive.
Import venues are mainly controlled by the government and Sepah, which profit
enormously from their monopolies. These hasty and haphazard developments have
severely destabilized Iran’s economy in the past few years, leading to
rocketing inflation (25-30%) and growing poverty. Unemployment is very high; no
official statistics are available but rough estimates are around 30%, creating
fertile ground for recruitment into the state’s military and police apparatus (similar
to the “poverty draft” in the United States).
Is the Ahmadinejad administration anti-imperialist?
The 1978–79 revolution was one of the most inspiring popular uprisings
against imperialism and homegrown despotism the world has seen, successfully wresting
Iran away from US control over Iranian oilfields and ending its role as a
watchdog for US interests in the region. Denunciations of American imperialism
were a unifying rallying cry and formed a key pillar of revolutionary ideology.
However, in the more that thirty years since, the Iranian government has, like
all nations, ruthlessly pursued its interests on the world stage. Despite its
anti-American/anti-imperialist rhetoric, Iran cannot survive without capital
investment from and trade with other “imperial” nations, without integration
into a world market that is ordered according to the relative military and
economic strength of various states. Witness the large oil, gas, and
development contracts granted to Russia and China, and the way that these
countries, as well as France and Germany, have cashed in on the Iranian
consumer goods market. The Islamic government has even cut deals with the US,
such as during the infamous Iran-Contra episode, when it served its interests.
US opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, and multiple rounds of sanctions,
should be understood as part of the American effort to re-exert control over
this geo-politically strategic country and re-enter the race for Iranian energy
resources and markets from which it has been shut out.
Iran’s foreign policy cannot and should not be reduced to one
individual’s inflammatory speeches. In fact, the same Ahmadinejad who grabs
western media headlines by criticizing the US is the first Iranian president to
send a letter directly to a US president requesting a new era of diplomacy, something unthinkable under previous
administrations. Diplomacy, to be clear, carries with it the goal of re-entering
a direct relationship with the so-called “Great Satan.” Far from acting as an
outpost of anti-imperialism, the Ahmadinejad administration is maneuvering to
cut the best deal possible and to renegotiation its place in the global
hierarchy of nations. Given its massive oil and gas resources and strategic
location, Iran would likely be playing a far more significant and powerful role
if not for decades of isolation, sanctions and hostility from the US. It is in
the Iranian governments interests to break this stranglehold. Its strategy is
to play all cards possible in extending its regional influence in smaller and
weaker countries, such as Lebanon and the occupied territories of Palestine. As
Mohammad Khazaee, the Iranian ambassador to the UN told the New York Times,
Iran is a regional “heavyweight” and deserves to be treated as such.
The Iranian government’s support for Palestinians also scores it major
points with many leftists in the US and around the world. Again, it is crucial
to see through the rhetoric and examine the more complex aims and effects of
Iran’s policies. While the Iranian government does send material aid to
Palestinians suffering under Israeli blockades and in refugee camps in Lebanon,
they have also manipulated the situation quite cynically for purposes that have
nothing to do with Palestinian liberation. Using money to buy support from
Palestinians, and financing and arming the Hezbollah army in Lebanon, are
crucial ways the Islamic Republic exerts its influence in the region.
There is no mechanism for Palestinians or Lebanese people, who are
impacted by Iran’s actions, to have any say in how Iran intervenes in their
struggles, even when the results are harmful. For instance, Ahmadinejad’s
holocaust denials undermine the credibility of Palestinian efforts to oppose
Israeli apartheid by reinforcing the false equation between anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism. At the 2001 UN conference against racism in Durban, South Africa,
an anti-Zionist coalition emerged and got a hearing. But at the 2009 conference
in Geneva, Ahmadinejad’s speech on the first day overshadowed the whole
conference and undermined any possible critique of Israel, creating a serious
set back for the anti-Zionist movement.
Relentless state propaganda about Palestine coming from an unpopular
regime has tragically resulted in the Iranian people’s alienation from the
Palestinian’s struggle for freedom. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of Ahmadinejad
claiming to care about the rights of Palestinians while trampling on those of
his own citizens, the policy of sending humanitarian aid to Palestinians while
impoverishing Iranians has produced massive domestic resentment. In an article on The
Electronic Intifada, Khashayar Safavi attempted to link the pro-democracy
Iranian opposition to broader questions of justice in the region. “We are not
traitors, nor pro-American, nor Zionist ‘agents,’” he wrote, responding to
Ahmadinejad’s verbal attacks on the movement, “[W]e merely want the same
freedom to live, to exist and to resist as we demand for the Palestinians and
for the Lebanese.” Unfortunately, sections of the US left support the
self-determination of Palestinians while undermining that of Iranians by
supporting Ahmadinejad’s government. We now look at some of the key problems of
Ahmadinejad’s government, exposing the high cost of aligning with repressive
state leaders.
Harsh realities for labor and other social justice
organizing in Iran
Currently no form of independent organizing, political or economic, is
tolerated in Iran. Attempts at organizing workers and labor unions have been
particularly subject to violent repression. The crushing of the bus drivers’
union, one of the rare attempts at independent unionizing in the last few
decades, is one of the better-known examples. The story of Mansour Osanloo, one
of the main organizers of the syndicate, illustrates the incredible pressure
and cruelty labor organizers and their families experience at the hands of the
regime. In June 2010, his pregnant daughter-in-law was attacked and beaten up
by pro-regime thugs while getting on subway. They took her with them by force
and after hours of torture, left her under a bridge in Tehran. She was in dire
health and had a miscarriage. These unofficial security forcescontinued to
harass her at home in order to put psychological pressure on Osanloo, who is
still in prison and is not yielding to the government’s demands to stop
organizing. Currently, even conservative judiciary officials are complaining
about violations of their authority by parallel security and military forces
who arrest people, conduct interrogations and carry out torture, pressure
judges to issue harsh sentences, and are implicated in the suspicious murders
of dissidents. (In the past few months, not only political dissidents, but even
physicians who have witnessed some of the tortures or consequences of them,
have been murdered.)
No opposition parties are allowed to function. No independent
media--no newspapers magazines, radio or television stations--can survive,
other than websites that must constantly battle government censorship. The
prisons are full of journalists and activists from across Iranian society.
Conditions in Iran’s prisons are gruesome. Prisoners are deprived of any rights
or a fair trial, a violation of Iranian law. After the election protests,
killing, murder and rape of protesters and prisoners caused a scandal, which
resulted in the closing of the notorious Kahrizak prison. Executions continue,
however, as the government has meted out hundreds of death sentences in the
last year. Iran has the second highest number of executions among all countries
and the highest number per capita. In January 2011, executions soared to a rate
of one every eight hours.
The women’s movement has been another major target of repression in
the past few years. Dozens of activists have been arrested and imprisoned for
conducting peaceful campaigns for legal equality; many have been forced to flee
the country and many more are continually harassed and threatened. Women
collecting signatures on a petition demanding the right to divorce and to child
custody are often unfairly accused of “disturbing public order,” “threatening
national security,” and “insulting religious values.” Ahmadinejad’s government
employs a wide range of patriarchal discourses and policies designed to roll
back even small gains achieved by women.
Ahmadinejad’s anti-immigrant positions and policies are the harshest
of any administration in the past few decades. The largest forced return of
Afghan immigrants happened under his government, ripping families apart and
forcing thousands across the border (with many deaths reported in winter due to
severe cold). Marriage between Iranians and Afghan immigrants is not allowed
and Afghan children do not have any rights, not even to attend school.
Moreover, Ahmadinejad’s government has been repressive toward different ethnic
groups in Iran, particularly Kurds. It is promoting a militarist
Shia-Islamist-nationalist agenda and escalating Shia-Sunni divisions.
Given these realities, how is it that large parts of the
US left can support Ahmadinejad? We now look at the confusions that make such a
position possible. US left support for Ahmadinejad.
Despite the many differences between the individuals and groups
represented at that dinner with Ahmadinejad a few months ago, what the
overwhelming majority of them have in common is a mistaken idea of what it
means to be anti-imperialist or anti-war. The sycophantic speeches at the
dinner can be understood as an enactment of the old adage “the enemy of my
enemy is my friend.” There are two problems with this approach. The first is
that it equates governments with entire populations, the very mistake the
activists at that dinner are always saying we shouldn’t make when it comes to
US society. The second problem is that support for Ahmadinejad means siding
with the regime that crushed a democratic people’s movement in Iran. This
position pits US-based activists who want to stop a war with Iran against the
democratic aspirations and struggles of millions of Iranians.
Part of the confusion may stem from a distorted notion of what it
means to speak from inside “the belly of the beast.” In other words, the
argument goes, those of us in the United States have a foremost responsibility
to oppose the actual and threatened atrocities of our own government, not to
sit in hypocritical judgment over other, lesser state powers. But in the case
of the vicious crackdown on all forms of dissent inside Iran, not judging is,
in practice, silent complicity. If anti-imperialism means the right to only
criticize the US government, we end up with a politics that is, ironically, so
US-centric as to undermine the possibility of international solidarity with
people who have to simultaneously stand up to their own dictatorial governments
and to the behemoth of US power. The fact that the US is the global superpower,
and therefore the most dangerous nation-state, does not somehow nullify the
oppressive actions of other governments. China, for example, is increasingly
participating in economic imperialism across Asia and Africa, exploiting
natural resources and labor forces well beyond its borders. There is more than
one source of oppression, and even imperialism, in the world. The necessity to
hold “our” government accountable in the US must not preclude a crucial
imperative of solidarity--the ability to understand the context of other people’s
struggles, to stand in their shoes.
If any of the activists defending Ahmadinejad would honestly attempt
to do this, they might have some disturbing realizations. For example, if those
same individuals or groups tried to speak out and organize in Iran for their
current political agendas--against government targeting of activists, against
ballooning military budgets, against media censorship, against the death
penalty, against a rigged electoral system, for labors rights, women’s rights,
the rights of sexual minorities and to free political prisoners--they would
themselves be in jail or worse.
Given that these are the issues that guide the work of these leftists
in the US, we must ask: don’t the Iranian people also deserve the right to
fight for a progressive agenda of their choosing without execution,
imprisonment and torture? As we demand rights for activists here, don’t we have
to support those same rights for activists in Iran?
Solidarity: concrete and from below
In the tangle of conflicting messages about who speaks for the “people
of Iran”--a diverse population with a range of views and interests--what has
been sorely lacking in the US is a broad-based progressive/left position on
Iran that supports democratization, judicial transparency, political rights,
economic justice, social freedoms and self-determination.
There is no contradiction between opposing every instance of US
meddling in Iran--and every other country--and supporting the popular,
democratic struggles of ordinary Iranians against dictatorship. Effective
international solidarity requires that the two go hand in hand, for example, by
linking the struggles of political prisoners in Iran and with those of
political prisoners in the US, not by counterposing them. Iranian dissidents,
like dissidents in the US, see their own government as their main enemy. The
fact that Iranian activists also have to deal with sanctions and threats of
military action from the US only makes their work and their lives more
difficult. The US and Iranian governments are, of course, not equal in their
global reach, but both stand in the way of popular democracy and human
liberation. US-based activists must not undermine the brave and endangered work
of Iranian opposition groups by supporting the regime that is ruthlessly trying
to crush them.
We are calling for a rethinking of what internationalism and
international solidarity means from the vantage point of activists working in
the US. Internationalism has to start from below, from the differently
articulated aspirations of mass movements against state militarism,
dictatorship, economic crisis, gender, sexual, religious, class and ethnic
oppression, in Iran, in the US and all over the world.
For activists in the US, this means being against sanctions on Iran,
whether they are in the name of “human rights” or the nuclear issue. It means
refusing to cast the US as the land of progress and freedom while Iran is
demonized as backward and oppressive. Solidarity is not charity or pity; it
flows from an understanding of mutual--though far from identical--struggle. It
means consistent opposition to human rights violations in the US, to the
rampant sexism and homophobia that lead to violence and destroy people’s lives
right here. But we don’t have to hide another state’s brutality behind our
complaints about conditions in America. We have to be just as clear in
condemning state crimes against activists, journalists and others in Iran, just
as critical of the Iranian versions of neo-liberalism and oligarchy, of attacks
on trade unions, women and students, as we are of the US versions.
For solidarity to be effective, it must be concrete. US-based
activists need to educate ourselves about Iran’s historic and contemporary
social movements and, as much as possible, build relationships with those
involved in various opposition groups and activities in Iran so that our
support is thoughtful, appropriate to the context and, ideally, in response to
specific requests initiated from within Iran. It is our hope that these
struggles may be increasingly linked as social justice activists in the US and
Iran find productive ways of working together, as well as in our different
contexts and locations, towards the similar goals of greater democracy and
human liberation.
[1]
For example, Workers World, ANSWER and several other groups who share the same
political tradition have historically supported Soviet crackdowns against
popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Chinese
state’s massacre of unarmed protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the
ethnic cleansings carried out by ultra-nationalist Milosevic throughout the
1990s.
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