12th June protest report back and analysis

Afshin Nikouseresht
On June 12^th, 2010, a 300 strong crowd of Iranians and their supporters participated in what was a historic protest march[1], through the streets of Melbourne to commemorate the first anniversary of the uprising of the Iranian people in the aftermath of the fraudulent 2009 elections. Iran Solidarity Melbourne activists managed to mobilise a very lively and diverse group of about 50-60 protestors who marched inside a the ‘freedom of expression’ block; a loose coalition of activists who came together on the day for the sole purpose of exercising their right to participate in the protest in support of the Iranian pro-democracy movement.

In the lead up to the anniversary, the organisers of the protest, United For Iran Melbourne, again refused to include any other activist groups in Melbourne in the planning phase of and preparation for the rally and went on to announce that only individuals who agreed to march in silence, under their flags and with their propaganda material in hand would be allowed to march. When Iran Solidarity Melbourne activists protested that the manner in which this decision had been made was undemocratic and that the restrictions themselves were of an undemocratic nature and not in tune with the spirit of the demands of the protest – human and civil rights for Iran – we were simply told that this was the way it was and if we didn’t like it we didn’t have to attend! Upon insisting on our right to be there to represent our views in solidarity with the Iranian struggle we were told that United For Iran organisers would ask the police to forcefully remove anyone who showed up to defy their restrictions. Iran Solidarity Melbourne condemns this decision to use state violence against Iranian protestors as the most shameful and unprincipled form of conduct imaginable by a so called “pro democracy” and “pro human rights” campaign group and believes that this clearly exposes the farcical and dictatorial nature of United For Iran Melbourne.

Iran Solidarity Melbourne, refusing to concede to bullying tactics and intimidation and with the support of some of the non-Iranian progressive political forces in Melbourne such as the Australia Asia Worker’s Link, the Socialist Party of Australia and Socialist Alternative mobilised the above mentioned ‘freedom of expression’ block which in the end turned out to be a significant portion of the rally and succeeded in making what was to be an exclusive, homogonous and autocratic gathering into an all inclusive, diverse and democratic one where in the end, much to the dislike of the organisers, people from across the political spectrum exercised their right to march in the manner in which they saw fit instead of in a manner that was dictated to them from above. Much to our disappointment the organisers of the rally continuously urged the police to remove us through the march, much to our delight however Victoria Police ironically proved to know more about democracy and human rights than the rally’s organisers and refused to remove any of the protestors who were deemed well within their rights to be at the protest and chanting slogans and displaying their placards.

Post Rally criticism from supporters of United For Iran Melbourne

Following the protest Iran Solidarity Melbourne has come under criticism by supporters of United For Iran for its conduct at the protest. While most of this criticism has been of a pathetic, apolitical and personal nature – such as accusing Iran Solidarity Melbourne members of being paid agents of dubious terrorist organisations – and are thus not worthy of a response we feel the need to address some of the accusations which have appeared in a letter recently sent to us by Mehrdad Fatemi.[2] Fatemi is a self proclaimed independent protestor who in his letter expressed his disapproval of the conduct of Iran Solidarity Melbourne while defending United For Iran’s desire to exclude other activists from the rally.[3]

Fatemi’s accuses Iran Solidarity Melbourne of behaving in an undemocratic manner by defying the bans placed by the organisers. It is most concerning that Fatemi’s main gripes with the rally (referring to it as a bitter experience) was with the conduct of a group who merely wanted to express themselves freely instead of with the group who, if they had their way, would have had the police violently remove other Iranian protestors from the rally. Fatemi’s priorities must therefore seriously bring under question his commitment to democracy and its associated principles.

Fatemi reasons that Iran Solidarity Melbourne’s action was undemocratic as it didn’t adhere to the demands of the majority of the people who wanted to march in silence. For the record Iran Solidarity Melbourne defends the right of anyone to protest, whether they wish to protest in silence or not. At no point in the rally did Iran Solidarity Melbourne object to the method of protest chosen by the majority of the protestors and we did not interfere with their actions and expected the same in return.

It must also be said that it is not clear that the majority of the people were even bothered by our presence. The United For Iran organisers, who are unrepresentative of the Iranians in Melbourne wanted to impose compulsory silence on the protestors and failed while most people simply just wanted to express their support in the way they saw fit and minded their own business, in fact they behaved democratically in conducting their action while allowing others to conduct theirs. It was not the Iran Solidarity led block nor the bulk of the silent protestors who acted undemocratically but the organisers of United For Iran who continuously sought the removal of the ‘Freedom of Expression’ block from the protest.

Iran Solidarity has always had a transparent policy of inclusion. We advocate the idea that anybody who is concerned about the situation in Iran should be allowed to express their support for the people of Iran and they should be able to voice their opinions as to how we can reach our stated goals of institutionalising “democracy” and “human rights” in Iran. We have always believed that only by being inclusive we can build the largest solidarity movement possible.

On the other hand If the organisers of United For Iran had their way, the protest would have been a good 50-60 people smaller as these were the people whom had expressed concern at the lack of freedom of expression at previous rallies and had initially wanted to stay away and not march on the day (a scenario which the organisers of the rally had advocated in a private meeting with Iran Solidarity Melbourne activists, they had out rightly said “if they don’t like it they don’t have to come”). However Iran Solidarity Melbourne insisted that these people exercise their right to protest and managed to convince them to participate in the rally maximising the turnout in the process.

United For Iran Melbourne has provided many excuses for its policies and these were repeated again in Fatemi’s letter. We have already addressed many of these arguments in previous communication with United For Iran here , here and here, but this has not stopped them from using the same arguments again and again to justify their inexcusable dictatorial tendencies. For example we are told that:

Iranian students are too scared to participate in protests that include radical elements as they fear repercussions upon returning to Iran

I have already addressed the argument about the fear of demonstrators in previous communications. We believe that it is irrational to think that one is somehow “safe” to attend a “silent protest” and then return to Iran. As already demonstrated in my previous letter, these details do not matter for the Islamic Republic who indiscriminately persecutes pro-democracy activists regardless of the degree of their radicalism. Those who attend protest marches have already crossed the threshold of safety and should attend these gatherings at their own risk. It is irresponsible of the organisers of United For Iran to create a false sense of security by peddling this nonsense and making people believe that they are somehow more secure if they remain within some ill-defined boundary of conservatism. If United For Iran organisers were really concerned about the safety of the people they invite to their protests, they would inform them about the risks of participating and undertake measures to protect the privacy of the participants. We have already suggested ways of doing this.

Further it must be said that this argument has always come from the organisers of United for Iran, not any students that I have had contact with nor have I heard anybody else talking to any students who have had these concerns. My guess is that United For Iran activists are cynically using this argument about safety to push their own political agenda of stifling opposition to the Islamic Republic, generally stifling political debate and lowering the level of political engagement and hampering the development of a democratic political culture within the Iranian diaspora as well as drawing an arbitrary distinctions between the Iranian diaspora and Iranian citizens living in Iran in the hope of excluding the Iranian diaspora from the political life of Iran in the hope that they do not have any influence over or engagement with Iranians inside Iran.

It is not the first time that the supporters and organisers of United For Iran have shown their general distrust and hatred for Iranian expats. The unethical manner of their conduct makes it nearly impossible to document any of these attitudes (they almost never formally communicate their ideas and true political agenda in writing but instead only use personal means to communicate with individuals), but a pattern has been in existence here for some time now. I was surprised to find after conversing with one of the United for Iran activists^[4]for the first time that she brazenly announced that she “hated” Iranians who lived outside Iran.^[5] At other times the same person violently attacked Iranian-Australian protestors and ridiculed their political activity jeering that they should return to Iran if they “dare” and if they are serious about their political activity. The fact that the people she had attacked all had a history of political activity in Iran and had been the victims of torture and imprisonments and were forced to live in exile as a result of their activities was not enough to win these people any political “cred” in the eyes of this shameless individual.

And now Mehrdad Fatemi’s letter provides us with a documented illustration of at least one account of such attitude by differentiating between Iranian students studying here on student visas and members of the Iranian community who are permanent residents of Australia by rhetorically posing the question to Iran Solidarity Melbourne activists; “why were there no Iranians who had recently come to Australia in your block?”, implying that the lack of presence of recently arrived Iranians in our block deligitmised our action. Leaving aside the fact that his assertion is factually incorrect (In fact there were recently arrived Iranians in our block, as well as permanent residents, older, younger, middle aged Iranians, and non Iranians including Australian supporters from at least three different organisations which I personally came in contact with at the rally, The Socialist Party of Australia, Australia Asia Worker’s Link and Socialist Alternative as well as at least one Armenian supporter whom I had never met before – all in all it seems that our block was far more inclusive and diverse than the rest of the rally.) In differentiating between Iranian international students and Iranian residents of Australia Fatemi implies that somehow the latter are not qualified to question the former or to contribute constructively to the debates regarding the pro-democracy movement in Iran. Fatemi’s argument leaves no room for anyone to doubt or criticise the actions or politics of the Iranian students as in his view they are right by default and need no reason to justify their ideas or politics simply because “they were there” when the riots broke out in 2009. This kind of reasoning is not only irrational and divisive, it also sets an arbitrary point of reference for evaluating the political merit of any argument, action or group in that it becomes no longer important to look at the intents, values and political implications of any given idea but to instead simply look at where the person who makes that argument comes from or where they have lived most of their life; an utterly unscientific approach to analysis! As one can imagine this kind of mindset does not help in any way to promote a culture of critical thinking among Iranians and only creates barriers and division.

But the question must be asked; why is excluding and discrediting the Iranian diaspora so important for the organisers and supporters of groups like the Melbourne branch of United For Iran? To answer this question we must first look at the political make up of this group. While I believe my observations of this group allows for the drawing of generalised conclusions about similar trends around the world, due to a lack of time I will only deal with the local and particular and urge others to find out about and document similar trends in their own corners of the world. The political agenda of the United For Iran activists in Melbourne, which has now become obvious to all, is the towing of the official line of the defeated reformists candidates of the 2009 elections. The first immediate sign of this is the insistence of holding silent protests, a tactic often promoted by Mousavi in Iran as a way to prevent the opposition from expressing any general disapproval of the Islamic Republic. This same tactic is being used outside of Iran for the same purpose, to paint a picture of a movement that is homogenous, loyal to a vague notion of “democracy” and intolerant of anyone proposing radical structural changes such as the overthrowing of the Islamic Republic or opposing the dictatorial powers of the Velayate Faqih as a prerequisite for establishing democracy in Iran.

So long as conditions inside Iran make it difficult for the more radical elements of the opposition to organise and voice their opinions, public displays of resistance are limited to street protests and riots, and public meetings and discussions are impossible to organise, a certain logic which fails to understand how these conditions effect the outward political appearance of the movement, dictates that these displays of resistance are homogenous and committed only to a minimalist program constituting of removing the current Iranian president from his office.

While clearly a section of the Iranian movement (to avoid controversy I won’t contemplate on whether this is a majority or minority, and maintain that it is impossible for anyone to know this and anybody claiming otherwise is simply pushing their own political agenda) is using this opportunity to demand sweeping and historic changes, certain activists who are closely linked with the Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami reformist trio, such as the “socialist” students of Allaameh University, emphasise the centrality to the “green movement” of electing the reformist candidate, Mousavi. Naturally for these people any radicalisation in the demands of the people is a deviation from this central objective and a major inconvenience which they would rather not have to deal with. Fortunately for them, the historic elimination of all radical political tendencies inside Iran has deprived the people of alternative political voices and the current suffocating political atmosphere means that there are virtually no contesting radical figureheads or organisations that can effectively challenge the official reformist dogmas which makes the task of maintaining an ideological hegemony over the movement relatively easy inside Iran as there are virtually no public debates inside Iran about how the movement can go forward or what its objectives should be or how these objectives can be achieved.

However this is not the case outside of Iran. When the movement broke out in 2009, Iranians outside of Iran became involved in an unprecedented level of political activity to not only show their solidarity with Iranian movement but to become involved and engage with and contribute to the debates in ways that the 70 million Iranians held hostage inside Iran’s borders could not. Not restricted by the political environment in Iran, expats sought to use the freedoms available to them to express their many different and diverse views and to promote the cause by the different means available to them. This became a problem for those who wished to keep the movement within the bounds of their own narrow political objectives. Confronted with a political atmosphere which gave the right to protest to different groups with different ideologies, the proponents of the reformist’s official line sought to recreate a solidarity movement abroad mirroring the image of what they saw as the real character of the movement inside Iran.

Many benign  sounding arguments were used to justify this approach (most of which I have already addressed in other letters and articles) and many people who had little political experience prior to the uprising in 2009 readily accepted these arguments and towed the line. They accepted that the solidarity movement should remain “apolitical” (a ridiculous paradox), they accepted to not bring any material to gatherings other than green banners and to only use placards and slogans provided by the organisers who patronisingly argued that Iranians would “fight” one another at protests if different and competing political materials were present (but as we have just seen apart from the organisers who were furious with the presence of such material most other people did not care one way or another that there were people with different ideas present), and most significantly they accepted that they should remain silent in their protests. All of these conditions were calculated to recreate the closed and oppressive political atmosphere in Iran by making the Iranian diaspora and Iranian students impose restrictions on their own freedom of expression in order to be allowed to participate in political activities in solidarity with the Iranian people.

Ofcourse from the beginning this project was met with obstacles. Groups of politically aware Iranians reside in all parts of the world and these soon began to organise themselves to exercise their right to freedom of expression, organisation and participation in public events in solidarity with the struggle inside Iran. in the absence of the threat of state violence many groups and individuals began to offer their views on the movement and to engage in debates about its direction and character, a refreshing development after years of apathy and detachment. But this development was not welcomed by the supporters of the reformist trio in Iran as it opened up a space for people to criticise the leaders of the movement as well as the entire Islamic Republican system of government; criticisms for which there were often no convincing counter arguments. Perhaps somewhat inconvenienced by the lack of state repression of radical political ideas, these activists sought to rely on the repression of other states, time after time pleading with Victoria Police (and I am only referring here to incidents in Melbourne but I suspect similar incidents may have occurred elsewhere) to forcefully remove demonstrators with whom they did not agree and who refused to be cowed into self-censorship, from the protests. Much to the frustration of the organisers, Victoria Police have simply not been interested in the rivalries between the different Iranian political factions and have not stepped in to remove any protestors from any of the gatherings and as time has gone by the presence of Iranians, who are willing to defy the undemocratic restrictions placed on them by the organisers, has steadily increased with the most successful mobilisation being the June 12^th 2010 rally with around 50-60 demonstrators marching inside the “Freedom of Expression” block in defiance of the ban on chanting slogans and raising placards and flags other than those provided by the organisers.

The role of the Iranian Diaspora

The importance of the Iranian diaspora to the Iranian movement has been illustrated on many different levels. Iranians expats both as professionals, such as Journalists, news reporters and academics, and as activists and human rights advocates have played a great role in propagating the cause of the Iranian people outside of Iran and to keeping the memory of the struggle alive outside Iran’s borders. Networks that have spontaneously emerged which link the diaspora to Iranians inside Iran have played a huge role in spreading information about developments inside the country and to then communicate these developments back to people inside Iran (through satellite TV channels and the internet) who would have otherwise themselves been deprived of such information. This significance is perhaps best illustrated by the numbers of people who continuously risk their lives^[6] to contact various Farsi language TV stations around the world to report on events.

The extent of this significance has not been lost on the advocates of the official reformist line who are active outside of Iran. After all they also attempt to mobilise this section of the Iranian population, albeit on their own terms. They can also see that this is simply another effective way of showing the world that there is a political struggle going on in Iran between a tyrannical government and a people who long for democracy. However they wish to limit the extent of the participation of this section of the Iranian population lest they wish to actually politicise the solidarity movement. It is with this understanding that we may begin to get to the all important question, and that is, to what extent should the Iranian diaspora play a role in the struggle for democracy inside Iran?

There are two competing answers to this question. The first dictates that the role of the Iranian diaspora should be limited to passively and uncritically supporting the movement in Iran and to not try to influence events or ideas inside Iran and the second proposes that the Iranian diaspora has a responsibility to use the relative freedom available to it in western democracies to engage critically with the movement and to forge networks with activists inside Iran and to form a dialogue in order to a) better understand the situation on the ground and b) offer critical analysis and to introduce new ideas into the struggle in the hope of hastening our march towards victory.

If one is content with the first approach, then principles such as freedom of expression and actively engaging in political debates are not so important and can be done away with for the sake of a casual and passive participation which does not go far beyond the odd vigil and protest march here or there. However if you firmly believe in the second proposal then it is absolutely crucial that debates are held in open and non hostile environments, that the principles of democracy, freedom of expression, organisation and the such are vehemently defended and that access to the Iranian activist community does not become the privilege of only one political group or idea. I am firmly of the belief that the Iranian diaspora can play a crucial role in the liberation of Iran if it uses the opportunities that come with living in democratic societies.

Of course you are allowed to disagree. You may believe that such an ideal is a mere pipedream and that Iranians could never play a such a role outside of Iran. This is your prerogative. We stand by your right to embrace the first proposal and to conduct our activities accordingly, what we will not stand for is other groups imposing their view regarding this matter on those who subscribe to another viewpoint. As advocates of democracy and human rights we reserve our right to participate in political events which are organised for the purpose of advocating these ideals and we reserve our right to participate in a manner which does not contradict the very principles that are so central to our struggle.

Afshin Nikouseresht

Iran Solidarity Melbourne

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[1] Iranians had never marched through the streets of Melbourne in support of the democracy movement in Iran before, although plenty of immobile gatherings have been held as well as some vigils and one protest involving a fleet of cars driving through the city.

[2] Mehrdad Fatemi is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of the demonstrator.

[3] Fatemi’s letter is available in Farsi on Iran Solidarity Melbourne’s website.

[4] The activists of United For Iran have been active under several different names in Melbourne the latest of which, at the time of writing this article, is United For Iran.

[5] The Farsi word for “I hate”, motenaferam, was used. This word is used to express extreme hatred for something as opposed to similar words which express dislike or disapproval

[6] There is at least one account of one person being arrested while on the phone to one of these stations. The broadcaster was relaying the man’s story live when he is approached by a security agent and dragged off screaming seemingly unaware that the entire altercation was being broadcast live to the entire world.