Like other exiled Iranians, she initially supported the preparations for the Iran Tribunal. She even supplied it with evidence. An impressive range of international politicians and lawyers were won to the project - for example, from Germany Norman Paech, a prominent member of the leftwing party, Die Linke, and respected professor of law.The first stage of the tribunal sat from June 18-22 in Amnesty International’s London HQ, where 60 witnesses (all of them survivors of the massacre or relatives of those murdered) gave accounts to the “truth commission” detailing their experiences and those of their family members (they had also supplied written statements beforehand). A report of 359 pages has since been published on the tribunal’s website.
This gruesome report of the truth commission will be handed to a ‘court’ in a second stage of the tribunal. This court, made up of human rights lawyers from around the world, will meet in The Hague from October 25-27 in order to evaluate the material and announce a judgement.“Of course, we cannot implement this judgement or the results of the commission,” say the organisers. “But the proceedings give tens of thousands of families a voice for the first time.” Criticism So far, so supportable.However, Yassamine Mather and others withdrew their initial cooperation when they noticed that the tribunal’s materials totally failed to mention the anti-Iran war plans of the United States and Israel. “The danger of war grows every day. I am a strong opponent of the regime in Tehran - but a war would be disastrous for the forces in Iran who have a real interest in democracy: the workers, women’s groups and social movements in that country.” Without clear opposition to war and sanctions, this tribunal effectively strengthens the hand of all those reactionary forces contemplating a military attack on Iran, Yassamine Mather says.Mather wrote to the tribunal’s committee to point out the need for a clear statement against war and sanctions. She also reminded them that many of those killed were actually socialists who were implacable not simply in their opposition to the Iranian regime, but also capitalism and imperialism. Surely, given this, it was incumbent on the tribunal to make its position on the terrible prospect of another disastrous war in the Middle East crystal clear. “I never even got a reply,” she notes.Mather and other Iranians were taken aback by this silence and took a closer look at the committee, its composition and its funding. They soon uncovered the fact that the tribunal is supported and financed by the Iran Human Rights Documentation group, whose founder, Payam Akhavan, acts as the chair and spokesperson of the tribunal’s steering committee.The IHRD has over the years received a large amount of funding from the US government.2 Akhavan is also active in Human Rights and Democracy for Iran (also known as the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation). This is financed by a variety of American and European foundations, amongst them the infamous National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED was founded in 1983 by former US president Ronald Reagan to spread his version of “democracy” around the globe.It is established fact that the US has destabilised and sponsored coup d’etats and proxy wars to rid itself of regimes it regards as hostile to its interests. The CIA finances, organises and trains local pro-US opposition groups. In Chile, Guatemala and many other countries, democratically elected governments were overthrown and replaced by dictators, some of whom went on to oppress their peoples for decades. In 1953 the CIA - with the help of the British government - toppled the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh.While the war drums beating against Tehran make it clear that military force remains on the agenda, the US strategy has been refined and more layers of sophistication have been added. In particular, in the aftermath of the collapse of USSR and the regimes of eastern Europe, pro-western regime change from above is pursued under the banner of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’.
In the Iranian presidential elections of 2009, the west heavily supported presidential green movement candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi. The ‘democratic’ credentials of this man expose the hollowness of all the talk of ‘democracy’ that comes out of Washington and London. Ironically, he was actually prime minister of Iran in 1988 and thus directly responsible for the mass murders and the extermination of the opposition (even if he did not order them personally). Unsurprisingly then, the opposition politically differentiated and split; the ‘green wave’, which brought more than a million people onto the streets of Iran, has largely ebbed away.“The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but it receives a yearly appropriation from the US Congress,” explains the former CIA agent Philip Agee in an article on the website Clearing House.3 In 2009, it was funded to the tune of $135 million by the US government.“No left activist should accept money from such sources,” says Mark Fischer, chair of Hands Off the People of Iran. “When they do, what started as a worthy project that originated on the anti-war left - to hold the Iranian regime to account for its crimes - is totally usurped and turned into its opposite. The tribunal has become part of the drive by Washington to topple the Islamic government and replace it with a US- and Israel-friendly regime.”Yassamine Mather and Hopi have been sharply criticised by some for their ‘purism’ - ‘What is so bad about accepting money from the US government?’ some have asked. After all, it is possible to receive funds from pigs without having to grunt yourself.“Of course it is,” responds Fischer. “But only if the financier places no political conditions or demands on you. But the NED is an important arm of US-sponsored foreign policy.” Fischer says it is no coincidence or oversight that the website of the tribunal does not come out in opposition to war and sanctions. Or that it does not mention even once that many of the victims of the 1988 massacre were communists and socialists.“Financially and politically the tribunal is an integral part of the campaign for ‘regime change from above’,” says Fischer. This is a multi-front campaign that utilises bombs, military threats, sanctions, killer commandos despatched by the Israeli secret service Mossad ... and ‘human rights’ initiatives like the Iran Tribunal. For the sake of legitimacy - especially when it comes to ‘soft war’ initiatives like the IT or sanctions - the support of pliant politicians of the Iranian opposition is vital in this. Indeed, some of these forces have foolishly suggested that the worse the social conditions become in Iran, the weaker the regime.Yassamine Mather adds: “Actually, what is weakened first and foremost are the ordinary people in Iran. The workers’ movements and women’s organisations are currently more feeble and embattled than they have been for many years. People struggle to get by in worsening economic conditions and simply have no time, space or energy for the political fight.”
Comrade Mather also criticises the composition of the steering committee of the tribunal, which “reads like a ‘who’s who’ of establishment luminaries who fight for ‘human rights’ in a total political vacuum”: eg, Sir Geoffrey Nice is a supporter of the Human Rights Commission of the British Conservative Party; lawyer John Cooper is also a well-known Tory. Payam Akhavan was voted “young global leader” at the World Economic Forum in 2005. All three are well-known, high-ranking lawyers, who in the name of what they dub “the international community” have over the years confronted many dictators and government heads in international courts (generally when these have turned on their former sponsors in the US, of course).
The government in Tehran was able to easily dismiss the tribunal as part of a western plot against Iran: the radio stations, Voice of America and Radio Free Iran - both financed by Washington - broadcast the witness statements uncut and for many hours.
Israeli socialist and Hopi supporter Moshé Machover believes that some of the organisers and participants have “acted with evident good will, but that is not enough. It often happens that people of good intentions lend themselves out of naivety to be exploited by evil forces. This is a danger that we must always guard against. Many good people, out of genuine and justified concern for women’s rights, were duped into lending legitimacy to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; and similarly good people, with genuine horror of Saddam Husain's atrocities, were duped in 2003 into lending legitimacy to the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”From as early as 2010, a number of former political prisoners have been criticising the mooted tribunal and its links to the US government. But the body only became the subject of an international controversy when Yassamine Mather began to publish her damning research in the Weekly Worker from June 2012.Many Iranians have since added to her critical voice. For example, a number of tribunal witnesses have used their statements to condemn the links of the committee to the NED and publicly stated that they are against war and sanctions on Iran. Several organisations have withdrawn their witnesses, support for and cooperation with the tribunal - amongst them Rahe Kargar (Komitee Ejraai) and the communist organisation Charikhaye Fadai Khalgh (one of the offshoots of the original Fedayeen). Others, like the Communist Party of Iran, have dropped their support. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Iran (Maoist) has split over the issue, as has the Iranian Left Socialist Alliance in the US and Canada.The most ferocious criticism has come from the tribunal’s Norwegian support committee. In two highly critical statements it describes how all IT witnesses who arrived in London on June 17 were taken to a briefing session, where they were explicitly asked not to raise any politics during their session. They would not be asked the name of their organisation or their political views, as this was “not a political tribunal”.Worse, they then spotted Maurice Copithorne, who was about to chair one of the sessions. Between 1995 and 2002 he acted as UN human rights rapporteur for Iran. “Some Iranians travelled to meet him in 1995 in order to get him to start an investigation of the 1988 massacre,” according to a member of the Norwegian committee. “But they weren’t even allowed to meet him. His aide told them that he would only deal with the current situation in Iran and was not interested in things from the past.”Of course, this was at a time when the US was making efforts to stage a rapprochement with Tehran and to enlist it as an ally in the fight against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. It was in this geo-political context that Copithorne’s 1998 annual human rights report was seen as a “political whitewash” of the theocracy’s oppression, explains Yassamine Mather. For example, in that report he opines that, “while the Islamic Republic of Iran is making progress in the field of human rights, this progress is uneven and a number of sectors are, at this time, being left behind. The government needs to broaden its agenda for change and to declare a strong commitment to achieving certain goals within specified time-frames.”4 This brand of almost technocratic advice to encourage the Tehran regime’s human rights “progress” seems surreal when the grim daily reality of poverty, repression and censorship for ordinary Iranians is borne in mind.Copithorne’s sudden interest in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners (in the new geo-political context of a US-led drive to war against Iran, of course) impressed few and most of the witnesses from Norway (as well as a number from Great Britain and Germany) decided at this point to withdraw from the proceedings. In protest at the farce unfolding in London, the Norwegian committee decided to dissolve itself, explaining that its members felt they had been “duped” by the organisers. In its statements, the presence of Copithorne, Nice and Cooper is criticised, as are the attempts to depoliticise the witness statements, and, of course, Akhavan’s leading role in the whole initiative and his links to the Broumand Foundation and IHDRC are emphatically rejected.One witness, however, wanted to challenge the tribunal and at the end of his 30-minute session made an anti-imperialist statement. Outrageously, his whole statement was excluded from the tribunal’s report.Norman Paech The furore has now started to make waves amongst the non-Iranian left. When Hopi supporters confronted the leading German politician cited at the beginning of this document, Norman Paech of Die Linke, with the evidence gathered by comrade Mather, he immediately cut off his cooperation with the tribunal. This is his statement in full:“I have indeed supported the intention and the work of the committee to prepare this tribunal. I still think it is absolutely necessary that all facts about the horrific murders, the torture and the crimes of the 1980s are brought to light. But the background of the funding and the obvious links to the NED, of which I had no knowledge and which have only just been brought to my attention, make it impossible for me to continue this support. I find myself in particularly strong disagreement with the committee when it comes to my resolute opposition to sanctions and the threat of war on Iran. I do not want to be part of a project which is supported by the pro-war Mujahedin.”He has since come under pressure from a number of Iranians in Germany to withdraw his statement. But his political biography suggests he is astute enough to stand firm.Paech left the then governing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2001, when it sent German troops to Afghanistan. He became a member of parliament for Die Linke in Germany in 2005, where he acted as the fraction’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and led the (failed) attempt by the party to declare the despatch of fighter jets to Afghanistan to be illegal. In 2010 he was on board the ship, Mavi Marmara, which attempted to deliver goods and food to Gaza. Notoriously, it was raided by the Israeli army and nine people were killed. Afterwards, Paech and two other Die Linke members on board were heavily criticised by the German media for their involvement, which “also harboured many extremists and Hamas supporters”. Because of the still strong German ‘collective guilt’ complex over World War II and the holocaust, any kind of criticism of Israel is widely misconstrued as anti-Semitism and Paech was slammed even by right wing sections of his own party.It is also important to point out that, to his credit, he has been very critical of attempts to charge so-called ‘war criminals’ in international courts. These courts act very much as the courts of the victors who are rewriting history for their own purpose. They are not interested in and cannot deliver ‘justice’.We should also have no illusions in the ability of the US, Israel or any western government to bring democracy to Iran. Iraq and Afghanistan surely serve as horrific examples of imperialist-led ‘regime change from above’.“In reality, the plan is to rebuild the politically unstable Middle East in a US-friendly way and preserve the regional hegemony of Israel. The biggest obstacle here is the regime in Iran,” says Machover. The Iran Tribunal is now a secondary, but nonetheless important, part of that reactionary project.
Mujahedin Despite all of this, there are still a number of groups who continue to support the tribunal as an important element of their opposition to Tehran: for example, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). For this organisation the overthrow of the regime has always been the key objective and it explicitly supports sanctions and war to achieve it (in the first Gulf War, it famously sided with Saddam Hussein and supported his attacks on Iran, including militarily). The Mujahedin’s backing for the Iran Tribunal is actually disputed by the organisation, yet the involvement of people with close links to the MEK seems to tell a different story. Hardly surprising: after all, the US government has only just announced that it is about to delist the Mujahedin as a terrorist group.
[ED NOTES;I LOVE IT,THE WHOLE TRIBUNAL ON VERGE OF COLLAPSE AND IS NOW LEFT IN SHAMBLES,THOUGH SUPPOSEDLY TO CONTINUE ON IN LATE OCTOBER LOL IMPORTANT AS WELL ARE SEVERAL ADMISSIONS THAT THE LEADER OF THE SO CALLED GREEN MOVEMENT ARE MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME OF THESE MASSACRES OF THE DISSIDENTS IN QUESTION YEARS BACK(NOTHING NEW TO MYSELF)!!!THESE ARE THE SO CALLED REFORMISTS WEST PRAISES AND MAJORITY OF GREENS PROMOTE LOL!!!I LOVE IT!!! ALSO SEE.. THE IRAN GREEN MOVEMENT,IS A FRONT FOR CIA,PROOF.. http://irangreenmovementexposed.blogspot.com/ GLOBALIST,IMPERIALIST) CFR's DECEITFUL NEW REPORT TARGETTING IRAN...CITING DISCREDITTED CIA BACKED GREEN MOVEMENT http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/11/director-of-cfr-richard-hass-at-w.html
(CIA-NED) TIED DISSIDENTS AND WESTERN BACKED GREEN MOVEMENT SHILLS ARE CALLING FOR IRAN TO SUSPEND ITS PEACEFUL NUCLEAR PROGRAM VIA CIA FRONTS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/11/cia-ned-tied-dissidents-and-western.html (CIA-NED) TIED DISSIDENTS AND WESTERN BACKED GREEN MOVEMENT SHILLS ARE CALLING FOR IRAN TO SUSPEND ITS PEACEFUL NUCLEAR PROGRAM VIA CIA FRONTS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/11/cia-ned-tied-dissidents-and-western.html 17 NGO'S ''SOME FOREIGN FUNDED'', OTHERS ''PRO MONARCHY'',OTHERS ''BASED IN ISRAHELL'' ,OTHERS ''PRO IMPERIALISM'' SYNCHRONIZE ATTACK AGAINST IRANIAN GOV ,FOLLOWING CFR AGENDA AND GOALS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2012/06/17-ngos-some-foreign-funded-others-pro.html
(CIA-NED) TIED DISSIDENTS AND WESTERN BACKED GREEN MOVEMENT SHILLS ARE CALLING FOR IRAN TO SUSPEND ITS PEACEFUL NUCLEAR PROGRAM VIA CIA FRONTS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/11/cia-ned-tied-dissidents-and-western.html (CIA-NED) TIED DISSIDENTS AND WESTERN BACKED GREEN MOVEMENT SHILLS ARE CALLING FOR IRAN TO SUSPEND ITS PEACEFUL NUCLEAR PROGRAM VIA CIA FRONTS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/11/cia-ned-tied-dissidents-and-western.html 17 NGO'S ''SOME FOREIGN FUNDED'', OTHERS ''PRO MONARCHY'',OTHERS ''BASED IN ISRAHELL'' ,OTHERS ''PRO IMPERIALISM'' SYNCHRONIZE ATTACK AGAINST IRANIAN GOV ,FOLLOWING CFR AGENDA AND GOALS http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2012/06/17-ngos-some-foreign-funded-others-pro.html
No comments:
Post a Comment