For those who need to travel, there seems to be a particular anxiety associated with flying. Whatever the fears may be, though, it seems inconceivable to be detained while on a stopover, dragged to a prison known for torture, held with no formal charge other than “relations with foreigners,” and denied due process and a lawyer.
And yet, this is exactly the fate that awaited former U of T philosophy professor Ramin Jahanbegloo in his native Iran on April 27, 2006 while on a stopover from India to Brussels.
Jahanbegloo, a dual citizen of Canada and Iran, is a student of Sorbonne and Harvard. He has published some 15 books in three languages, on issues ranging from modernity and globalization, the writings of Gandhi and Hegel, and interviews with noted philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
What has perhaps proven to be Jahanbegloo’s most ambitious work before his incarceration, was his hosting of a “Dialogue of Civilizations” forum in Tehran. The dialogues featured such intellectual heavyweights as Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, and Michael Ignatieff, who spoke on “Proving the Universality of Human Rights.”
The “dialogues” also seem to have come at an inopportune time for dissidents in Iran, especially a philosopher such as Jahanbegloo. Shortly after they began, a shift in Iranian leadership saw a change in president from the more liberal-minded and Western-friendly Mohammad Khatami to the authoritarian populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Ahmadinejad regime-now infamous for its leaders’ ardent denial of the Holocaust and adopting a nuclear policy that is at odds with the international community-seems to have increased attention on Jahanbegloo after an article he published in Spain’s El Pais newspaper in which he recounted his visit to Auschwitz. Jahanbegloo called it “one of the most terrible experiences that anyone can experience.”
As unjust as it is, many caution that his treatment is nothing new, as Binesh Hassanpour, a U of T student and writer/editor of Sharvand, the Iranian diaspora’s largest newspaper, reminds us. “The arrest and asphyxiation of intellectuals has been a trend the Islamic Republic has subscribed to ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The regime does not intend to release its iron grip of Iran’s ideological conversation.”
What surprises Hassanpour most, however, is that Jahanbegloo does not fit the role of the radical political dissident: “Professor Jahanbegloo’s imprisonment is an anomaly insofar as he was not the fervent political or social activist. Jahanbegloo was an academic in every sense of the word. He was genuinely interested in dialogue per se.”
Even under the supposedly liberal Khatami, human rights were sorely lacking in Iran. It was under Khatami that another dual Canadian citizen, photographer Zahra Kazemi, was beaten, raped, tortured, and eventually murdered in 2003 for taking pictures of a demonstration in Iran. Like Jahanbegloo, her detention and murder had taken place in Tehran’s Evin prison, which is notorious for torture and prisoner abuse.
What is particularly dire for those demanding Jahanbegloos’ release has been the Canadian governments’ inability to do anything to save him, much like the case of Kazemi. In Kazemis’ case, Canada threatened to recall its ambassador and even impose sanctions, something not done for Jahanbegloo.
Nader Hashemi, Jahanbegloos’s friend and a U of T PhD graduate who is now a fellow at Northwestern University, argues that while international attention and pressure does let the present Iranian regime know that Jahanbegloo will not be forgotten, there is little that governments, including Canada’s, can do.
“Canada’s influence over Iran is quite limited. We are not one of Iran’s major trading partners. We sell more to Iran than they sell to us. So any talk of sanctions would hurt Canadian business more than it would hurt Iranian interests.”
Hashemi identified Jahanbegloo’s status as a leading intellectual figure as perhaps a cause for his internment, to send a message to other dissidents that they are being watched and will not be tolerated. He mentioned the example of Akbar Ganji, an Iranian dissident recently released after six years in prison.
“The struggle for [Iranian] democracy demands sacrifice. If Iranians want democracy, they will have to pay a price for it. That means running the risk of going to prison for articulating ideas. Ramin is paying that price, and its an important price that democracy movements need to make.”
Overall, Hashemi argues that Jahanbegloo’s imprisonment shows the weakness of the Iranian regime: “It shows that any regime that needs to imprison and interrogate a man like Ramin Jahanbegloo, who is a nonviolent, democratic philosopher, not a political activist, not someone who is involved in political causes, a man who is simply a teacher, a man of ideas, suggests that the regime cannot refute his ideas in the court of public opinion. It has to resort to strong arm tactics…as a way of dealing with him. It speaks to the deep crisis of legitimacy in the Iranian state and Ramin’s case reminds us of that fact.”
To learn more about the issue and sign a petition, please visit:
http://raminj.iranianstudies.ca/
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/polsci/ramin/letters.htm
