Reformists In Iran Say Regime Doomed Without Free Elections

According to Etemad newspaper, based on the new legislation, making any comment about the state of affairs in the country can land people in trouble, particularly politicians, political activists and celebrities.

The newspaper said that lawmakers at the Judiciary Committee wish to make sure that all public comments are identical with official version of developments. The headline of Etemad's report said: "Watch your mouth, you might be punished if what you say is different from the official reading!"

The paper said that the motion at the Majles is currently called "Adding one article to Chapter five of the Islamic Penal Code." The report in Etemad further opined that the new legislation may mainly target "well-known and famous" individuals.

The parliament had previously tabled another motion dubbed, "Adding two articles to Chapter five of the Islamic Penal Code," which called for changing articles 499 and 500 of the law. The new article 499 now calls for more severe punishment for those who "insult ethnic or religious minorities with the aim of instigating violence and tension," and the new article 500 intensifies the punishment of "those who commit criminal offenses against law enforcers and government buildings."

The amendments were made in December following months of protests in Iran during which occasional clashes occurred between heavily armed security forces such as the IRGC, police special forces, the Basij militia and plainclothes officers who attacked unarmed protesters.

The new change is about article 512 of the penal code which is about "those who provoke the people in order to disrupt the country's security through instigating war, massacres and civil strife."

The sentence for those who were charged with related offenses was imprisonment for five years, but the new addition is aimed at intensifying the punishment and making it easier for the courts to apply the article on anyone in jail as it is known today by human rights organizations that inmates are made to confess to crimes they have never committed.

The new legislation extends the duration of imprisonment to up to 15 years and also calls for the payment of up to 550 million rials no matter if the act committed "will or will not lead to murder and destruction of property."

Meanwhile, the new addition to the law says, "Anyone with a good job or with a good social standing or anyone who is a cultural, scientific, or military figure, even those with a high standing in their family" might be subjected to the new punishments "if they make a comment prior or contrary to official views about the state of the affairs in the country whether by word of mouth or on social media."

The legislation also warns that in certain cases, such comments might be assessed as "spreading corruption on the Earth," which entails death sentence.

The website of the Iranian parliament has restricted access to this part of the law based on users IP to bar foreigners and Iranians living abroad from accessing it or possibly telling the rest of the world about what Iran is doing to restrict civil liberties. The error message says: "Access denied --The request has been blocked from your IP at your location! This is due to some security settings of the website."

Based on this new legislation, an event such as the murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody should not be discussed on social media or otherwise as long as there is no definitive official attestation. In other words, no one can contradict what the government says about all issues, including for example inflation. A complaint about high prices could be interpreted as instigating unrest.

Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, the chairman of the Majles Judiciary Committee told Etemad that the new legislation is still being reviewed and its aim is to include “fake news, lies and rumors” within the jurisdiction of article 512. He mentioned Mahsa Amini's case and said that anyone makes a comment about the matter which could be categorized as lies, rumors and fake news will be additionally sentenced to up to ten years of deprivation from their social rights, and will be barred from going back to their job.

The film festival is part of a series of events to mark the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution marked by 10 days of state-sponsored ceremonies dubbed the decade of Fajr – which literally means dawn. 

The trio of festivals – along with a theater and a music festival – have faced boycotts by numerous artists and art enthusiasts in recent years, but the current wave of protests and the regime’s heavy-handed crackdown seems like the coup de grâce to the most significant propaganda gala of the Islamic Republic. 

Despite the government’s efforts to portray the events as popular as they used to be a decade ago, the theater festival was inaugurated in the sparsely attended Vahdat Hall this week.

It is ironic that even the most “prestigious” cultural events of the Islamic Republic are held in halls constructed prior to 1979 in the era of monarchy, as the clerical regime never truly invested in culture, and considers most of its representations un-Islamic except for a couple of weeks during the celebrations for the establishment of the Islamic Republic. 

Even though photos of the empty hall during the theater festival’s opening ceremony were reported even by state media and outlets affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, the Culture and Islamic Guidance minister, said that the event was welcomed by the people. 

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Since the beginning of the ongoing uprising in mid-September, many celebrities were banned, arrested or summoned by the judiciary for their solidarity with the current movement. Some of the most popular actors and artists even emigrated from the country to be able to express their support for the antigovernment protests freely and without fear of arrest. 

Many actors and filmmakers had announced their boycott of the festival weeks before the start of the event, prompting the authorities not to announce the films selected to be screened during. Something unprecedented that took place this year was that the tickets for the movies were sold without the names of the works, because the government feared that if it announced the flicks, more artists would announce their opposition to the event. Of course, their trick turned out to be ineffective as some actors actually announced their boycott after their films were selected for screening, such as Haniyeh Tavassoli. Most of the actors, actresses and even directors do not have a say in the screening their movies because almost all of the productions in Iran are sponsored by state organizations. 

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The festival had always been dominated by the works produced by government organizations and propaganda institutes but this year the level of audacity of the regime is even higher as authorities have announced that no movies that draw a grim portrait of the society were selected for screening. The committee tasked with selecting the movies is comprised of regime insiders, some of whom were not even film industry figures, such as Reza Pourhossein, a cultural manager and a professor of psychology at the University of Tehran. 

The secretaries of the festivals and their juries are also selected from the figures close to the regime and known for works that promote regime propaganda, such as the secretary of the film festival Mojtaba Amini, a producer who was involved in the attacks on the Saudi embassy when it was ransacked by IRGC’s basij militias in January 2016. The secretary of the Theater festival called those who boycott the event “cultural dictators” at the opening ceremony. 

The antigovernment protests, coupled with economic woes and political uncertainty, have clouded the cultural landscape of the country so much that the culture minister was reported asking theater directors and singers to start holding performances so that the regime can pretend the situation is back to normal. 

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Iranian Academic Mostafa Mehraeen said at a gathering of sociologists that Iran is facing an implosion and a civilizational revolution because of the people’s experience in the years before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He called on officials to think about why the Islamic Republic has been turned into a fundamental evil during the past four decades.

Many Iranian academics and commentators have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the authoritarian regime, its mismanagement of the state and deadly violations of human rights in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, Mehraeen criticized some of his peers and firebrand cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda for saying that no one was killed by security forces during the uprising and that the movement in Iran was motivated by sex and alcohol. He said those who have made those false comments are “ignorant.” Mehraeein further accused Iran’s rulers of dishonesty and said: “They have been lying for 40 years.”

He added that claims by officials about the protest movement being a riot by gunmen was also a lie.

Mehraeen questioned the Islamic Republic for regarding itself as a "sacred order" and said, "Yes, you were sacred only in the first year after the revolution."

The sociologist can well put himself in danger of getting arrested, as dozens of journalists, artists and writers are currently in prison.

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In another sharp remark, Mehraeein spoke about IRGC Commander Hossein Salami ordering Iranians "Not to take to the streets from tomorrow!" Mehraeein addressed Salami: "Do you own the nation? Do you own their bodies? Do you own the streets? Who are you and what is your status?"

He also recalled a move by members of the Islamic parliament who asked the hardliner Judiciary to execute detained protesters and said: "You foolish members of the parliament, you are supposed to be representing the people. What do you mean by saying that they should be executed?" He reminded the regime: "A political system is not all about the noose and hanging. It is not all about police, batons and repression!"

Mehraeein pointed out that one of the characteristics of the current protests is that they do not seek to disrupt the social order. "The protesters love their country and do not wish to start a civil war. That is why the conflict in restive provinces never turn into civil war because the ethnic people in those provinces seriously avoid any armed confrontation with the security forces. They want a revolution without bloodshed," he said.

During the past weeks, the Iranian Sociological Association has been holding several conferences to discuss the implications and the outlook of the Iranian protests that have been rocking the country for four months.

In his discussion about the pathology of civil protests, Iranian sociologist Ali Jafari separated the notion of culture from the idea of fabricated culture. For instance, when women reach a consensus on an issue such as hijab, that is culture, but ideological governments fabricate their own ideas as some kind of culture and try to impose that on the people. This is what we call fabricated culture, he said, which damages the society's cultural and social order.

The Association's website also featured an article by jailed sociologist Saeed Madani, written before the current protests, which argued that some social movements start without pre-planning or coordination.

Iranian sociologists had warned for years about the chances of protests similar to the Woman, Life Freedom movement, suddenly flaring up, but the regime never believed them. Even now when they have realized the predictive nature of sociological studies, they still keep academics such as Madani in jail and continue interrogating them and asking: How come you knew this and we didn't.

In an interview with Sky News, Prince Reza Pahlavi emphasized that he is not looking for power, adding that "My only goal is to bring our country to a point where the Iranian people, in a free and fair election can determine their own future in terms of self-determination."

"I'm not running for any office, nor do I seek any political position in the apparatus of state. I'd rather be an advocate for the people and stand by their side," he underlined.

Reza Pahlavi expressed hope that when the opposition is united and each of its members receive the support of the international community, it will be possible to oust the regime as quickly as possible by staging nationwide strikes.

Once again, he asked all pro-democracy and secular political groups of any aspiration, including left, right and center, to help him form this coalition.

He once again stressed that the process of transition from the Islamic Republic will continue with a transitional government, and finally the people will decide on the political future of Iran through a free referendum.

“The world needs to …begin to think of how they can elevate the pressure by having maximum support …in helping the Iranian people get rid of this regime which is the fundamental problem in the first place,” Pahlavi emphasized.

An audio file emerged on social media last week in which a man identified as Firouzi or someone posing as him said he had only one wish, to be allowed to see his baby daughter one more time before being executed. He also said he was being tortured to make a scripted “confession” but that he knew he would be executed whether he complied or not. He said he was arrested during recent protests.

Several Iranian television channels abroad reported on the case, including Iran International, with available photos showing him badly tortured.

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Then on January 22 Iran’s Judiciary issued a statement and claimed that no one by the name of Hassan Firouzi had ever been arrested.

Its official Mizan News Agency made a further claim Wednesday that Hassan Firouzi, was arrested while fleeing the country.

Mizan also published several photos of the detained man in an empty plane with Qeshm Air logo visible in the cabin. Mizan claimed that Firouzi had faked his arrest and torture to escape from his creditors and carried out his plan with the help of “hostile foreign-based media” and provided them with his fake torture photos and stories.

Pro-regime media and social media are currently abuzz with claims that other cases of dead protester and torture are similarly fake.

The social media account of Iran Human Rights Society which is reportedly affiliated to the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MEK) last week claimed that Firouzi had gone into a coma resulting from further tortures because of sending out the recorded message. It was also claimed that his family had been taken to a hospital to see him for the last time.

Some journalists and social media activists such as Masoud Kazemian became suspicious of the case for several reasons including the leaking of unique and gruesome photos of a tortured Firouzi and his audio file but no records of his trial or sentencing, as social media reports were claiming. There was also no trace of his family and friends speaking about his case.

A human rights activist based in Europe who in December established a Twitter account, Political Sponsorship Iran (@PoSpoIr), as a centralized hub for sponsorship of political prisoners told Iran International that Firouzi case is being used by the regime’s propaganda machine to discredit the international effort by hundreds of European lawmakers and activists to prevent the torture and execution of Iranian protesters.

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“Hassan Firouzi has three French, one German, one Canadian and one Danish sponsor because his reported circumstances seemed to be exceptionally dire. Planning this and making his case look fabricated is psychological war,” the activist behind @PoSpoIr said.

“You don’t win all the time in a war. Firouzi’s case, if it is really a hoax, does not rule out the authenticity of hundreds of other cases or stop parliamentarians who are well-informed about the regime’s dirty tricks from volunteering to take political sponsorship of other prisoners or pursuing the cases they have already accepted,” she added.

There are also some people who think a Hassan Firouzi may have really been arrested for protesting, tortured and sentenced to death, and again tortured to say he had never been arrested and had only faked the whole story.

“We cannot confirm, based on the extant information, that whether this person’s life is in danger or not,” Seda-ye Shahrivar, a Twitter account dedicated to the news of recent protests, said about the case while pointing out that the situation could result in “lack of trust and confusion over the conditions of political prisoners” by creating doubt about their veracity.