Writing Dangerously in Iran
By K. ANTHONY APPIAH
New York Times
January 9, 1999
Last month, two Iranian writers -- Mohammad Mokhtari, a poet and literary
critic, and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, an essayist and translator -- were
murdered. Iran's official news agency published a statement from the Information
Ministry on Tuesday saying the killers were "irresponsible colleagues
of this ministry."
Both Mr. Mokhtari and Mr. Pouyandeh were among a group of seven writers
summoned last October to appear before a "revolutionary court,"
which ordered them to cease their efforts to form an independent writers'
association because it constituted a threat to national security.
Their murders came two weeks after opposition politicians, Daryush Foruhar
and his wife, Parveneh Eskandari, along with Majid Sharif, a translator
and journalist, were killed. The Information Ministry has also admitted
involvement in their deaths.
Before these terrible crimes, there were signs that Iran might be entering
a period of perestroika: Mohammad Khatami, a moderate cleric who had once
resigned from a government post to protest censorship, was elected President
in 1997 with 70 percent of the vote. After the election, independent newspapers
sprouted up; Faraj Sarkuhi, a journalist, was released from prison and
allowed to join his family in Germany; Mr. Khatami vowed not to carry out
the death sentence against Salman Rushdie, and groups of athletes, tourists
and academics began traveling to and from Iran.
Why, then, have writers become targets? The trouble begins with the
balance of power within Iran's Government. Conservative clerics, led by
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ranks above the elected President in this theocratic
republic and controls the judiciary, armed forces and Information Ministry
, have both the power and the will to resist President Khatami's modest
attempts at liberalization. And, with a growing secular movement in Iran,
they have become increasingly nervous that their grasp on power might soon
slip away.
Next month, city and provincial elections mandated by Iran's Constitution
20 years ago will be held for the first time, and moderates are expected
to prevail. February also marks the 20th anniversary of the revolution
that overthrew the Shah, leading many Iranians to question the direction
it has taken. These murders can be seen as the hard-liners' latest challenge
to Mr. Khatami's authority.
Mr. Mokhtari and Mr. Pouyandeh, secular writers with no government or
religious ties, made attractive targets. They first came under scrutiny
in October 1994, when they signed the Declaration of 134, which announced
plans for a new independent writers' association. Four of the signers have
since died in mysterious circumstances, and many more have been harassed
and interrogated.
In the past, Iran's security police were content to arrest their targets,
torture them and extract false confessions. But as control over prisons
has shifted toward Mr. Khatami, it seems extremists are resorting to assassination.
Most Iranians yearn for the basic freedoms we take for granted, and
Mr. Mokhtari and Mr. Pouyandeh have become martyrs to this simple but historic
desire. We must not forget them. Nor should we forget the surviving signatories
to the Declaration of 134.
Writers have only one weapon in the struggle to defend the right to
free speech: more words, sent out into the world. That truth was brought
home poignantly when Mr. Mokhtari's widow placed a pen in his coffin.
K. Anthony Appiah, the Chairman of PEN American Center's Freedom-to-Write
Committee, is a professor of Afro-American studies and philosophy at Harvard.
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