For months, the state-owned media in Iran have been whipping up a frenzy about alleged plots to topple the government.
Last week, the frenzy found a new face: that of Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old former Miss North Dakota who has been in Tehran working on and off as a reporter for Western media for years.
Originally arrested on a charge of working without a labour permit, she was soon transformed into a Mata Hari figure, a devious ‘spy’ helping the American ‘Great Satan’ undermine the world’s first ‘truly Islamic system’.
Last week a court sentenced her to eight years in Tehran’s dreaded Evin Prison.
Moments after her sentence was announced, Saberi announced an unlimited hunger strike. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for Saberi’s immediate release, hinting that her fate might have an impact on projected talks between Tehran and Washington.
One theory is that hard-line factions opposed to a dialogue with the US engineered the incident to make it harder for Barack Obama to implement his strategy of ‘direct and unconditional dialogue’.
Saberi is an ideal face for the conspiracy campaign that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hopes to use to win re-election in June.
To start with, Saberi is both an insider and an outsider.
Her father is an Iranian who has lived in the United States since the revolution. Her mother is Japanese. She was born an American, but was recently engaged to marry Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi.
Ghobadi, who has won many prizes in international festivals, has published a passionate open letter rejecting the charges against his fiancée and calling for her immediate release.
Saberi is also a reporter, and these professionals are frequently at risk. By some counts, more than half of all Iranian journalists have spent some time in prison.
The first demonstration against Khomeinism was held on March 8, 1979, in Tehran, less than four weeks after the clerics had seized power. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has emerged as one of the most hated figures of the government’s loyal opposition. Since last January, scores of women, fighting for women’s rights, have been arrested and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. Most of the magazines published by and for women have been shut after their editorial boards were accused of ‘plotting against Islam’ by promoting ‘Western-style rights for women’.
No one knows what might happen to Saberi.
She may be used as a bargaining chip in talks with the Obama administration.
Her release would enable Ahmadinejad to claim that he has responded to Obama’s goodwill without having to give way on real issues such as Tehran’s nuclear project. In a comment last week, Ahmadinejad tried to distance himself from the incident, leaving the door open for precisely such a move.
But if the fate of some women who shared some of her attributes is an indication, the prospects do not look promising for Saberi.
Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian journalist and photographer, was abducted, imprisoned, abused and ultimately killed in Evin, during the presidency of Hojat Al Islam Mohammad Khatami. In 2005, a committee of enquiry identified Kazemi’s killers, but Khatami refused to arrest them and ordered that the case be closed. Last week, an Islamic court decided the final closure of the case without sentencing anyone.
Zahra Bani-Yaqub, a medical doctor and well-known campaigner for women’s rights, was arrested in Hamdan, west of Tehran, and died after 24 hours of torture and alleged rape.
Ada Haratounian, an Armenian-Iranian, has been sentenced to three years in jail on a charge of ‘researching the situation of Christians’ in Iran. She is held incommunicado, and denied the urgent medical treatment she needs.
Asha Momeni, another Iranian-American, was jailed on a charge of ‘researching the status of women’. Released on bail, she is awaiting trial in Tehran.
Parnaz Azima, a reporter for Radio Free Europe’s Persian programme was arrested, and had her passport withdrawn for months, before being allowed to leave the country.
Roya Toluee, a mother of three, spent months in prison, and was subjected to torture and rape, before being allowed a furlough to visit her husband and children. She used her brief moment of freedom to escape to Turkey.
Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar partly of Iranian origin at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, spent months in prison in Tehran before being released after she was forced into making sensational televised confessions.
Camelia Entekhabi-Fard, for years a journalist and women’s lib campaigner in Tehran, spent months in Evin on charges of anti-Islam activity before she was able to flee the country.
Some women are in prison because they have campaigned for an end to gender apartheid. Among them are Shahla Entessari, Parvin Ardalan, Fariba Davoudi, Susan Tahmasbi and Azadeh Forghani who organised a ‘one million signatures’ campaign in support for women’s demands last year.
According to official statistic published last week, over 60,000 women are in prison in Iran today, representing almost 10 per cent of all inmates.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
