Rights Abuses Persist in Iran, Symposium Is Told

With each succeeding lash to his back, the bound man sagged deeper, oblivious to the cries of “God is great!” from the crowd. They gathered to watch the slow, painful death of a soldier convicted by a clergy-run Iranian court. The charge: moral corruption.

Two others were buried up to their chests and then stoned to death for the same crime.

Captured on a 1991 videotape smuggled out of Iran, the images of oppression show a side of the Islamic government that many expatriates say Americans should know still exists under President Mohammad Khatami.

He is the same president who has talked of culture and educational exchanges with the United States, a charismatic leader to whom the Clinton administration is making overtures.

In recent months, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has expressed regret about America’s past dealings with Iran, while the U.S. government has gently loosened import restrictions on items such as Iranian pistachios and carpets.

But evidence is mounting that human rights violations long associated with the Islamic Republic persist, according to Clinton policy critics.

The White House has “left human rights and democracy out of the equation,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) told the 150 people gathered at Occidental College in Eagle Rock on Saturday to call attention to charges of continued abuse of Iranian citizens. The U.S. government should demand the establishment of an independent judiciary and an end to worldwide terrorist activity before offering concessions, Rohrabacher added.

Separation of church and state should extend to all levels of Iran’s government, added Mohammad Parvin, who heads the Mission for the Establishment of Human Rights in Iran, a nonprofit watchdog group that sponsored the daylong event.

“Any demand for freedom and democracy is branded as deviation from Islamic rules and ideas,” said Parvin, whose group is based on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“It is regarded as treason and punished by death. This has been the way that [the regime] has dealt with any dissidents in the last 20 years . . . and is doing it right now as we speak.”

Plans should be made to help Iranians when the Islamic government collapses, which it is bound to do as citizens grow increasingly restless with the clergy’s rule, said Michael Warder, vice president of the Claremont Institute, who also spoke at the symposium.

“Likely there will be a time of chaos. Are we in the United States ready for such an eventuality?” Warder asked. “I do not believe so. No, [instead] we are importing pistachio nuts.”

Whether coming from conservative American leaders or leftist Iranian students who suffered torture at the hands of the mullah-run regime, the message heard at the symposium was the same: Iran continues to inflict terror on its citizens and the world.

In the first two decades of Islamic rule, as many as 120,000 Iranians have been sentenced to death, Warder said. Since Khatami came to power in August 1997, abuses have persisted, he and others say.

Warder said there have been 24 assassinations orchestrated by Khatami government agents. “The recent shutdown of 17 reformist publications does seem to have caught the attention of the American press,” he said, but even that story is fading.

Afsaneh Rahimi, 36, who spent three years in an Iranian prison and now lives in Santa Monica, said she had to flee Iran nine months ago after two fellow Iranian Communist Party members were arrested when they emerged from the underground in what they thought was a freer society under Khatami.

“I still feel the slaps as if it was yesterday,” she said, recounting the terror of being flogged and beaten. She said she also heard other prisoners being raped.

Like Rahimi, four other survivors of torture in Iranian prisons shared their tales. Some said they had been tied to wooden beds and had their feet beaten with sticks until they passed out. Guards would wait for them to regain consciousness, for the feeling to return to the bleeding feet, before they began the beatings anew.

“The first lash is extremely painful, like an electric shock,” said Mahmood Mohammadi, 39, of Laguna Niguel.

After three 90-minute beatings in 1985, Mohammadi said, he signed a confession about his anti-government activities, even though he says he was innocent. He subsequently spent 4 1/2 years in prison, followed by several years of compulsory military service.

He tried to go to college, but the government wouldn’t let him unless he agreed to be an informer. Instead, Mohammadi said, he fled on foot across Iran’s northwestern mountains into Turkey and eventually changed his last name to protect his family, which remains in the Middle East.