The Iranian Gandhi

The mullahs have met their match:

Akbar Ganji is the Iranian journalist and dissident who for over a month now has been on hunger strike in Iran’s most infamous prison. Arrested in 2000 and ultimately sentenced to six years in jail for criticizing the regime, most notably in a series of articles he wrote implicating former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the murders of several dissidents and intellectuals, Ganji has become a symbol both inside Iran and out of the Islamic Republic’s techniques of repression and Iranians’ resistance. He published a powerful letter from prison after starting his hunger strike, and is reported to have recently written another. Yet his health has been deteriorating, and some say the indomitable Ganji could be near his end.


Amir Abbas Fakhravar, a political prisoner who has known Ganji and observed him closely for years, said in a phone interview from Iran last night that Ganji is in “terrible shape.” Another prisoner, says Fakhravar, saw that Ganji experienced great difficulty walking, standing, and even seeing and hearing, and that he refused intravenous feeding, which he has not received for days. “If this carries on, within 24 hours he will die,” says Fakhravar. “He has the conviction to go all the way to the end.” (A report last night suggested Ganji had been taken from the prison infirmary to the hospital, but the circumstances of his transfer remain unclear.)

President Bush has called for Ganji’s release, as have the State Department, several U.S. congressmen, and the European Union. Yet the Iranian judiciary has so far insisted he will not be freed, demanding that he receive medical treatment under official supervision. An Iranian news service reported that Ganji declared this weekend he would no longer cooperate with prison clinic officials, after the judiciary made inaccurate statements about his condition.

“If anything ever happens to Mr. Ganji,” says Fakhravar, who was himself arrested for criticizing the regime and sentenced to eight years in prison, “a revolution will happen in Iran…. [Ganji] knows his blood will create real turmoil, which the country will never come out of.” He continues, “Ganji is not a member of a particular opposition group or party, but every group loves him and has respect for him. The whole society will rise up.”

I certainly hope so. Trouble has been brewing for a long time in Iran, exacerbated by the Iraq War, the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, and the recent phony elections the LWM seem so hopeful about for the usual reasons. Perhaps Mr. Ganji's plight will be the spark that sets the powder keg off.

Perhaps the CIA might help ignite it, if they're not too busy posing for Vanity Fair.