Ahmad Batebi was an Iranian student whose picture was published on the cover of the Economist. Batebi was then identified and sentenced to 15 years during Khatami's presidency.
Batebi has been elected twice since, as the honourary vice-president of National Union of Students, NUS in Britain. Batebi is still in prison and currently on hunger strike. At the same time former Islamic Republic president, Ayatollah Khatami is visiting St. Andrews to receive an honourary PHD.
This is an opportunity for NUS to save Ahmad Batebi. His release from this unfair sentence can be demanded as a pre-condition to Khatami's visit to St. Andrews.
Otherwise this is how the story reads:
NUS misses a golden opportunity to save their former elected honourary vice-president. At a time when secular academics and students in Iran are being expelled and a second "cultural revolution" is taking place in Iran, NUS and Scottish academics rather than standing by their colleagues in Iran are rewarding a representative of an anti-student, anti-academic religious apartheid.
After a US tour where Khatami was given a platform to mislead his audiences by fancy slogans like "dialogue amongst civilisations", he now seems to get another opportunity to mislead another audience in Scotland. Once again those who are giving him this platform are doing so without giving an opportunity for a dialogue to the Iranian victims during his presidency.
5 comments:
Giving him an honorary PhD?
Holy crap!
I think your idea of exchanging Khatami's visa for Batebi's freedom is a good one.
If they are leftists, you cant expect too much
Potkin jaan,
Please go up to St. Andrews and bring your friends and make some noise... last year when Ahmadinejad came I was in New York and we did our best and it wasn't that bad. This year I am in California and didn't hear anything at all about anything. We can't let up. Whether he comes or not, it is absolutely incumbant upon us to bring as many people as possible out. Get a van and just pick up people on the street if you have to, we must be loud. Try to get dragged off the street by the police make a noise, I'll try my best to echo it from here. Saint Andrews is a bastian of racist Grecophils who hate Iran and Iranians and that's exactly why they are doing what they are doing. Being nice won't get up anywhere. Do not go gentle into that good night.
Best,
David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, is currently soliciting suggestions from Iranian bloggers regarding the ongoing process of indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran.
Please visit the Editor's Inbox of PostGlobal, the international blog and forum of The Washington Post, at: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2006/09/bushahmadinejad.html . Here you will find links to publications by an array of think tanks attempting to make sense of the "proximity talks" between Iran and the United States.
Is the only option for the U.S., in seeking a nuclear-free Iran, to react militarily? Can diplomacy still succeed? Should the United States accept the inevitability of an Iran with both civilian and military nuclear capabilities?
Please visit PostGlobal and take part in this virtual Iran-U.S. dialogue.
Good post Azarmehr. Well done.
This interview with our Shah clearly shows that he was against torture. The barbaric IR regime has failed to keep the standards that he built.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8u2UKWCHtM
Jamshidi
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