Ganji's wife appeals to the world -- but is the world listening?

By Aussiegirl

Who is Akbar Ganji, you ask? Well you might, as there has been precious little publicized about this heroic human rights advocate in Iran who is currently imprisoned in Iran and is in the 53rd day of a hunger strike. Where is Mr. Bush's voice? Didn't he pledge to all those who hunger for freedom and stand for democracy that "we will stand with you" when he made his Inaugural speech? Precious little has been heard. We strain to hear the world's outrage at the treatment of this brave dissident. Where is Amnesty International? Where are the Human Rights organizations which militate so heartily about the abuses at Abu Graib and Gitmo? Where is the UN?

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WASHINGTON - Defying warnings from the Iranian regime ordering her not to talk to foreign reporters, the wife of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji yesterday told The New York Sun that she has had no choice but to appeal to the international community to save the life of her husband, who today enters Day 53 of a hunger strike. Meanwhile in New York, a spokesman for Secretary-General Annan says his boss has personally intervened with the mullahs on Mr. Ganji's behalf.

In an exclusive telephone interview yesterday, Massoumeh Shafieh said: "We are appealing to the United Nations, human rights groups, and other nations to pressure our government to release my husband. Our struggle must reach out past the borders of Iran now. Our leaders will not listen to their people, they will only respond to external pressure."

Ms. Shafieh said she saw her husband yesterday at Tehran's Milad Hospital and said his health was deteriorating. Mr. Ganji was rushed on July 18 to Milad from Evin Prison, where he had been held since June 11. He was rearrested last month for urging his countrymen to boycott Iran's recent presidential elections after having been temporarily released to seek medical attention for his asthma; the writer deemed fraudulent June's political race, the results of which will bring hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into office on August 6. Mr. Ganji was originally arrested for publishing a series of articles that accused regime leaders of ordering a chain of murders of dissident intellectuals in the late 1990s, and his struggle and hunger strike have made him a hero of Iran's democratic movement.

At one point during Ms. Shafieh's visit to the hospital yesterday, she said, Mr. Ganji tried to stand up after armed guards cursed him only to collapse on the floor from the debilitating effects of his hunger strike that begain on June 11, the day he was most recently taken into custody.

"When he was on the floor, the guards photographed him. It was humiliating," she said. "I was crying so much when I saw him."

Ms. Shafieh confirmed for the Sun the authenticity of Mr. Ganji's recent open letters, including one to a dissident cleric, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, who has, like Mr. Ganji, called on the supreme leader to relinquish power or stand for election.

"Ganji is physically weak, but he is still mentally very strong," his wife said yesterday.

Nonetheless, she said she is now very worried about his health and treatment. "They are trying to break him," she said. Ms. Shafieh went on to say that in a private conversation, the prosecutor that ordered his arrest, Saeed Mortazavi, threatened Mr. Ganji's life at the hospital, where Mr. Mortazavi sent special armed guards to watch Mr. Ganji 24 hours a day.

"Mr. Mortazavi told my husband, 'If you die it will better for the regime. We will put you in a remote place, and in a week or two we will give the number of your tombstone where your family will mourn for you, but they will not mourn for you publicly. They may not arrange a funeral or proper burial but privately I will let them mourn you,'" she said yesterday.

Throughout the interview, Ms. Shafieh said her phone was tapped and the reception faded in and out where faint clicks could be heard in the background. But despite the surveillance, Ms. Shafieh was open in her criticism of the regime.

Ms. Shafieh's plea for international solidarity has attracted in the last six weeks calls for his unconditional release from President Bush, Natan Sharansky, Vaclav Havel, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Even European Union leaders, whose colleagues are currently negotiating with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, have demanded that Mr. Ganji be freed.

Despite eliciting support from leaders across the globe, until yesterday U.N. Secretary-General Annan had not made a statement on Mr. Ganji's detention. On July 13, Mr. Annan said he did know enough about the political prisoner's circumstances to speak about his case. His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric told the Sun yesterday, however, that "The secretary-general is fully aware of Mr. Ganji's case," adding that "A number of U.N. human rights experts have expressed their profound concern regarding Mr. Ganji's detention and, especially, the lack of medical attention."

Mr. Annan "has been using his good offices and has made direct representations with Iranian officials at a senior level regarding Mr. Ganji in an effort to resolve the situation," Mr. Dujarric said.

Ms. Shafieh said in yesterday's interview that she was unaware of any efforts on the part of the United Nations to raise the profile of Mr. Ganji's case. She said that she would be leading a demonstration on Wednesday in front of the U.N. mission in Tehran asking for support with members of an Iranian student organization, Tahkim Vahdat.

When asked for her reaction to a statement by a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, calling for Mr. Ganji's release, she said she was unimpressed. Mr. Ganji's 1999 book, "The Red and the Gray Eminences" singles out Mr. Rafsanjani as one of the Iranian leaders who ordered the assassination of intellectuals.

"When Rafsanjani said this he was smelling danger. If anything happens, he will say he was innocent and tried to help so as not to be condemned," she said. "But if anything happens, it is too late for him or the others to say they are innocent and have not committed crimes. All of them, the whole entity, has committed crimes and now they are asking for his release."

Even as many Iranian leaders, including the outgoing president, Mohammed Khatemi, call for the release of Mr. Ganji, the political climate has worsened for Iranian dissidents. The Associated Press reported yesterday that Mr. Ganji's lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, has been arrested on espionage charges. Activists last night told the Sun that his whereabouts were unknown.

At the end of the interview last night, Ms. Shafieh said that she was asking for support for her husband not only because "he is the father of my two children," but also because "this is not just the cause of my husband, but the cause of our country now. I will continue this work for the memory of my husband, if, God forbid, anything happens."