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Behind
the scenes of Iran-Canada rift
By Hooman Peimani
Canadian-Iranian relations have unexpectedly
taken a hostile direction. Officially, the murder of a
Canadian-Iranian photojournalist while in the Iranian
judiciary's custody is the reason. However, the speed of
deterioration of those relations previously marked with
stability and an absence of tension, and with growth in
the economic, scientific and educational areas, provides
grounds for suspecting that additional political factors
are at work.
The death of Zahra Kazemi initiated
the process of hostility. She was arrested on June 23
while allegedly photographing protestors outside
Tehran's Evin Prison, where political dissidents have
been kept since the shah's time. In the absence of any
official explanation for her arrest, people close to the
Iranian government have suspected espionage as the
probable charge. The first official news release
regarding her death on July 10 specified a stroke as the
cause of death. However, Mohammad Abtahi, a vice
president, rejected it during a July 16 press conference
when he stated that Kazemi had suffered a blow to her
skull during her interrogation and died in a Tehran
hospital from a brain hemorrhage. He put her death in
the context of a campaign by the "conservative" faction
of the Iranian regime against its "reformist" faction,
which had manifested itself in the arrests of many
pro-reform journalists and students since mid-June.
The tragic incident began a new round of
conflict between the two factions, geared to their
efforts to consolidate their factional power. Following
Abtahi's revelation and the expression of anger by many
reformist parliamentarians at the murder, President
Mohammad Khatami requested the Iranian judiciary to
investigate the case. However, the appointment of Judge
Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor, provoked protests
by many pro-reform forces, including several Iranian
parliamentarians, who called for an impartial inquiry.
They raised serious doubts about the requested
investigation's integrity, arising from Mortazavi's
direct involvement in the suppression of the Iranian
news media since the early years of Khatami's
government. He has since ordered the closure of hundreds
of newspapers and magazines critical of the political
system and particularly those critical of the
conservative faction. More ironically, he reportedly
ordered the arrest and the interrogation of the dead
photojournalist.
In such a situation, last
Thursday's publication of a letter addressed to the
Iranian Speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karoubi, forced
Khatami, who was facing a growing demand for an
impartial inquiry, to order a new inquiry by another
judge (Javad Esmaeili). He also demanded that "those
behind the journalist's death face an open trial". In
that letter, Mohammad Hussein Khoshvaqt, head of the
Iranian Ministry of Guidance's foreign press department,
claimed that Mortazavi had forced him to announce a
stroke as Kazemi's cause of death in his press release
broadcast by Iran's official news agency, IRNA.
Against this background, the Canadian
government's dispute with its Iranian counterpart began
when it demanded the return of Kazemi's body to Canada
in accordance to her son's wish and also to conduct an
autopsy to determine the cause of death. The latter is
now practically unnecessary since the presidential
committee investigating her death has clearly specified
the unnatural cause of death, a point that the Canadian
government wanted to prove. Accordingly, she died of a
"fractured skull, brain hemorrhage and its consequences
resulting from a hard object hitting the head or the
head hitting a hard object".
Consequently, what
is now important is to identify and prosecute those who
committed the crime. This is the mandate of the new
judicial inquiry and a separate one by the Iranian
parliament. This is also what the Canadian government
wants, as spelled out last week by Canadian Foreign
Minister Bill Graham. Referring to the Iranian
government's admitted unnatural death of the deceased,
he concluded, "… there must be somebody within [the
Iranian] judicial and prison system who's responsible
for that, and we want to get to the bottom of that and
we are insisting that the [Iranian] government do that".
Although the outcome of the two ongoing inquires
may not be satisfactory for all those who want to
prosecute the perpetrators of the crime, Iranian and
Canadian alike, there is not any ground for the current
escalation of Iranian-Canadian conflict. Officially, the
Iranian government's refusal to send Kazemi's body to
Canada as demanded by her son, and its burying the
murdered photojournalist in Shiraz, her city of birth in
Iran, angered Ottawa, despite her mother's granting
permission for the burial. In his reaction to the
development, Graham recalled his ambassador to Tehran
last Wednesday to be "back [in Ottawa] before the week
is out", while stressing that "the remains of Madame
Kazemi [must be] returned to Canada in accordance with
the wishes of her family".
The Iranian
government's refusal to return the body should be a
source of anger for its Canadian counterpart. However,
it does not seem to be strong enough a reason to justify
recalling the Canadian ambassador and to announce a
review of Canada's ties with Iran, hinting at additional
political and economic measures against Tehran.
The move prompted the Iranian foreign minister,
irritated by the murder by the Canadian police of an
18-year-old Iranian immigrant (Keyvan Tabesh) near
Vancouver, to accuse the Canadian government of covering
up that murder. "The preliminary comment made by the
Canadian government," Kamal Kharazi stated last
Thursday, "is more of a justification of the
indefensible action of the Canadian police in murdering
an Iranian citizen with a firearm, than a clear
explanation." Thus, his murder began a war of words
between the Iranian and Canadian foreign ministries.
Kazemi's tragic murder, which had seemed to be
taking a proper legal direction due to pressures from
inside on the Iranian government, changed course because
of her burial, only to become a major crisis atypical of
Canadian-Iranian relations. Apart from the legal and
humane significance of the murder case, the sudden
escalation of the dispute between Canada and Iran, which
have extended their relations in many fields despite
American opposition over the last two decades, hints at
reasons stronger than the publicized one.
As the
United States and the European Union are putting Iran
under pressure to sign the additional protocol to the
Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 (NPT), the Canadian
move will inevitably have an isolationist impact on Iran
when it needs to expand its foreign relations exactly to
withstand such pressure. Of course, there is no
certainty about any behind-the-scene deal between Ottawa
and Washington regarding Iran. Nevertheless, there is no
question that, whether the Iranians like it or not, the
sudden deterioration of their ties with the Canadians
will only weaken their resistance to the American
pressure to force them to sign the protocol. This is a
declared objective of the United States, and to achieve
it it has sought to unite its friends and allies over
the last few months.
Dr Hooman Peimani
works as an independent consultant with international
organizations in Geneva and does research in
International Relations.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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