WASHINGTON - With the Islamic Republic
formally charging Iranian-American scholar Haleh
Esfandiari this week with conspiring to undermine
the regime in Iran, academics and others are
calling for a boycott of the country.
Scholars have added their voices to the
protest of Esfandiari's arrest, including
professors Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole and Gary Sick -
the last was a National Security Council member under
three
US presidents. More than 70 academics signed their
names to a letter that was sent to Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Cole has
also canceled plans to attend a conference in Iran
this summer because of Esfandiari's arrest. He has
called for other academics to do the same and for
international public protests of her detention. "I
don't see how normal intellectual life can go on
when a scholar at the Wilson Center can't safely
visit Iran," Cole wrote on his weblog last week.
Esfandiari, 67, is the director of the
Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars based in
Washington. According to the center, a statement
from the Iranian Intelligence Ministry said that
Esfandiari, the center and other organizations
such as the New York-based Soros Foundation were
conspiring to establish a network that would work
"against the sovereignty" of Iran. A consultant
for Soros was also reportedly detained this month.
Esfandiari holds dual Iranian-US
citizenship and has been a strong proponent of
US-Iran dialogue in her work at the Woodrow Wilson
Center. Esfandiari helped to run a program that
brought diverse perspectives on Iran to
Washington.
Esfandiari left Iran during
the revolution of 1979 and has lived in the US
since, but returns frequently to visit the country
in which she grew up. She has been in Iran since
December when she traveled there to visit her
93-year-old mother. The Woodrow Wilson Center, the
US State Department and Esfandiari's family have
said the charges against her are without
foundation.
Arrested on May 8 after four
months under house arrest, Esfandiari faced
interrogations by the Ministry of Intelligence
before being transferred to Evin Prison, north of
Tehran. The prison is notorious for its political
prisoners' wing and the abuse that has been
documented there by organizations such as New
York-based Human Rights Watch.
Critics of
the government say her arrest is in violation of
Iran's constitution, which protects the rights of
individuals to freedom of thought, opinion and
speech, as well as violating the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which
Iran is a signatory. The Middle East Studies
Association of North America sent a letter to
Ahmadinejad telling him that her treatment "sends
a chilling message to scholars throughout the
world", and calling on the president to allow her
access to legal counsel and family members.
On Tuesday, the US House of
Representatives introduced a bipartisan resolution
demanding that Esfandiari be released.
Esfandiari's relatives have enlisted Nobel
Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to represent her,
but so far the Iranian government has denied Ebadi
and her legal team access to their client. Ebadi
is a well-known human-rights lawyer who has
previously been jailed by the Iranian government
for her own advocacy work.
The effects of
an academic boycott are unclear. "As things stand,
an academic boycott will simply strengthen those
in both countries who would like to see no
exchanges between Iranian institutions and
individuals and their counterparts in the United
States," said Farideh Farhi, a faculty member at
the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has lived in
Iran and writes frequently on contemporary Iranian
issues.
Academics have cited several
potential reasons for Esfandiari's arrest and the
charges against her. One is that the Iranian
government suspects that academic institutions are
behind Washington's efforts at "regime change". It
has also been suggested that Esfandiari is simply
a pawn in the internal politics between the
hardline Ahmadinejad and his more moderate
political opponent, former president Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani. Esfandiari is known to be
friends with Rafsanjani's daughter, Faiza Hashemi.
Sick, now an adjunct professor of
International Affairs at Columbia University's
School of International and Public Affairs, has
suggested the possibility that Tehran is
interested in a prisoner swap with the United
States for the five Iranian Revolutionary Guards
who were arrested by the US military in Iraq on
January 11.
A more popular theory is the
inclusion of US$75 million in the State
Department's budget for "democracy promotion" in
Iran. When she unveiled the initiative in
February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the
money would be used to "support the democratic
aspirations of the Iranian people" and counter the
influence of Tehran's hardline regime.
According to Farhi, the original
allegations leveled at Esfandiari intentionally
did not include a reference to the State
Department's program because the Iranian
government knows that the Woodrow Wilson Center
has not taken any of the $75 million.
"However, the accusations tie her to the
broader issue of external attempts to promote
civil-society activism as a means to bring about
eventual regime change in Iran," Farhi said.
Since the program was announced, Tehran
has cracked down on women's groups, student
activists, labor groups and human-rights
advocates. Esfandiari's arrest two weeks ago came
amid a string of arrests of women activists and
student leaders.
Next week, Ryan Crocker,
the US ambassador to Iraq, is scheduled to hold
talks with Iranian diplomats. But it is unlikely
that Esfandiari's case or the two other
Iranian-Americans being held as "soft hostages"
will be discussed. The US administration has
stated that those talks will be exclusively about
Iraq.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
