Pajamas Media

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Mr O’Connell appears to sidestep the growing criticisms of VOA’s Persian Service. Ghaderi and Abdian make some excellent points. Contrary to what Mr O’Connell is saying, there is very little discussion of ethnic minority rights in Iran, apparently because non-Persian groups are a threat to the agenda of Reza Pahlavi II.

Anyone who knows Iran knows that the paid “experts” featuring on VOA shows are close allies and advisors of the self-proclaimed monarch-in-exile, who refuses to even broach the subject of ethnic minority rights. Why? Because the Pahlavi monarchy was predicated on Aryan supremacy, which put Persians at the top and the semitic Arabs and Jews at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, with other ethnic groups fitted in between – an ideology that has been maintained under the mullahs.

I have news for Mr O’Connell. In 1979, the whole of Iran was united against the Shah. Iranians (the ones living in Iran and not the rich ones in California who control VOA Persian Service) don’t want the monarchy back, even if they despise the mullahs just as much.

Mr O’Connell’s deliberate exclusion of minority rights movements on the basis that they, as he says, “advocate secessionism” is simply a reiteration of the racially insulting propaganda from the Iranian regime – propaganda that the monarchists are keen to push, because they do not want any challenge to their racial elitism. It proves that VOA is infected with ethnic chauvinism.

The VOA only allows the voices of monarchists and supporters of the regime onto its Persian language service. Naturally, minority groups will never be heard if we only hear these two sides. Name one Balochi activist interviewed on VOA about the regime’s attacks on their villages. Name one Ahwazi activist interviewed on VOA about land confiscation. The fact is none have been interviewed because the Balochis and Ahwazis do not fit into the monarchist/Islamic regime agenda, which are the same. So there is nothing about the suffering of these people on VOA, despite the fact that non-Persian ethnic groups make up at least half the Iranian population and despite the fact that ethnicity is one of the mobilising democratic forces against the regime.

No doubt Mr O’Connell and his monarchist friends will dismiss me as a “ranting separatist”, which is their usual tactic against anyone who disagrees with them. But he can’t get away from the conclusions of the government’s interagency Iran Steering Group. It stated that Iranians don’t regard VOA or Radio Farda as a reliable source of news and that they never publish anything that would upset the Iranian regime. Iranians call Radio Farda “Radio Khatami” because it promoted the Khatami administration at a time when it was murdering Iranian students in the streets of Tehran.

If anyone is interested in the complicity of VOA/Radio Khatami with the monarchists and the regime, read the following article: http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/2/13/154601.shtml?s=sr

Do you speak Farsi? How many transcripts of VOA Persian do you read a week? Show me some transcripts and I will listen to what you have to say. Until then, someone who is being led blindly by the nose shouldn’t talk so much about something you find out second/third hand. OF COURSE the people producing VOA Persian are going to sell you a bill of goods. Otherwise, they lose their jobs if someone actually knew what was going on.

Also, show me the number of times Dr. Royce, a VOA Persian top staffer who invites many of the guests, has rubbed elbows at the Iranian interest section on Wisconsin Ave. to do something else besides hang out with his like minded friends. O, and how many times were terrorists invited to the show? There were so many, I lost count.

Ok, so maybe the folks running the show at VOA Persian aren’t on the Mullah’s payroll, so I guess we will say its a strange coincidence that there are so many people invited on the air who are against U.S. policy of democracy and change from within and so many guests who advocate against sanctions and for more economic relations with the regime that is killing our sons and daughters in Iraq.

Jospeh O’Connell wrote in his defence:

“Radio Farda quoted Human Rights Watch saying that so far at least 12 people have been executed in Iran for “separatist” bomb attacks, and others have been sentenced to death for voicing ethnic protest.”

Yes, but did Radio Farda report that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International described the trials of these executed Ahwazi Arab activists as unfair and falling well short of international norms of what constitutes a free and fair trial?

Has it reported the mass arrests and torture of Ahwazis, all the disappearances, and the Tehran regime’s tactic of taking Arab mothers and children as hostages to force their on-the-run activist husbands / fathers to surrender for execution?

And what about the mass poverty in oil-rich Al-Ahwaz? When was that reported? Which Ahwazi Arab human rights activists have been interviewed? When?

Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner, London UK
http://www.petertatchell.net

Despite my Arab Iranian heritage I find myself tuning in to Iranianradio.com daily to listen to classical Persian Music, and pay the hefty price to watch the Persian Satellite station Tapesh. So, when Arab Iranian activists who dare to express pride in their Ethnic heritage and advocate for equal rights within Iran are dismissed and branded as separatists I am profoundly offended. When the VOA re-circulates that, it is doubly offensive since it is done with my tax money. It is clear that the Iranian government is using the inexcusable terrorists acts committed by members of ethnic minorities in Iran to cast a wider net accusing all activists opposed to ethnic discrimination of terrorism and separatistism. The VOA has an important rule within the Iranian community abroad and within Iran so at the very least it should refrain from circulating the same adjectives applied by the Iranian regime to its opponents. Last but not least, the VOA as an American tax payer funded entity should be more receptive to criticism and try to find ways to improve rather than circle the wagens as it seems to be doing in this instance. It would also help greatly if we were to focus on the message rather than the messengers.

I completly agree with the writer of this article.

Like Mr Fazeli, I also appreciate Persian culture even though I am not Persian. Yet anyone who advocates the rights of non-Persians in Iran is immediately rubbished as a separatist or anti-Iranian or anti-Persian, etc. In fact, Mr O’Connell keeps using the word “separatist” when describing minority rights activists arrested by the regime, but says nothing about the forced confessions, the torture they endure, the closed trials, the arrest of defence lawyers, etc, in the case of arrested Ahwazis (VOA won’t even use the term Ahwazi because it is deemed too separatist). This is despite the statements of UNHRC experts who have condemned outright the treatment of Ahwazi Arabs. And so what if someone was separatist? The UN states that self-determination is a right. Is Mr O’Connell going to take the right to self-determination away from Arabs, Balochis, Kurds and Azeris in Iran? VOA supported the self-determination of those living under communism, so why not those living under fascism in Iran?! Are Ahwazis and Balochis less deserving of freedom than Estonians and Ukrainians living under Soviet domination? Are the Azeris in Iran less deserving of self-determination than the Azeris who won freedom from Russia and created an independent Azerbaijan?

If VOA is to remain relevant, it must broadcast a broad range of Iranian voices: federalists and separatists as well as the monarchists and Islamists it currently broadcasts. It is not doing this now, despite what Mr O’Connell says. I would be surprised if he is a Farsi speaker and what worries me is that he is being misled by vested interests involved in VOA Persian Service. Instead of listening to the criticism above and making an independent assessment of the content of VOA broadcasts, he simply dismisses them. None of the human rights and political activists he mentions have spoken a word about minority rights, including Shirin Ebadi, who is a Khatami supporter.

“If VOA is to remain relevant, it must broadcast a broad range of Iranian voices: federalists and separatists as well as the monarchists and Islamists it currently broadcasts.”

I seem to remember something about being important for VOA content to be in the American national interest for some reason.

Claudia Rosett’s got some complaints, too. I wonder if the response to this mess will be like the response to Al-Hurra mess.

Mr O’Connell states that “Radio Farda operates under RFE/RL’s Professional Code, which mandates that its broadcasts should promote tolerance and not advocate secessionism.”

I am unclear about his logic. A broadcaster need not endorse the views of the people it interviews. If it is Radio Farda’s and VOA’s view that broadcasting “secessionist” viewpoints is tantamount to an endorsement, then the broadcasting of voices supportive of the Iranian government – as alleged by the Iran Steering Group – is surely an endorsement of the Iranian regime!

I would like the Broadcasting Board of Governors to indicate whether, during the Soviet era, RFE/RL refused to broadcast the opinions of “secessionists” from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. I don’t honestly know, but if it did broadcast the voices of such figures then it was, according to Mr O’Connell’s logic, supporting secessionism from the Soviet Union (which was no bad thing, in my mind). The Chinese government certainly thinks that VOA’s Tibet service is supporting secessionist groups (again, no bad thing). So, really, the broadcasting of secessionist voices elsewhere in the world is allowed by RFE/RL and VOA services, just not in their Persian services.

I put it to the BBG that it is censoring minority groups on its Iran service and this has nothing to do with any charter or code of conduct. The groups that Abdian and Ghaderi represent are not secessionist, although certain factions may portray them as such. They are prominent in the communities they represent. How often are they heard in VOA broadcasts? We have to ask ourselves whether the censorship on VOA Persian Service and Radio Farda is designed to appease the Iranian regime.

Another question we have to ask ourselves is whether the BBG believes that the US interests are represented by a certain faction of the Iranian regime or the opposition and that this is the reason why minority voices are marginalised by its services. If so, the American tax-payers and their representatives must decide on the efficacy of such an arrangement and whether this has anything to do with the promotion of a plural democracy in Iran. If they decide it isn’t, then funding for the BBG’s broadcasting services to Iran should be cut and the money spent elsewhere, where it could make a real difference to the Iranian people and, by extension, global security.