Biden, Chomsky and Cole: Free Haleh
May 22nd, 2007Washington, DC – Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) called for the immediate release today of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari
“I call for the immediate release of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her arrest is inhumane. It is also self-defeating, since Dr. Esfandiari has been a courageous voice of reason on Iranian issues for decades. She has struggled to build bridges of dialogue across the widening chasm dividing Iran and America. I urge the Iranian government to release her immediately and allow her to return to her home and her family.”
Professor Noam Chomsky also issued a statement calling for Haleh’s release.
I would like to join Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Studies Association in strenuously condemning the persecution and now imprisonment of Haleh Esfandiari. These actions are deplorable in themselves, and also are a gift to Western hardliners who are trying to organize support for military action against Iran. Now is a time for diplomacy, negotiations, and relaxation of tensions, in accordance with the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians, as recent polls reveal. The intolerable treatment of this highly respected scholar and human rights activist severely undermines the efforts of those who are seeking peace, justice, and freedom in the region and the world.
Professor Juan Cole is boycotting a conference he planned to attend in July to protest Haleh’s arrest:
I had been planning to go to a conference in Iran in July, hosted by some French scholars, but I have cancelled in protest against this detention of my friend. I don’t see how normal intellectual life can go on when a scholar at the Wilson Center can’t safely visit Iran.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“If and when there is a functioning democracy in place, then there shell not be any political prisoners nor a militarism regime”.
Such arrest indicates that the Iranian regime is not a democracy but a system which is afraid of the concept and therefore by arresting its citizens indicating that fact. Growth of a functioning democracy is the future of young Iranians and all over the world, by arresting Haleh the Iranian people will and has questioned Iranian and the US militarism regime where such behavior sooner or later has to be answered by both systems.
May 25th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Ms Esfandiari and the other four Iranian-American national detainees (or ‘hostages’ - as the US media has chosen to call them) are unfortunately just pawns in a cynical game of chicken being conducted by the governments of the US and Iran.
The US, by the kidnapping of five Iranian diplomats in Iraq nearly six months ago, has provoked a “hostage crisis” with Iran. Tehran understands Washington’s plan and has just begun playing the same game. The warning from Iran came in May 18 meetings with the Iraqi president, prime minister, foreign minister and other senior officials, when Iranian foreign minister Mottaki told them clearly that “the Iraqi government is responsible for releasing the kidnapped Iranian diplomats, and no excuse is acceptable.”
All of these are happening just before the US and Iranian ambassadors are to meet for the first time since 1979 in Baghdad to supposedly discuss security in Iraq. And now Washington has launched a series of naval maneuvres in the Persian Gulg and a media campaign (ie: cnn blitz) claiming that Iran is planning a “summer offensive” against US forces in Iraq by “linking al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shi’ite militia allies”. These are the same Iraqi Sunnis who use the term ‘Iranian’ as an insult toward their Shia compatriots.
Are you confused yet? I know I am.
I do wish that both governments will release the detained (one of which happens to be an aquaintance of mine) and put a stop to these irresponsible games before they escalate the situation towards another disastrous conflict in the Middle East.