.Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
.TIME FEBRUARY24,2003
Wendell Steavenson/Qum
.A Dissident Ayatollah.
.Gets Out of the House
After years of house arrest, Hossein Ali
Montazeri is again free to speak his mind.
SOME
120 KM SOUTH OF
. Tehran,in the brown
. salt desèrt called Kavir,
lies the spiritual heart of
Iran's Islamic revolution: Qum,
a dusty oasis of pine trees and
tens of thousands of Shi'ite
seminary students. A few
streets away from the blue
. domes of the Shrine of Hazrat
Massoumeh is the horrie of
Grand Ayatullah HosseinAIi .
Montazeri, where last week
crowds of visitors, mullahs,
sympathetic M.P.sand journalists
waited to see the 81-yearold
dissident after his release
from five years of house arrest.
The isolation had been hard.
"Our human nature needs
exchange with other human
beings;' Montazeri said to wellwishers.
"Being under house
arrest is against the very nature
ofhuman beings:' A few days
later, the Ayatullahsuffered a
mild heart attack and his
energy seems diminished.
Once the anointed
successor to Ayatullah
Khomeini, Montazeri was
dismissed in 1989 for speaking
out against the execution of political
opponents. He was
placed under house arrest in
1997 after questioning the religious
credentials of the man
who had replaced Khomeini,
Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali
Khamenei. Today, manyof
Qum's clerical establishment
share Montazeri's frustration
with the country's hard-line
religious government, which
has damaged public respect
for clerics as a whole. In a lane
not far from the Ayatullah's
home, graffiti declares: "Death .
to the Clerical regime and
Khamenei for stealing smiles!"
But Montazeri arouses opposition
too. While hundreds gathered
to welcome the freed
cleric, another crowd passed
out leaflets denouncing him.
Starting with his opposition
to the Shah in the 1960s
through his leading role in the
1979revolution and ultimate
disaffection with its excesses,
Montazeri has been a potent
force in Iranian politics.
"Montazeri is the last of the
generation of clergy who had
.revolutionary credibility
combined with scholastic competence;'
says Hadi Semati of
Tehran University. According
to Emadeddin Baqi, a former
student of Montazeri's who was .
just released from prison for
writing articles that linked the
authorities to assassinations in
the late '90s, the Ayatullah's
years in jail under the Shah
helped shape his politics. "He
was in a public cell with .
Marxists;' Baqi says. "He lived
like them. He developed
FREE:Montazeri, right, is
lionized by Iran's reformers but
reviled by conservatives, below
"By refono, we mean the implementation
FROM I RAN
tolerance for the opposition."
Before his heart attack,
Mont8zeri said, "The
revolution promised people
things ,likefreedom of speech.
So why take this from the
pèople? When we say'reform;
we mean the .implementation
of the promises of the .
revolution." During his
confinement, Montazeri vöiced
his opinions through a privately
published book, but mention of
his name or ideas in the media
.was prohibited. Montazeri has
sùggested that the Supreme
Leader's role should be folded
into that of the President, who
would be elected every five
years. Regarding the supervisory
Guardian Council,
currently controlled by hardline
clerics, his ideas are less
clear. "The existence of the .
Guardian Coi.mcilis not bad;'
says Ahmad Montazeri ofhis
father's views. "The problem is
it works accOrding to peoplés
tastes .and not the law:'
Whether Montazeri can still
be a force for change is
uncertain: In a bookshop
outside the shrine where
pilgrims purchase their Qum
souvenirs-baked earth tablets
from the Iraqi holy cities of
Naj~ and Karbala, prayer beads
and pistachio brittle-the
proprietor explains that he
doesn't have any books by
Montazeri. 'We were under
pressure not to sell any;' he says.
"Now that hés free, perhaps we
will be able to. But there's a
rumor they only let him out because
he will die soon:' •
of the promises of the revolution."
105