Ali Akbar Mousavi. Tavaana Interview Transcript

Transcription

1 Ali Akbar Mousavi Tavaana Interview Transcript Vision and Motivation My motivation for political and social engagement as an activist is twofold. First, a personal motivation based on my natural inclinations. Second, my awareness of the country s alarming situation and the need to become increasingly sensitive to its destiny. These two factors, in addition to my professional and personal activities, brought me into political and social activism. Leadership In my opinion, what makes an effective social and political leader lies first and foremost in that person s given personality and genes. Some individuals are excellent activists but not effective leaders. The second factor relies upon the acceptance of that person as a leader by the group. In that sense, it is the people with whom you work who make you or not a leader. The leadership of an individual cannot, in that regard, be imposed upon a group. In addition to these factors, a leader should be able to listen to the group, avoid imposing upon it his or her own views, capture, synthesize and represent the group s pluralistic views and, at the same time, properly interconnects his or her community, be it a NGO or any other form of organization, with its surrounding world and interlocutors at large. Courage, perseverance and a sharp sense of responsibility are also among the characteristics of an effective leadership which does not shy away in front of difficulties, stress and pressure. It is a cocktail of these personal features that makes a good leader.

2 Goals and Objectives As an activist, my short and long-term objectives, in the three areas in which I have been active so far, can be categorized in the following manner. The first area goes back to my experience as a legislator in the Majlis, the Iranian parliament. As a reformist legislator, one of our main long-term goals back then was to bring fundamental changes in what needed to be reformed and oversee the whole process. The second area goes back to my specific political activities. Then, as a member of the Advar Tahkim, a student organization, our long-term goals were to form cadres, to build networks and to participate in the political process of needed social and structural reforms. Finally, the third area relates to my professional life as a communication and information expert where the pursued long-term goals were those of organizing team work, forming an effective Union-type structure and building bridges with like-minded professional international organizations. Our short-term goals while in the parliament were to overcome the atmosphere of growing despair and hopelessness that was gaining the country and the moods about the feasibility of reforms in a dead-end situation. So, we started to work on what appeared to us to be feasible at that time, namely overseeing the proper execution of existing laws. In this particular domain, I personally pursued these short-term objectives in the penitentiary system. A relative trust was built between us, that is the team working on this particular subject, the parliament and the judiciary. Our goal was to introduce a limited number of reforms in the system, close down certain penitentiaries and put the rest of them under the control and monitoring of the central Organization of Penitentiaries. So, this is a clear specific case of what we did. In the domain of communication and information technologies, our main short-term goal was to break the monopoly over the industry so that the Internet could be widely used as a tool for social improvements as well as in the reform process. Here too, I think that what we achieved was fairly good. Were it not for the work we did in this domain

3 and given the current repressive atmosphere of censured media, new communication technologies, from the Internet to mobile phones, could not have played the role they are playing now in informing the people inside and the public opinion around the world about what goes on in Iran. We worked with NGOs inside and outside Iran, in coordination with WSIS under the umbrella of the ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. Once the repression brought an end to our activities inside, we pursued them outside the country. Civic Environment In all these three areas, the general atmosphere in which we carried out our activities was so full of tensions and confrontations that, were it not for our long-term strategy, nothing could have been done in order to bring hope back to our society. In the area of the prison system, our working relations as parliamentary members with the judiciary were very weak. Parliamentarians and members of the judiciary were waging a sterile war of attrition against each other through the media, often using a very harsh language. So, we thought that the best thing we could do was to build a minimum of trust. We wanted the judiciary to believe that our goal was not to use the subject of the prison system in order to further weaken them. As a result, some of the prison houses were shut down and others, those which no one could have supervised until then under any circumstances, were placed under some degree of monitoring. Politically and legislatively speaking, we were in a deadlock. Any reform-minded resolution passed by the legislature ended up being rejected by the Council of the Guardians. Given the context, we started focusing on less politically sensitive resolutions which bore more long-term potentials in terms of catalyzing change. For instance, when the Press Resolution was rejected, we brought our attention to resolutions pertaining to ITCs so that in this way, alternative medias could see the day. Even this proved quite difficult, given the tense and politically charged atmosphere in which we were. But, after all, the very art of political and social activism is to achieve the achievable in a hostile environment.

4 Audience Our interlocutors were the students in the first phase, the students all over the country and primarily those in Tehran, with its 30 PMs in the parliament, who had trusted us and elected us as their representatives. The second group was made of all the educated people and the general public. These were our interlocutors. As their representatives, we had the responsibility to be accountable to all of them. Supporters and Opponents Our supporters and proponents, to classify them, were these same groups of students, the educated people and the social classes with which we had interacted in preparation of our plans and projects. In addition to these, there were also the professional communities with whom we used to work. When working on the specific subject of the prisons, the prisoners families and relatives, encountering various social problems and barriers, were our main interlocutors. Our opponents and adversaries were mainly to be found among the conservatives. They used coercive methods of intimidation. They also resorted to the judiciary as a vehicle for their exclusive manners by creating tension and a confrontational atmosphere. Following our term as PMs, they continued using these same methods. So far as I am concerned, this judicial approach used by our adversaries resulted in 5 consecutive penal cases and prosecutions which I had to resolve in order to obtain my acquaintance prior to leaving the country. These adversities continue to this day in a much harsher manner. Outreach Activities

5 Our main medium to get our message across to our interlocutors from the very first day when we started as PMs, was the existing press. In addition to this, we made use of meetings and other assemblies we used to hold now and then. At the beginning, the use of new information technologies was quite limited but, with the aggravation of the censorship of the press, we increasingly relied on these alternative electronic media, making good use of the resolutions we had passed in this domain. Working in coordination with the Ministry of Communication, we did our best in order to get these new media to the widest possible range of users across the society with a reasonable bandwidth. We were among the first groups to use Internet and s as a main tool in order to address our audiences. That has always been difficult and continues to be so. In particular when you consider that the radio and TV channels are monopolized by the State. The State does not allow the slightest media opening through official channels in order for you to address your interlocutors. Last but not least, given the importance of satellite channels and their impact inside the country, we have never neglected their potential and have always pursued the goal of putting them at use for our purposes, even if being broadcast from abroad, their use may bring us criticism from inside. Back then, when we were students, Internet usage was quite limited. So, we used campus and university journals with limited circulations, in order to remain in touch with our supporters. We also tried to use the Persian language media outside the country. These media outside would publish our interviews and, inside the country, we could measure their impact. We also used meetings and assemblies in order to build a face-to-face relationship with our interlocutors and supporters and exchange our views. Family networks also played a role in getting our message across to other students and their relatives and getting feedbacks from them. As student members of the Advar Tahkim, we used our strategic partners in Daftar Tahkim Vahdat, in order to develop and strengthen our social and political networks, while each organization maintaining its own identity. We first tried to build bridges among like-minded groups, drawing on the experiences of a large spectrum of political families, from the National Front to the Religious-nationalists and the Left. Based on

6 common goals, we tried to connect these rings together. Due to age differences and diverse political backgrounds, tensions would occur every now and then. But, with the insistence of the younger students pushing for more cooperation, we succeeded in convincing these various groups to engage in more collaborative works while maintaining a separation of task between each of them. As a result, petitions and communiqués were published, some having more than 600 signatories. In our civil engagement, we proceeded in the same manner. For that purpose too, we set up a Civil Communication Committee. Through that, we got in touch with other social and civil groups and learned about their respective goals and agendas. These were the Workers and the Women, and, of course, the Students as our main priority. Following the Reform period and once the Conservative came to power, given that meanwhile these movements had grown in importance, we tried, so far as our means would allow us, to remain engaged with them and interact in a constructive manner. Within our own organization of Advar Tahkim, up to 4 or 5 such socially and civil rightsoriented movements were represented, compensating their own lack of means using to a limited extent what we could put at their disposal. Our adversaries monitored these activities and we thought that even in the event of a crackdown, our networks would still be strong enough to sustain the pressures and survive and, in any case, the work being done was worth the risk being taken and its eventual price to be paid. And what we feared, eventually took place some three years ago when, during the commemorations of the 18 of Tir events or the anniversary of the student uprising in 1999, the offices of our organization, Advar Tahkim, were shut down. These organizations and their networks were the red line that our adversaries could not stand. During the interrogations conducted by the security forces, we were constantly reminded that no such networks would be tolerated, even if the Workers, Women, Students or Teachers organizations behind them could not be entirely suppressed. Those who were arrested were being told that Students issues had nothing to do with Teachers and that Workers and Women issues were unrelated to each other. Despites these pressures, we did not retreat from our positions and, as a result, during these past years, each time one of these social categories expressed its discontent, others

7 would join the protest in solidarity. This was in the domain of civil rights. We reproduced these experiences in that of our professional work with new communication technologies, in the sense that we networked with NGOs supportive of our activities or involved in this arena as users of the Internet. With pressures mounting inside, we pursued our networking activism outside the country, being certain that at some point, these networks would prove instrumental in supporting the ongoing movement of the Iranian people inside the country. And we continue doing precisely this.