Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 14 July 2009

If people were not allowed to voice their demands in peaceful gatherings, it “could destroy the foundation of any government,” regardless of its power, wrote Ayatollah Montazeri on 25 June in a warning to Iran’s leaders.

Almost two weeks after the controversial presidential election in Iran, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most senior dissident cleric in Iran and from 1979 to 1989 the heir apparent of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued what is being called a fatwa on 25 June, warning the authorities that trying to stifle dissent would prove to be futile, according to Förenade föreningar för ett fri Iran (FFFI), an umbrella organisation for Swedish-based organisations wanting democratic changes in Iran.

If people were not allowed to voice their demands in peaceful gatherings, it “could destroy the foundation of any government,” regardless of its power, he wrote. Ayatollah Montazeri fell out of favour with the ruling clerics by questioning their almost limitless powers. He has been in house arrest since 1989.

“Officials who have religiously and rationally lost authority and custodianship in social affairs are automatically dismissed from their positions,” Montazeri wrote. “Their authority has no legitimacy whatsoever. And if they remain in their position through coercion, deceit or fraud, the people must voice those officials’ illegitimacy and lack of credibility and demand their removal from those positions through the most effective and least costly methods.

“Obviously, this is a duty for all people. It falls upon everyone in society, the elite and the laymen alike, depending on their knowledge and abilities. No one can shed this responsibility under any pretext.”

Montazeri wrote that the elite of society are more aware of the religion and law, more capable and wield more influence. As such, they have a more serious mandate. Through unity, like-mindedness and establishing of parties and organizations as well as private and public meetings, they must inform others and present a solution to them.

“Religion, logic and learned people around the world condemn and consider as worthless a government based on coercion, oppression and aggression against the rights of other people; a government which has usurped and manipulated the people’s votes, killed, arrested, detained and applied medieval and Stalinist tortures on them; a government that represses, censors the newspapers, disrupts communication and imprisons the elite in society on bogus charges and forces them to make false confessions, especially in prison,” Montazeri wrote.

“According to credible accounts from the family of the Prophet and his direct descendents, extracting confessions in prison has absolutely no religious and legal legitimacy and cannot be the basis for issuing a sentence,” the Ayatollah wrote. “Iran’s valiant people are fully aware of the reality of these confessions which conjure up recorded examples in fascist and communist regimes. It is common knowledge that such confessions and fabricated television interviews have been obtained through force, torture and threats in order to conceal cases of oppression and injustice.

“Those ordering, perpetrating and assisting in such confessions and false interviews are sinners and offenders,” he wrote. “From a religious and legal standpoint, they deserve punishment.”

Montazeri wrote that the Shah heard the sound of the Iranian people’s revolution only when it was too late. The Ayatollah hoped that officials in charge do not allow the situation to get to that point and show flexibility toward the demands of their own citizens as soon as possible.

“The sooner we can exercise damage control the better,” he wrote. “It is beholden on everyone to comprehend and sense the deliberate opposition of the rulers to the religion and the law. Others must be informed as well. Everyone has a responsibility when encountering injustice and the violation of the people’s rights depending on his/her own awareness and capability. One cannot assume that someone could believe in justice but not take any steps in realizing it or for that matter, be afraid or take a wait and see attitude on the pretext of not having enough power. To fear man is to commit to the most serious cardinal sin of duality.”

Click here to read the Copenhagen Voice story, ‘Iran human rights organisation investigating whether pro-democracy demonstrators have been hanged’.

Click here to read the Copenhagen Voice story, ‘Iran clerics declare election invalid, condemn crackdown - The Times’.

Click here to read Farhang Jahanpour’s comments in the Copenhagen Voice, ‘Iran’s Supreme Leader silences the opposition’.

Click here to read the Copenhagen Voice report, ‘No revolution coming in Iran, what we see is the beginning of the end’.