Department of Sociology
Ganji in Georgetown University, Washington
23 Jul 2006
Speaking to about 700 Iranians at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall in Washington, DC, Iran’s most prominent investigative reporter who spent 6 years in prisons in the Islamic Republic of Iran and is now on a tour of the West aroused his audience through his talk on conditions in Iran and what he thought needed to be done to achieve democracy in Iran.
“We are the people, and we must each ask ourselves what are we ready to sacrifice for democracy and resistance in Iran,” Ganji said in his talk in Persian.. “No nation achieved its current rights and freedoms without a struggle and sacrifice, and we are no exception,” he added, citing the examples of Rosa Parker, Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, and the movement for women’s rights in the US, among others. The crowd clapped and gave him standing ovations on several occasions as Ganji engaged his audience by calling the regime in Tehran patriarchal and no different from the dictatorship of the monarchy that collapsed in 1979.
In introducing Ganji, Dr Mehrdad Mashayekhi from Georgetown University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, invited Iranians to internalize democratic thinking.
“If we are serious about establishing democracy in Iran then civil disobedience is the method to challenge the rulers in Tehran, which is practiced by people all over the world,” Ganji invited his audience in his 60 minute talk. “No Messiah was going to appear and hand over democratic values to Iranians,” he said, reiterating that Iranians had to be willing to pay a price for their desires of democratic values, just as they paid for their other desires. “I believe in civil disobedience to be the way to achieve our goals. Whenever any one of us believes that a law is against our conscience, or unfair, or against our rights, we should engage in civil disobedience,” he said, citing many examples such as people disregarding the government ban on satellite receivers in Iran or women’s challenge of the strict dress unpopular dress code, which people already exercised.
In the question and answer session that followed, Ganji responded to questions about what the Iranian Diaspora could do to help bring about democracy in Iran by saying they could create a serious and informative television station. “Iranians have been endowed with wealth here, from what I hear, and so this is not a difficult task to accomplish,” he said while also criticizing the existing television stations that beam programs into Iran, in which, according to him Iranians continue to “bicker and fight, rather than learn how to talk and respect each other.” We must learn to accept our differences and not try to convince each other or impose our ideas. We must accept that we will never reach a consensus on the past, just as others don’t strive for that. Instead, we must work for a democratic future,” Ganji said.
Ganji also criticized US government’s $75 million fund allocated for promoting democracy in Iran, as he expressed his opposition to any military intervention in Iran because of its nuclear program. “Democracy is not born out of bombardments and invasions,” he said, adding that civil disobedience would paralyze the rulers in Iran. Ganji was an ardent supporter of the revolution that overthrew Iran’s Pahlavi monarchy in 1979 but has since become the country’s most vocal and courageous dissident writer. “I am against revolution because such a major transformation cannot be controlled,” Ganji said adding that since human beings regularly made mistakes in their lives and desires, only through small changes and experimentation could they made improvements, adjusts and learn from their experience. The absence of a strong organizational structure was the reason why he thought Iran’s pro-democracy groups and movement, while powerful, did not make headway. He explained his belief that all problems could not always be solved through dialogue alone, so people had to learn to accept each other as they were, rather than try to reject them for being different.
“I am a republican who believes in absolute non-violent methods of activism, and civil disobedience specifically,” Ganji explained his thoughts. In his talk Ganji briefly explained some of the basic views of the other opposition movements which desired a new regime in Iran. “The monarchists basically believe that no domestic group or opposition movement can peacefully unseat the regime in Tehran. This is why they encourage the US to carry out its regime policy and believe this to be inevitable.
About his return to Iran, Ganji said that he was planning to return after more visits to other countries that included those in Europe.
Ganji received the John Aubuchon award for his courageous reporting of the Iranian government’s involvement in the murders of the country’s dissidents in the 1990s on July 17, 2006. His forthcoming meetings include those with Noam Chomsky and Czech’s Vaclav Havel.