Erfurt's Christmas Market

I have just a few more days left of working in the archives in Erfurt. So I will soon introduce readers to my research findings for the year of 1920 as a starter. But I also want to show you some more photos; first, nice ones I took from Erfurt in December 2006. If you are interested in Erfurt's Christmas markets and some of my late afternoon walks, please click here.

Dictatorship, Terror and Human Rights in Iran

I have taken a break from archival work and writing to travel with my girlfriend Nicole from Berlin to Magdeburg, Erfurt and back. It was a much needed respite after months of being on the road. I plan to post more in the following days on my own research and writing, but I wanted to write today about the man I met while walking through Potsdamer Platz (Berlin) to the train station.

He was standing in the street bundled up in a long dark coat and gloves. He had metallic rim glasses, bushy eyebrows, gentle eyes and a mustache. He was waving his hands and asked me in German if he could speak to me about human rights violations in Iran, thanking me as he moved closer.

He had a folder in his hands and he quickly flipped through it to show me photo identification with his official proof of German citizenship and terrifying pictures of young people, both men and women, on the gallows.

He told me that he had been a teacher in Iran. When he refused to fight against the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, he claimed that the Iranian government imprisoned him for three years. Afterwards he sought asylum in Germany and has been living in the southwestern German state of the Baden-Wurttemberg for the last ten years. He had taken a few days off from his job to travel to Berlin and sought to raise awareness by approaching people among the passageways of Potsdamer Platz.

He asserted that his fellow Iranians now live under a brutal dictatorship, which will not come as a surprise to many. He flipped back through the photos of young men and women marched to the gallows for public executions. He asked me to help with a donation or petition campaign. I told him that I am not a citizen of Germany and could not fill out any of his petitions or bank transfer forms. I had little money, but I suggested that I could take a flyer with his group’s contact information and give him some of my pocket change. He was interested in my pursuit of a dissertation in history and the fact that I am a US citizen. I told him that I wanted to support his efforts and that I am concerned about current US foreign policy, especially the public calls from our neo-conservative right for strong gestures of saber rattling and even military action against a radical Iranian government armed with nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

If you are interested, please check out his organization’s website address: www.hmiran.de. However, it is in German. HMIRAN stands for Help for Human Rights in Iran and is based in Dortmund, Germany.

His flyer makes some moving claims. German papers like Die Welt (from 05.08.2007) have been reporting on these public executions, but the German government, so HMIRAN claims, has been slow to act. Moreover, HMIRAN claims that since the beginning of 2007, the Iranian theocratic dictatorship, i.e., President Ahmadinejad, the Mullahs, the secret police and paramilitary squads, have carried out over 1400 death sentences and executions. Over 1.5 million people have been arrested. At least 7,300 of these arrests have been politically motivated. Over 670,000 people have been imprisoned. At least 6,500 of these people were arrested for political reasons. 255 newspapers and other forms of media have been banned. The list of problems goes on and on; the group cites numbers for those Iranians who are addicted to drugs, infected with HIV, homeless or female survivors of male violence. Most striking, HMIRAN claims that there have been over 2700 public forms of demonstration, strikes and protests all despite the government’s public reign of terror.

I find HMIRAN’s projects worth considering. They want to use donations from German citizens to hire lawyers in order to free Iranian political prisoners and stop executions. They claim to have already engaged the support of over 500 lawyers for international law. In order to protect Iranians’ human rights, they are initiating these public protests and supporting the broadcast of television programs with more information via satellite.

I had to catch a train, but I promised to do something. He looked me in the eyes as if to see if I meant what I said. Why don't Americans hear more about the details of what is actually going on in Iran? I hope there are some readers out there that can think of ways to help these Iranians help themselves despite such oppression. I do believe that war should remain the very last option when our leaders have proven that all other political options are ineffective. Opposition to such regimes does face the prospect that their government will label them as a dangerous foreign influence in order to legitimize going after them, but there are still signs of an active Iranian civil society (See the BBC’s online articles from this week on the Iranian Supreme Court’s decision to reopen the case of a dead Canadian-Iranian woman). Military action is not the only way to overthrow regimes and too many US and Iraqi citizens have died in the current approaches to regime change and political reforms so as not to consider other more creative alternatives. See also last week's Spiegel for the problems the German government faces in trying to exert economic pressure on Iran because of Germany's own economic ties with Iran.

What about those readers out there who are connected to American Voices Abroad here in Berlin already looking for ways to start dialog among US and Iraqi citizens and soldiers here in Germany in order to help deal with the trauma of the current US occupation – is this a chance to act proactively on Iran? What about those of us connected to groups like MoveOn.org or Amnesty International? How can we help fact-check and network these activists with those who can focus political support in constructive ways? What about Americans? Does saber rattling help? Is the Bush Administration actually interested in a new course with Iran? Can we help Iranians help themselves against their fellow Iranians who resort to violence and terror? Can we develop a different approach than that of our current US Administration that will move our national foreign policy, professional service and average, everyday American effort and sacrifice in more thoughtful and constructive directions in the wake of perhaps the worst foreign policy mistakes in our nation’s history?