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COMMENTARY
July 17, 2003
Zahra Kazemi
The story is straightforward: Zahra Kazemi a Canadian photographer of Iranian origin went home to Iran took pictures got arrested and was beaten to death. So why all the fuss? Iranians get beaten to death every day and the victims of the regime have included not only talented woman photographers but many of Iran's most gifted writers and artists and thinkers. It is a mere accident that Ms Kazemi had a Canadian passport and they had not. Can such a document mean anything? I wish it did but it doesn't. As long-time Canadian travellers know if you get into trouble abroad you go to the American embassy or the British or the Australian whichever's nearest. The Canadian who uses his own embassy to do anything more than renew his passport or perhaps collect mail is inexperienced. He shouldn't be travelling in dangerous places. Unfortunately for Ms Kazemi even phoning an embassy wasn't an option. She knew she was taking risks in documenting Iran's vicious human rights abuses. She decided to take the risks -- for she was a brave and exceptional woman. We do not yet know quite why she was arrested only that she found herself at the wrong place and time. This in no way justifies what the thugs of the "Islamic Revolutionary" theocracy did to her. The only question is what are we going to do about it? Will we make them pay or will we shrug in the current official manner? Bill Graham our really embarrassing foreign minister -- a man of cruelly limited intellectual capacity and no personal presence despite his freak appearance -- was reached by phone in Corsica where he was on vacation by Canadian reporters. He had spoken to the Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi who could give him no hard information whatever but assured him they were investigating. Typically Mr. Graham rushed to the defence of the Iranians remarking that they would be wanting to use this case to prove that they don't countenance human rights abuses. It hadn't yet occurred to him to demand Canadian participation in such an investigation. (It was our deputy prime minister John Manley who later thought of that: summoning a return "how dare he!" blast from the Iranian health and interior ministers.) I wrote "typically" because Mr. Graham often makes such remarks casually defending the honour of various sick evil regimes in the name of what is inaccurately called "diplomacy". But the naivete of such statements goes so far beyond the realm of plausibility as to set off alarms among the sane. Does Mr. Graham not know what goes on over there? Does he get his news only from the CBC? Is he not aware that this regime sends scooter brigades of imported Arab and Afghan club-wielding thugs to split the heads of student and all other demonstrators? That Zahra Kazemi's case is not unusual in Iran except in the one small particular that she happened to be travelling on a Canadian passport? That tales of beatings and untimely deaths in Persian prisons are daily fare? Is it possible a man is the foreign minister of a G-7 country and doesn't know such things? I very much doubt the men who tortured and murdered Zahra Kazemi were aware she was carrying a Canadian passport. They probably assumed she was "just another Iranian" from her appearance and facility with the language -- the regime feels fairly free in pummelling its own nameless subjects. Had they spotted the passport -- not that it was Canadian but that it was a passport -- they might have been content to just smash her camera. How do I know this? Because I'm not na?ve. Whereas over Mr. Graham as over all members of the Canadian foreign service I've encountered there is a real question. I don't get the impression these people are especially bad; one suspects some may even be well-meaning; they are just vacuously vain and completely uninformed. The instinct among them to defend e.g. the ayatollahs from bad publicity instead of Canadian citizens from Iranian thugs is not founded on anti-Canadian malice but on some contorted Pavlovian commitment to "world peace". In this case Mr. Graham who doubles as a politician was caught somewhat by surprise. Only when he gets home will he discover that he's a bit out of tune with the electorate on this one; and then the little fellow will start puffing and jumping and fuming against the "lack of co-operation" he will be continuing to receive from the Iranian side. It will be funny to watch as when your kitten arches up and attacks your ankle. The very people who hired the thugs to pummel Ms Kazemi until she was comatose and would die of a brain haemorrhage -- thugs themselves too stupid to check if she were a foreign national first -- are hardly going to prosecute themselves. (The Iranian vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi at least had the candour to admit how she died.) The most we will get from them is a few scapegoats offered up to appease our fury. And that only after unrelenting pressure from our Foreign Affairs Ministry or a send-up in the international media (and this story has had no wings beyond our own borders). What we can do is open our eyes. Canada (as France and several other European countries) has gone to great lengths to maintain good relations with the Iranian theocracy to advance trade and encourage "dialogue". We have publicly rejected the American confrontationist position. In the name of Zahra Kazemi it is time to switch sides. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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