Is the US withdrawing support for democracy and human rights in Iran as a gesture of good will towards the Islamic Republic?
Activists are expressing concern over reports that several groups, including Freedom House and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, are losing US government funding at a time of increasing human rights violations and, more arguably, better prospects for democratic reform.
Democracy advocates are also disturbed by reports that this year’s allocation of Iran democracy funds will be largely split between the American Bar Association (for lawyers’ technical training) and IRD, a private contractor. Some are convinced that the move is a consequence of the administration’s policy of engaging Iran and is meant to convey the message that it has abandoned the previous administration’s aspirations for regime change.
“If the rationale is that we are going to stop funding human rights-related work in Iran because we don’t want to provoke the government, it is absolutely the wrong message to send,’’ says Roya Boroumand, founder of the Boroumand Foundation, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy. “That means that we don’t really believe in human rights, that the American government just looks into it when it is convenient.’’
Some analysts are skeptical that external actors can do much to promote democracy in the Islamic Republic.
“Can the West do anything to help the current regime evolve into something more open, modern, and democratic?,” asks Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria. Change must come from within, he insists, but outsiders should at least “not do anything to preclude internal evolution or more dramatic change.”
But democracy and human rights activists insist that there is growing demand for Western support from within Iran. While democracy assistance groups have been understandably cautious about exposing and endangering dissidents, the emergence of an albeit embryonic Green movement and the political turbulence over the fraudulent June 12 election appear to have emboldened Iranian activists and fed a demand for external assistance.
“A tipping point is on the way,” argues Abbas Milani, “and prudent policies on the part of the West, particularly the United States, can help determine which way it will fall.” As the Iranian people “watch an increasingly oppressive militarist junta and a more democratic regime both struggling to be born.”
Iranian women have become the most committed advocates of democracy over the last two decades, Milani notes. Azar Nafisi concurs, writing on the occasion of the Anna Politkovskaya award.
“Perhaps the best example of this struggle [for equal rights] and its centrality to the fight for pluralism and democracy in Iran is that of the women working for the One Million Signatures campaign against Iran’s repressive laws”, she writes. It is fitting that a “vibrant and beautiful young girl, Neda Agha-Soltan, and not the men who rule over Iran has become a symbol of Iranian people’s fight for democracy and pluralism.”
The One Million Signatures campaign yesterday won the Anna Politkovskaya award for courage in the face of adversity.
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