Où est la gauche ?
Great witness-chronicler of anti-Communist "refolution" in Central Europe and eminently sensible man Timothy Garton Ash has done it again. All of his columns for the Guardian on Iran have been spot-on, in my opinion, and today's helping is no exception:
Rather than sitting on the sidelines carping at whatever Washington does, we Europeans should do something better ourselves. Instead of merely expressing (justified) scepticism about an American satellite TV channel for Iran, which will be widely seen there as Bush administration propaganda, we should be urging the British parliament to make money available for a 24-hour BBC satellite television service broadcasting to Iran in Farsi. For the BBC does have real credibility in Iran. Rather than just sniping at Washington's sometimes clumsy efforts at democracy promotion, we should be developing our own.
When I say we, I mean all the member states of the European Union, pooling their resources and know-how. After all, we - not the Americans - have the diplomats, businesspeople and journalists on the ground in Iran. Between our 25 countries, we have a unique body of experience about how democratic states can encourage peaceful change in their less democratic neighbours. In the last decades of the cold war, West Germany tried to do this with its Ostpolitik, and Poland, having been on the receiving end, can help us to learn from the mistakes of that Ostpolitik. Not all the European precedents fit Iran, but some do. For example, we should be weaving a dense web of human contacts between Iranians and freer countries, as we did between the western and eastern halves of a divided Europe.
Our universities should invite their academics and students, who have often been in the vanguard of standing up for free speech and human rights in Iran. Our newspapers and journalism schools should bring over their journalists. Our trades unions should hitch up with their unionists, some of whom have organised major strikes. Our parliaments should establish links with their parliament which, though far from fully democratic, has been giving Ahmadinejad a rough ride.
Writers, artists and filmmakers should be encouraged to travel to and fro, carrying ideas in both directions. Women's movements in Iran, representing half the population systematically discriminated against, should be supported by women's movements in Europe. Iran's Islamic thinkers and jurists, both reformist modernisers and conservatives, should be engaged in dialogue by theologians and scholars from other faith traditions. All this should be done less by our governments than by our own societies, and not just by America and Britain - traditionally distrusted by many Iranians - but by all European countries, working separately and together. We need a European Iranpolitik.
Indeed. Channel 4 News has been broadcasting from Tehran all this week, and many of the reports on everyday life in both urban and rural Iran have been interesting and instructive, but I wish Jon Snow and the gang would give more attention to the likes of this.
An International Women's Day demonstration calling for women's rights is put down by armed policemen and the respectable chatter-left of the West is busy fretting over supermarkets. Now, I have no problem with castigating Tesco and other mega-chains (though I admit that the one down the street from me is fairly useful and time-saving), but sometimes I can't help but get the impression the Western middle-class left is more interested in lifestyle choices than human rights. These days, being a "liberal" or a "leftist" or whatever is about buying fair trade products, grumbling about Tesco and McDonald's, and constantly registering how you're just FLABBERGASTED at how silly America can be and how evil Israel is. It has nothing to do with serious principles, certainly nothing to do with a concern for human rights and human dignity. Humanistic and liberal concerns, by the way, are finding eloquent expression among brave women in Iran. And given the chatter-left's eschewal of genuine solidarity in favor of a self-important consumerism (albeit an "ethical shopping" consumerism), their message to the liberals, socialists, feminists, and political prisoners of Iran is: "can't be bothered."
Rather than sitting on the sidelines carping at whatever Washington does, we Europeans should do something better ourselves. Instead of merely expressing (justified) scepticism about an American satellite TV channel for Iran, which will be widely seen there as Bush administration propaganda, we should be urging the British parliament to make money available for a 24-hour BBC satellite television service broadcasting to Iran in Farsi. For the BBC does have real credibility in Iran. Rather than just sniping at Washington's sometimes clumsy efforts at democracy promotion, we should be developing our own.
When I say we, I mean all the member states of the European Union, pooling their resources and know-how. After all, we - not the Americans - have the diplomats, businesspeople and journalists on the ground in Iran. Between our 25 countries, we have a unique body of experience about how democratic states can encourage peaceful change in their less democratic neighbours. In the last decades of the cold war, West Germany tried to do this with its Ostpolitik, and Poland, having been on the receiving end, can help us to learn from the mistakes of that Ostpolitik. Not all the European precedents fit Iran, but some do. For example, we should be weaving a dense web of human contacts between Iranians and freer countries, as we did between the western and eastern halves of a divided Europe.
Our universities should invite their academics and students, who have often been in the vanguard of standing up for free speech and human rights in Iran. Our newspapers and journalism schools should bring over their journalists. Our trades unions should hitch up with their unionists, some of whom have organised major strikes. Our parliaments should establish links with their parliament which, though far from fully democratic, has been giving Ahmadinejad a rough ride.
Writers, artists and filmmakers should be encouraged to travel to and fro, carrying ideas in both directions. Women's movements in Iran, representing half the population systematically discriminated against, should be supported by women's movements in Europe. Iran's Islamic thinkers and jurists, both reformist modernisers and conservatives, should be engaged in dialogue by theologians and scholars from other faith traditions. All this should be done less by our governments than by our own societies, and not just by America and Britain - traditionally distrusted by many Iranians - but by all European countries, working separately and together. We need a European Iranpolitik.
Indeed. Channel 4 News has been broadcasting from Tehran all this week, and many of the reports on everyday life in both urban and rural Iran have been interesting and instructive, but I wish Jon Snow and the gang would give more attention to the likes of this.
An International Women's Day demonstration calling for women's rights is put down by armed policemen and the respectable chatter-left of the West is busy fretting over supermarkets. Now, I have no problem with castigating Tesco and other mega-chains (though I admit that the one down the street from me is fairly useful and time-saving), but sometimes I can't help but get the impression the Western middle-class left is more interested in lifestyle choices than human rights. These days, being a "liberal" or a "leftist" or whatever is about buying fair trade products, grumbling about Tesco and McDonald's, and constantly registering how you're just FLABBERGASTED at how silly America can be and how evil Israel is. It has nothing to do with serious principles, certainly nothing to do with a concern for human rights and human dignity. Humanistic and liberal concerns, by the way, are finding eloquent expression among brave women in Iran. And given the chatter-left's eschewal of genuine solidarity in favor of a self-important consumerism (albeit an "ethical shopping" consumerism), their message to the liberals, socialists, feminists, and political prisoners of Iran is: "can't be bothered."
posted by Greer at 3:43 PM
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