It was in the middle of post-election days in Iran that my supervisor put a paper on my desk which was news about Tariq Ramadan being fired from the university and it was because he ran a program in Press TV which is a channel funded by Iranian government. Apparently the program was not political or in support of the Iranian regime. My supervisor who's Dutch was against the university's decision. Later on, there was news on Maziar Bahari's case; an Iranian-Canadian journalist who works for Newsweek. He got arrested during the post-election days in Iran and spent months in Prison before being released. Working for a western media apparently was enough for him to be suspected of espionage!
Now, Tariq Ramadan left Holland to where he found open arms in Oxford university and Maziar Bahari is back to Newsweek.
The scale of troubles that the journalist went through is beyond my imagination but I cannot help but wonder how different the logic supporting each condemnation was in the first place. I don't expect the governments in Iran to be fair as unjustness is one of the very ugly angles they are defined with but from academia in a democratic country it was surprising to observe what I was observing.
3 comments:
Don't be surprised at inconsistent injustice. Only the intention is consistent -- to suppress opposition.
And universities sometimes suppress in order to avoid the impression of conflict or partisanship. Too bad!!!
maybe the reason is similar, but the magnitude is relevant too
western countries are not perfect for sure, but people living there experience small advantages that when you add amount to a significant difference
that is one thing i learned from my trip to Iran this summer, small differences are important, and maybe there is no BIG difference!
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