TORTURE

Rashti barar jan!

To quote an evidence collected by the likes of Mansour Frahang, Khomenin's man at the UN, about the Shah's administration and te US press opinion of him, is like quoting Joseph Geobbles on his theory of Jewish conspiracy and the media's reflection of this theory.

Please spare us the anecdotal rebuttal!

Iran is NOT the only torturer

I think the significance of this article is that it takes torture out of its traditional realm of third-world dictators. I mean, we can (and should) discuss forever how and why and how much torture under the Shah or the IRI was or was not publicized. But if we narrow ourselves only to that we have missed an important point.

Torture goes on all the time, everywhere, and while it undoubtedly has local perpetrators it is also part of a bigger political design. And bigger political powers are always the main players in that design. In simple words, US and its allies are too involved in torture everywhere to allow their media to give it much coverage -- even in the case of their so-called enemies.

And that is only part of the story too. The other part is how average people are turned into torturers. I can't think of a better way to prevent people from becoming torturers than the exposure of what torturers do. I think public exposure is the most important part of establishing and demanding accountability from both local and global perpetrators. I totally agree that with independent media we have a better shot at this than ever.

Conspiracy ro Revolution

It was the year 1975 when my late friend, A. came for a visit during the summer break and stayed for more than a month. His family lived very close to us, so we met on a daily basis.

We were childhood friends, but we hadn't seen each other for years after my family moved to a different town. He was attending a school in the U.S. and I was enrolled in a college in Iran. I was working and making good money at the time, lots of it.

Our time was spent going to a very nice hotel where many foreigners used to stay or one or two other bars and clubs we liked. I knew many people in town and going places was fun for us.

Strangers would approach and talk to us and wanted to join our "party." We ended up making many important friedns that summer. A. was planning to come back to Iran and work after college, so he got job offers from several big shots who liked his youth, vitality and, specifically, his credentials.

We always spoke in English to each other and that was kind of odd for many to see two Iranians speak to each other in English. Perhaps that was one reason some people would come and talk to us, Iranians and foreigners, alike.

One day a young man in his late twenties came to where we were sitting in the hotel lobby and asked if he could sit with us. We had no objection and he sat down and ordered a pot of tea. We were drinking beer.

We talked until our friends came to pick us up to go to dinner. We asked the guy if he wanted to join us, but he refused saying he had to take care of some business. We said good-by leaving him in the lobby by himself.

We talked to him on several occasions after that until one afternoon when he said he was leaving town. He had told us that he was on a contract with an engineering company. During those years anybody you ran into was some kind of engineer.

On the day he left, he asked us to accompany him to his suite. We went along and saw he had already packed his suitcase and a handbag. In the room he asked us to sit around a table because he wanted to tell us something before he departed. He was very calm and confident even calmer than I had seen him before. He said:

"Guys, the Shah will have to go. I was here on a mission and will be visiting many towns and cities. I enjoyed my talks with you. hope to see you, some day." He continued, "Shah's time is over and we'll be taking over soon."

At this point A. asked, " When will that happen, when will he be deposed?" The guy responded, "Pretty soon."

We talked for several more minutes after that, then he shook our hands and gave each of us a hug and we left his room.

He didn't speak like the revolutionaries I met after 1979. He didn't bore us with a long revolutionary speech loaded with slogans. His mode of expression was succinct and to the point.

On our way to dinner, A. said, "The guy was very serious, but I think he was full of it. Deposing the Shah. That's impossible!"

After that night, I forgot all about the guy and his talk. I was too busy with my own life to worry about stuff like that. I didn't even understand that much to care about the gravity of the situation he was describing. Deposing the Shah? What was that?

A. and I never mentioned his name, anymore. Perhaps we forget or perhaps we weren't interested, at all, in his mission.

It was either in the late eighties or early nineties that I remembered him and his talk in his suite again and realized what he had meant by deposing the Shah.

Having witnessed the revolution which brought about the collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty and having read about the insulting article concerning Khomeini which allegedly sparked the initial anti-Shah demonstartions, I have, often, wondered how he could predict the coming of a big change, so convincingly.

Remembering that encounter in 1975 and having read about the events which took place in the neighboring countries since then, I tend to believe the whole idea of a "revolution" had been planned long before the first so-called "spontaneous demonstrations" of 1977!

Rashti

The Western media did favor the Shah, but only until the late 70s. After that time the presented the Shah as the worst monster on the face of earth. Just suddenly like that, either the Shah did changed into a monster, or the Western media turned against him.

By the way, the Shah indeed was a benevolent dictator.

You wrote, "Washington Post editorial wondered why he did not use the power available to him as "a dictator" to suppress the population even more violently"

Why didn't he? Do you have an answer?

Rashti

The programmer guy is right, the media did go against him during the last years of his rule because he didnt go to war with Iraq(that is what the west wanted him to do so they could sell arms to both sides and make a bunch of money) and he did something that pissed off the British and the French alot; he raised oil prices.

At 3:07 of the video that im posting below, mike wallace asks the shah about torture. The Shah answers Mike Wallace and then at 4:05 of the interview, Mike Wallace precedes to tell the audience that the Shah was pretty much lieying and that there is lots of torturing under his government, it starts with him saying "But the victims of Savak knew differently...", that statement contradicts what the Shah said and is portraying him as a liar and in this case, a torturer as well. It even goes to show pictures of people that were supposedly tortured by the Shah. If you don't think that is bad media coverage then i don't know what to tell you.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-jkx36BPc

I also remember, a few weeks ago, somebody posted a French documentary on the Shah here on Iranian.com, and the docementary did the same thing this interview with Mike Wallace did, it displayed itself as being honest, moderate and unbiased towards the Shah, but there was a point in the video where the tone of the documentary changed to a dark setting and it talked about the torture that he supposedly used on his people.  So actually, it wasn't unbiased or moderate.  It had a purpose, that purpose was to make him unpopular.

To "The Programmer": Thank you

As I suspected, once again you have no evidence whatsoever, just your highly dubious claim of "eyewitness testimony". What happened, did the dog eat your homework? I hope your "programming" is of a higher caliber than your complete inability to make an argument based on evidence and logic even just one time.

There is plenty of evidence to be found both on and off the Internet to support one's arguments (material from the pre-Internet era has been archived); the book I mentioned was originally published in hardcopy. But clearly, you are beyond your depth. Just go to bed: you'll embarrass yourself less by doing so, and I'm sure you will have many more opportunities in the future to speak of things of which you haven't the slightest idea.

Truly yours...

Rashti 1970

Yes, I did read Jamshid's comment.

Then why was your dismissive reply to him completely irrelvant to the claim he had made? It looked to me like you were very activley engaged in "disproving" something he never said. If you just want to editorialize, you don't ahve to pretend to be replying to people, you know...

And no, the evidence I cited is not
"anecdotal". It is based on a comprehensive study of the U.S. media and
Iran called "The U.S. Press and Iran" by William Dorman and Mansour
Farhang.

The claim that a study undertaken by two private citizens for the purpose of writing a book is "comprehensive" is pretty dubious, in my opinion.And since you cite it here third hand, it is absoultely anecdotal. You do know what that word means, don't you?

If you have any real evidence to the contrary demonstrating that most
of the mainstream U.S. media was hostile to the Shah, I would be
interested to see it (for surely it must be out there somewhere on the
Internet).

Right. Sure... stuff from 1978 (and earlier) is ALL OVER teh internet. Why, I don't think there is a single media outlet form the 1950s on that didn't publish their articles and videos on the internet!

(I'm laughing at your obvious youth, there, in case you can't tel)

As far as your assertion that you remember the dominant U.S.
media being very biased against the Shah 30 years ago, when you were a
teenager: that doesn't even qualify as anecdotal evidence;

You are right. That isn't anecdotal evidence. It is eyewitness testimony. 

though you
are certainly welcome to believe whatever you like.

Yeah, I suppose it would be foolish of me to trust my own memory rather than taking your word for it! After all, you have those unimpeachable sources backing you up! :P

Response to "The Programmer"

Yes, I did read Jamshid's comment. And no, the evidence I cited is not "anecdotal". It is based on a comprehensive study of the U.S. media and Iran called "The U.S. Press and Iran" by William Dorman and Mansour Farhang. In fact, if you read what I wrote, I stated: " In 1978, a "Washington Post" editorial wondered why [the Shah] did not use the power available to him as "a dictator" to suppress the population even more violently." In actuality, that was one of the very references in the mainstream U.S. media in that year (i.e. 1978, the year that the revolution started) referring to the shah as "a dictator"; this was based on the author's systematic review of the U.S. media in that year. If you have any real evidence to the contrary demonstrating that most of the mainstream U.S. media was hostile to the Shah, I would be interested to see it (for surely it must be out there somewhere on the Internet). As far as your assertion that you remember the dominant U.S. media being very biased against the Shah 30 years ago, when you were a teenager: that doesn't even qualify as anecdotal evidence; though you are certainly welcome to believe whatever you like.

Glad to see this piece

It is good to put torture in a broader context, both internationally and in the context of the coverage it gets in the media. Also, thank you Stuve for bringing up the piece I posted on Iranian.com in 2006. As you mention I sent that piece (part of a longer article) to many publications in the US at the time, as well as presenting it to my academic connections -- nobody was interested. That was exactly twenty years ago (not 10!).

Something that has been bothering me all these years is the thought that IF I had finished the article in 87 instead of 88 and IF it had been immediately published, would it have made any difference in the lives of all those people who were murdered in 88? I am sure there were many more accounts of what was going on in the prisons in Iran that were ignored just like mine.

I keep thinking if the executions of 81-82 and the situation in the prisons had received more publicity maybe the executions of 88 would have been prevented. We will never know and we will always mourn. But I do know that in the mid-90s the publicity Faraj Sarkuhi recieved and the international pressure exerted on his behalf played a significant role in his release from prison.

BTW here are links to other parts of my 1986-87 article, Returning to Iran, that have to do with prisons and executions:

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/5.html

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/6.html

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/7.html

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/10.html

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/11.html

//iranian.com/Nahan/Iran/12.html

What great luck that now there are independent media like Iranian.com that help keep these tragedies from being forgotten. Experience certainly proves that we can't expect much from mainstream media.

Rashiti 1970

Torture did become a hot topic in West's media in early 1978. It was
covered in books, magazines, TV, and other media. Strangely though, it
covered only the Shah's Savak and nothing else.

Did you even read his comment? You provided a bunch of anecdotal evidence to dispute what he said, but all of your evidence predated 1978... so, I suggest you try again?

Do you have evidence to back up your views?

He's got me, and the evidence of my own eyes and ears. The Western Media quite conspicuously turnded on the Shah at about the time he says it happened. I remember. I was just a teenager, but the very first things I ever heard about iran were about the abuses of the Shah, and about SAVAK.

Jamshid: Huh?

You state: "Torture did become a hot topic in West's media in early 1978. It was covered in books, magazines, TV, and other media. Strangely though, it covered only the Shah's Savak and nothing else. More strangely, it suddenly died off exactly in Feb of 1979 after the victory of the "glorious" Islamic revolution."

Actually, the U.S. media was quite favorable towards the Shah as a U.S. "client" (and extremely negative towards Mosaddeq). From 1953-1978, the New York Times used the word "dictator" to refer to the Shah just one time, calling him a "benevolent dictator" in 1967. In 1978, a "Washington Post" editorial wondered why he did not use the power available to him as "a dictator" to suppress the population even more violently.

According to the NY Times, the Shah "demonstrated his concern for the masses". A plebiscite conducted by the Shah in 1963, with a 99 percent vote in favor of the Aryamehr, was lauded by the Times as "emphatic evidence" that "the Iranian people are doubtless behind the Shah in his bold new reform efforts."

Moreover, the U.S. media, in keeping with the U.S. government's and Big Business' views, has tended to focus relatively little on the human rights violations of U.S. client states (e.g. Indonesia, despite the fact that the latter invaded East Timor using weapons provided to it by the Ford and Carter administrations and imposed a brutal occupation that resulted in about 200,000 killed--i.e. one-third of the native population).

Do you have evidence to back up your views?

Wow... sign of actual American intelligence out there!

I don't know about other Iranians but I am moved by intelligent non-Iranian acknowledgement of torture. I mean, we've known about all this for a long time but it is such a breath of fresh air to see signs that there are Americans who give a damn.

Torture did become a hot

Torture did become a hot topic in West's media in early 1978. It was covered in books, magazines, TV, and other media. Strangely though, it covered only the Shah's Savak and nothing else. More strangely, it suddenly died off exactly in Feb of 1979 after the victory of the "glorious" Islamic revolution.

I wonder why?

Great

Is it because they all do it? All the bosses use torture? And they know
they’re sinners and don’t want to cast the first stone? They actually
are the Christians they say they are? (We’re talking about the U.S.
leaders, now.) They have compassion for their sinful enemies? Or could
it be that they don’t want to accuse others lest they be accused
themselves?

That's right, QRStuve. You nailed it. Good job. Give yourself a nice pat on the back.