paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) (03/19/85)
So sorry to bring up old -- very old -- business, but I lost track of
this one for years (almost exactly 5 years, in fact). Some time back,
there was a small argument in this group about whether Iran would
have been better off keeping the Shah, in response to which there
appeared statistics from Amnesty International indicating what a crud
the Shah was. Which reminded me of the article below, which I
couldn't find, suggesting that there was the early Shah and the later
Shah, and the last one wasn't all that bad -- according to trustworthy
observers. Enough introduction: on to a summary of the article.
de Camara, R.C. 1980. The Shah vs. Khomeini. National Review 32:
352-353, 369. (March 21, 1980).
"From [1972], the Shah's government announced the executions of 62
persons for political crimes, according to AI, which thinks the true
number was `considerably in excess of three hundred.' However, the
organization's official yearbooks show only two persons executed
after mid-1977, one the murderer of a U.S. Embassy employee and the
other a general convicted of espionage."
"Altogether, the deaths from 1963 to the Shah's exile in January
1979 come to perhaps ten thousand, an estimate endorsed by Butler
of the ICJ [International Commission of Jurists]... In 1976, which
in retrospect was a watershed year, the Shah was converted, as it
were, by a born-again American President-elect. Even before Jimmy
Carter took office, the Shah instituted reforms aimed at mollifying
the rights-conscious leader-to-be of the Western bloc. In early 1977
he extended invitations to the heads of AI [Amnesty International],
ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross], and ICJ to visit
Teheran. In personal audiences, he informed AI's Martin Ennals and
ICJ's Butler that he had ordered torture stopped, and he challenged
Butler to produce a single instance since the previous September.
He opened the prisons to the Red Cross... The Red Cross... [put] the
prisoner tally at 3,500 for 1977, down to 2,100 for 1978.)..."
"The consensus of the watchdog organizations is that, beginning in
1976, Iran's performance in human rights improved markedly."
"A notable dissenter to this view on occasion has been [AI].
Following a mission to Iran in late 1978... [AI] accused the Shah
of `gross hypocrisy' and said that torture `has been practiced
systematically throughout the country and has not stopped.' It
bolstered the charge with recent cases -- but only three."
"Two months later, presumably with fresh evidence on hand from
that mission, AI issued a fuller report on torture -- but,
curiously, only for the years 1971 to 1976. A preface to the
report did acknowledge that torture `appeared to have decreased
since early in 1977.'"
"...lawyer David Emil, who led that last AI mission to Iran, has
this to say: `It's undoubtedly true there was a big change between
1976 and the fall of the Shah. It could be characterized as an end
of systemic torture... Very cruel tortures were no longer practiced.'
Prisoners were still subjected to what Emil termed `psychological
torture' -- cold and wet cells, random kicks and blows, verbal abuse,
deprivation of sleep."
"Two visits to Iran by the Red Cross in the spring of 1977 had
uncovered complaints of torture and marks on inmates at 16 of 18
prisons... Returning in the fall, Red Cross doctors found no new
marks, and `virtually all' of the prisoners denied that they were
being ill-treated. Trips the next spring and summer disclosed further
improvements in prison conditions."
"The Red Cross had access to all prisoners for physical checkups
and private interviews."
Well, I'm not too sure what to make of all this; maybe all the
mistreated prisoners were hidden somewhere, or maybe the Shah did
change his ways. At any rate, those who debate whether the Shah
was such a bad old guy or not, or whether he was worse than the
Ayatollah Khomeini is, might be interested in the article -- even
though it was in National Review.
Regards, Paul Dolber (...duke!phs!paul).