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Iran's courageous democracy advocates are certainly not safe in their own country, where they risk imprisonment, torture, and worse for criticizing Iran's corrupt mullahcracy
National Review, March 28, 2005
* Iran's courageous democracy advocates are certainly not safe in their own country, where they risk imprisonment, torture, and worse for criticizing Iran's corrupt mullahcracy. But they may not be safe outside Iran, either. Abdulrahim Raeesi, an Iranian political-science professor, fled with his wife and son to Pakistan after he was arrested and maltreated for writing a pro-democracy article in an underground newspaper.
But Iran's secret police soon found them, and while his family went to stay with friends elsewhere, Raeesi stayed put to seek asylum through the U.N.'s refugee agency. His request was denied, and on February 7 armed men broke into the room he shared with two other Iranian asylum-seekers, killing one of them, Ahmed Mashoof, while Raeesi and the other escaped. The story suggests that the Iranian government, feeling threatened by changes in the region and the strong pro-democracy movement within its borders, may be returning to its earlier policy of sending intelligence agents and militias to assassinate outspoken Iranians abroad. It also suggests abject failure on the part of the U.N.'s refugee agency. Yet another example, it seems, of the U.N.'s unfailing propensity to aid the designs of despots.
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