A delegation of prominent intellectuals and civil libertarians presented a petition with 2,000 signatures to the Iranian Embassy in Washington on November 22 demanding the release of Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi and Dr. Ali Shariatti – two of the many writers, intellectuals, and artists now in the shah’s jails.

Neither the ambassador nor any of his aides would agree to see the delegation. An embassy staff member, who refused to identify himself, categorically denied requests for a future appointment and refused to accept a letter of protest written by members of the sociology department at Columbia University.

The delegation included Kate Millett, well-known feminist author; Ann Roberts of the National Organization for Women; Allan Silver, professor of sociology at Columbia University; Tristram Coffin from the American Center for PEN, the international writers society; David Weissbrodt, representing Amnesty International; and Fariborz Khasha of the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran (CAIFI), which organized the petition campaign.

CAIFI has focussed on the cases of Vida Tabrizi and Ali Shariatti in hope of breaking down the wall of silence with which the shah has attempted to hide the brutal repression of artists and intellectuals in Iran.*

Vida Tabrizi, a sociologist at the University of Tehran, was doing research on the living conditions of the peasant population of Iran when she was arrested by SAVAK, the shah’s secret police, in July 1972. A secret military court sentenced her to eight years in prison. The torture she has received at the hands of the shah’s agents has resulted in loss of feeling in her arms and legs. She also has a heart problem and meningitis.

Dr. Ali Shariatti holds a doctorate in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris and has written many books and articles. He was educational director of Hossinieh Ershad, an Islamic theological school in Tehran. But the regime decided that this institution was a center for political opposition and closed it on November 15, 1972. Dr. Shariatti was arrested by SAVAK in September 1973 and jailed in a dreaded Tehran prison complex called “The Committee.”

In the efforts to intimidate writers, artists, and intellectuals, more than fifty newspapers and magazines have been banned, and eighty journalists have been fired and forbidden to write. (See Intercontinental Press, November 4, p. 1436.) An estimated 25,000 political prisoners are at present in the shah’s jails.

In the past year, two prominent writers, Khosrow Golsorkhi and Karamat Daneshian, have been executed.

Among the well-known figures being held in jail are Fereydoon Tonkaboni, a writer and teacher, and Dr. Gholamhossein Sa’edi, playwright, author, and editor of Alefba (Alphabet), a literary magazine published in Tehran. Sa’edi was arrested last June. After his arrest, his home was searched for what SAVAK called “misleading books.”

A news conference was held after the Iranian Embassy refused to receive the protest delegation. Extracts from a letter written to the embassy by the president of the Canadian Sociological Association protesting the imprisonment of Vida Tabrizi were read.

“I should like to protest in the strongest possible terms this treatment by your government of one of our colleagues,” he wrote. “...it is utterly abhorrent to us that academic researchers should be subject to arbitrary government control and arrest.”

Professor Allan Silver of Columbia University told the news conference that a meeting of the American Sociological Association in August had adopted a resolution of condemnation and concern. It was expected that the association’s executive council, meeting in December, would take further steps.

The Amnesty International representative spoke about the all-pervasive role of SAVAK in the shah’s regime of repression – from investigation, through arrest, to prosecution before the military tribunals. The prisoners are even “defended” by military lawyers appointed by the military courts. But perhaps the most important denial of human rights, he said, was that the military tribunal accepts as evidence confessions of guilt that the defendants themselves have already repudiated in courts as having been made under torture.

Kate Millett praised the courageous work being done by Iranian students in the United States in defense of political prisoners in Iran. Because of SAVAK agents operating in the U.S., the students run the risk of being forced to live in exile as long as the regime lasts. Once their political views are known, their families, too, are persecuted.

“The shah is a tyrant and one of the cruelest and most despotic rulers in the world today,” she said. “Far from being the glamorous prince and playboy, which he’s played up around the world as being, he is the master of a society run virtually upon terror.”

She condemned the squandering of billions on munitions in a society where the mass of the people live in poverty. Seven billion dollars were spent on arms in the last two years, she said.

Millett attacked the regime for failing to guarantee virtually any human or civil rights for women at all. “Women are chattels,” she said. “A man is licensed to murder his wife, his daughter, or his sister if he suspects her of sexual relationships.

Women are forbidden to work or travel without the husband’s written permission. A daughter receives only half the inheritance of the son. Abortion is illegal and there is a three to ten year prison term with hard labor for it.”

She called on feminists throughout the United States and the world to demand the immediate release of Vida Tabrizi.

“When you come up against things like a dictatorial and bizarre, insane, immoral regime such as the shah’s, there the influence of world opinion, of mobilizing world opinion, is about the only recourse for the victims of this regime, until of its own corruption it falls. Until then to help these many thousands of prisoners, who are often tortured, it is an absolute necessity to marshal world opinion and to focus world opinion as strongly and consistently and effectively as we possibly can.”

* The address of CAIFI is 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 703, New York, N. Y. 10010.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1974/IP1245.pdf#page=52&view=FitV,3