IRAN: Instead of naked repression Ahmadinejad's government inhibits the ability to communicate ideas, writes Lara Marlowe in Tehran
Everyone in Iran struggles with "red lines". For the philosopher and high-ranking cleric Mohsen Kadivar, the red lines are the role of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, whom he compares to a monarch, and the system of Velayat-e-faqih, the leadership of religious men which is the foundation of the Islamic Republic.
Publisher Shahla Lahiji knows she can publish no books containing male-female sex, homosexuality or propaganda for another system of government. These days, she adds, feminism is viewed as a dangerous topic. "Newspapers have been ordered not to publish the words 'feminism' or 'pornography'," she explains. "That shows what they think of feminism."
Taboo subjects for journalists in Iran include Reza Pahlavi (the exiled pretender to the throne), the Mujaheddin Khalq extremist group, who've been trying to overthrow the regime for nearly 30 years, and the persecuted Baha'i religious community.
There are red lines in music too. "In public places, you're never allowed to play foreign pop or rock music," Mohamed Reza Ghanizadeh, a music student and co-manager of the Godot café near Tehran University, told me as he put a Bach 33 LP on the record player. "You get arrested. The first time, it's two months in prison. After that, life. People know better, so no one does it."
Over the past year, religious conservatives have taken over all branches of the government and media. Reformers and student leaders have gone to ground. "They all say: 'What's the point?'" notes a European observer.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has devised subtle but efficient ways of quashing the temptation to dissent. Instead of arrest, torture, murder or imprisonment - methods used by the judiciary, military and intelligence services in the recent past - the government inhibits the ability to communicate ideas.
Despite his friendship with then President Mohamed Khatami, Kadivar was imprisoned for 18 months from 1999 until 2001 for criticising the murder of 17 intellectuals and what he calls "the Islamic monarchy". "My judge told me, 'We made a mistake. Before prison, no one knew you. We made you famous. We won't make this mistake for others."
A week ago last night, Kadivar and another theologian named Sahabi spoke to an audience of 2,000 in a religious centre in Tehran. "Sahabi criticised the president's economic, foreign and nuclear policies," Kadivar recounts. "I criticised the Supreme Leader and I said we wanted a real republic, not what we have now. We crossed all kinds of red lines, but both of us are free.
"The next day's newspapers reported that 'Kadivar supports the republic' and 'Sahabi defends Iran's right to nuclear energy'," Kadivar continues. "What he in fact said was: 'We have the right to nuclear energy, but we also have the right to free speech', but they left the second part out."
Kadivar says Iranian television, radio and newspapers are off limits to people like himself; they can say what they want to, but only in small gatherings. "It's their new strategy; I am sure of it," he says. "We are fewer than 10 persons in the whole country who are brave enough to speak out. All of us have been in prison."
Nor does Kadivar expect to keep his job as chairman of the philosophy department at Tarbiat Modares University. "Under Khatami, the deans and presidents of universities were elected by the professors," he explains. "Since Ahmadinejad came to office, they are appointed." Despite the limitations, Kadivar believes Iran is more democratic than any Arab Muslim state in the Middle East.
Shahla Lahiji, the director of Roshangaran Women Studies Publishing, says her work has become more difficult since Ahmadinejad's election. She has always had to present a final copy of every book to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance before publication, but 15 of her books have been blocked by the ministry since last August. She has received permission to publish three, and two were formally rejected.
Lahiji suspects the government is trying to drive her publishing house bankrupt. "It takes a lot of money and energy to provide them a final copy," she explains. "We plan our list a year in advance, and it's not easy to replace a title. If they give you no answer, what can you do? They don't want to shut us down; they want us to sink on our own, thanks to their policy."
Lahiji (64) spent two months in Evin prison in 2000, after criticising censorship at a conference in Berlin on "Iran in the Process of Democracy". "My judiciary file is not closed," she says. "Any time I do something 'wrong' - as I do all the time - they can reopen it."
Akbar Ganji, an Iranian journalist who also attended the Berlin conference, was recently released from six years in prison. Ganji had implicated high-ranking officials in political assassinations.
Ahmadinejad's government has so far avoided avoided outrages like the death under torture of the Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi in June 2003.
The new government doesn't harass women about "bad hijab", and the Western habits of the upper middle classes are tolerated, at least for the time being. "If you have no (political) activities, if you go to parties, the pool and sauna, you can have a happy life; they don't bother you," says Lahiji.
Theatre director Pari Saberi has worked in France, Italy and India, and won an award from Unesco last year. Ahmadinejad has replaced the directors of all government-run theatres, but since grandiose productions like hers have a one-year lead-time, she says it's too soon to tell what difference the change of regime will make.
Saberi claims she has never suffered any restrictions working in Iran. Her secret? Her plays are based on Iran's great lyrical, mystic and epic poets, average age between 600 and 1,000 years old.
"I don't want to talk about the political situation, because I want to work in Iran," Saberi explains. "Obviously, I couldn't produce a play against religion or the government. No one forced me to make this choice; I made it. Some people have a political mission. I have no political mission."