I will share an anecdote with you. You do not really remember, because you were not yet born at that time; but those who experienced it, know what kind of suffocation it was; it is impossible to imagine. In 1963 I was taken to the Ghezel Ghal’eh prison. At the same time, a few young Tehranis were brought in. I heard them from behind the cell, and I learned that they had just been arrested. I became a little happy; I thought, after some days, when the interrogations were over, there would be less pressure in the prison and I would have someone to talk to. At night, they were called and taken away one by one. An hour later, I started performing the Maghrib and Isha prayers. After the prayers, I heard a person sliding the small window on the door open, saying: “Sir! I’m back.” He was one of the young people. I invited him in. He opened the door and entered the cell. I asked: “Why did you come back soon?” He explained that they were arrested while they were in a mosque, listening to the speech of the martyr Bahonar. In 1963, during the Ramadan, Martyr Bahonar was giving a talk in Tehran's great mosque, when the Pahlavi regime’s intelligence agents [SAVAK] came in and arrested some of the participants, including the five young men I saw, with no clear reason. They also arrested Martyr Bahonar at the same time and took him to the Ghezel Ghaleh prison. When these young men were interrogated, it was revealed that they were not political activists, so they were let free. However, when the contents of their pockets were investigated, a note was found in the pocket of this young man who was taken back to prison. On a page of that agenda, was written a folks poem with a bad handwriting:
Say all, young or elderly/ May God curse Reza Shah, the great!
He had not chanted any slogans. He had not published or spread this poem. He had only written this poem in his pocket calendar. For this crime, he was sentenced to six months of confinement.
People were not accused only if they chanted slogans, or if they expressed their opinion in public gatherings. In 1971, I was giving a course on Quran interpretation to a number of university students in Mashhad. At the beginning of Surah al-Baqarah, I was interpreting the stories of the Children of Israel. I was called to SAVAK and asked: “Why do you talk about the children of Israel?” I said “It is a part of the Qur'an; I interpret a Surah of the Qur'an.” They said: “This is insulting to ‘Israel’!” My class on the interpretation of the Quran was closed because of the interpretation of the ayahs about Bani-Israel-- because the name of Israel was there.
The suppression, the suffocation was extreme [during the Pahlavi regime]. However, the Pahlavi regime was never accused of countering freedom or democracy by the governments of the U.S., France or elsewhere.
At that time, elections were held in Iran, but the people did not understand at all who was elected and who was not. There was no real election; a ballot box was shown to the public, but the candidate they wanted and had been confirmed by the royal family was announced as elected. By doing so, they presented a ridiculous case of voting. Even today, in some countries in our region, the same can be noticed, but they are never criticized. Nevertheless, the Islamic Iran, which has organized about twenty-five elections over twenty-six years, is again accused of not having democracy, of having an appointment and no election! So the first point is that Western experience does not work.
Statements during a meeting with university students in Kerman
May 9, 2005
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