We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
We continue the program with playing a video clip that shows the Iranian national football team returning home from the World Cup.
We continue the program with talking to our special guest of every Thursday, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara, and begin with asking him about the ongoing protests of Iran’s bazaar merchants against the regime’s economic policies.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
Khamenei has said publicly that the Gonabdai Dervish Mohammad Salas who was execute last week deserved to die. Why do you think he has jumped into this debate?
Dr. Mohsen Sazegara:
Iran’s justice system suffers from three major problems. Firstly, it’s chief judge is appointed by the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and as such most of its courts are run by the stooges of Khamenei who are selected from the intelligence and security organs of the regime who only carry out his orders in their judgments and rulings. This makes the judiciary power of Iran the most corrupt and disastrous state apparatus.
The second problem is Iran’s backward laws like the Islamic punishments laws and criminal justice laws, none of which are anywhere near what we know of the civilized laws any human society.
The third problem is the domination of the clergy over the justice system whose understanding of the laws is limited to the Sharia edicts and fatwas of senior mullahs. Sharia is the personal interpretation of the Islamic laws and can never replace the secular and modern laws.
At the time of ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi as the chief judge, a French delegation of international lawyers visited Iran to help re-structure it’s judiciary. When they were leaving the country they told Mr. Soroush that from what they had seen, Iran does not have any laws at all!!
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
You are yourself the son of a bazaar merchant. What do you think is the message of the bazaar protestors?
Dr. Mohsen Sazegara:
The Iranian bazaars have always played two roles in our society. One is political, which has traditionally been associated with support for the clerical establishment, the other is economical. Their protests of recent days are a combination of these two roles.
However, since after the Islamic revolution the bazaar’s economic role has lost its clout as new centers of economic powers have mushroomed in Iran, which are under the control of Khamenei’s office and the Revolutionary Guard.
The Rouhani government does not have the power to confront the corruption as a source of the current economic crisis as the judiciary itself is a corrupt organ. You can see that instead of the government coming up with any solution or plan for the economic crisis, the head of the judiciary ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani has announced that bazaar protestors will be persecuted and imprisoned and even executed. The only “solution” that dictators have when they confront the wrath of the poor and hungry people.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
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