Here in the U.S., the most important amendment of the Bill of Rights includes the freedom of the press. The press keeps the government in check by informing the public, and the public holds the government accountable on Election Day. All in all, this is a pretty good arrangement in theory, and most of the time it works, for some values of works. However, this is not the case in all countries. There are countries where sunlight is not considered the best disinfectant, and the press is not free. The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of these countries, as National Public Radio freelancer Roxana Saberi has been learning over the past few months.
In February of this year, Iran announced that Saberi had been arrested for buying a bottle of wine, which is illegal under Iran's sharia religious legal system. She was later charged with working without press credentials. Her license to report the truth was revoked three years ago, but until this year, it apparently wasn't that big a deal.
Three weeks ago, though, it was announced that Saberi's secret trial had charged her with espionage, and sentenced her to eight years in prison. President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Senator Earl Pomeroy(D-ND), and the European Union Presidency have all issued calls for Saberi's release, as has the Council on American-Islamic Relations. However, Iran remains determined to continue its commitment to human rights failure. Last Sunday, Saberi celebrated her 32nd birthday in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran.
She hasn't been allowed to see a lawyer since March 8, she probably hasn't gotten a fair trial and her story has been underreported in the U.S.
It's a pretty safe bet that Saberi did not get a fair trial in Tehran; oppressive governments tend to bend the rules to put away enemies of the state such as Saberi. This is unacceptable. Other journalists who have been arrested in Iran's ongoing dragnet for dangerous outsiders include Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi and Kurdish journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kabodvand. Kazemi is now dead, killed by guards in the same prison where Saberi is now held. Sadly, judging by Evin Prison's track record, Saberi's chances of returning to the U.S. alive are slim to none, and Slim just left town.
Of course, there is always the off-chance that our president and all the diplomats at his disposal could do something about this travesty of justice. So far, all our leaders in Washington have done is make the expected noises of sympathy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed deep concern for Saberi's safety, and President Obama said he wasgravely concerned. With all due respect, that is a highly inadequate response - one expresses deep concern about the Cincinnati Bengals' draft picks this year, not whether or not an American journalist is being tortured in a dingy jail in the suburbs of Tehran.
At this point, it looks like Obama and Clinton intend to offer not only Saberi - but all the others that have died unjust deaths at the hand of the Iranian government - as a sacrifice to the Great God Kumbaya. If we don't do anything about Iran's rampant human rights abuse, even when it affects American citizens abroad, then maybe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will stop calling us theGreat Satan USA on his blog. If the lives of Americans and people from other countries is the price of a potential pie-in-the-sky peace deal, then the price is too high. I'm not calling for blood in the name of Roxana Saberi, I just want her and all the other people oppressed by the Ahmadinejad regime to be free. Now that's what I call change we can believe in.
4 Opinion
Jesse Hathaway
