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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Ahmadinejad orders NGO crackdown |
| 2006-01-15 |
| Iran's hardline Interior Ministry has decided to control and crackdown the NGOs by preparing a list of groups that it claims are planning to overthrow the Islamic regime. Conservative Qods daily has exposed a plan by the ministry to deal with Iranian NGOs. Based on Qod’s report, the Interior Ministry has accused some NGOs of misusing money, supporting members of the former government of Khatami and secretly communicating with foreign agents. During the last days of President Mohammad Khatami's reform government, Ashraf Boroujerdi, social affairs deputy at the Interior Ministry had stressed the existence of plans to fight NGOs and their so-called activities against Iran's national security. It seems that through the news regarding the interior ministry's list of NGOs, the fundamentalist and hardline government of Ahmadinejad is exposing its strategies aimed at slaughtering the NGOs. With 20 million votes, Khatami became the first president after the revolution who regularly and systematically emphasized on the establishment of a civil society in Iran. Eight years ago the media and political analysts took note of the call for the establishment and institutionalization of a civil society in Iran. In order to institutionalize the reform movement in Iran, Khatami's aides advised him to pay more attention to non-political and civil institutions and paved the way for the formation of NGOs that blossomed in Iran's short-live reform period. A Ministry of Interior official asserts that more than 10,000 active NGOs were established during Khatami's eight-year presidential term. During the last months of Khatami's government, the interference of semi-military and security shadow groups, prevented the activities of many NGOs while also intimidating activists through interrogations and even arrests. But things have come a long way and have changed drastically since the victory of the current hardline administration. Instead of strengthening the status of the NGO, some government officials today call for strengthening the religious and Islamic organizations. In the same light, the new government has shown a familiar intolerance towards the media and non-government political and student organizations, threatening them with closures and suspension of activity. A number of media editors too have expressed their concerns over the crackdown of NGOs and have called the pressures a plot to limit the free flow of information between Iranian institutions that operate in the global intellectual arena. This confrontational attitude and policies have raised the concerns of social activists as well. They believe these intuitions will form the foundations for social and civil justice, and eventually pave the way for people's participation to protect their rights and interests. Ahmadinejad's hard-line government does not believe in NGOs and prefers to provide the masses with ideology and rather than with modern organized organizations. The plot to crackdown such activities revealed itself when the government announced its plan to formally review the legal files of the NGOs. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Damm I feel sorry for everyone in Iran that on election day voted against Ahmandinejad. The clensin be a comin. Their screwed |
| Posted by: C-Low 2006-01-15 09:19 |