Jennifer's Blog

Accus­ing three Amer­i­can hik­ers of espi­onage for stray­ing into Iran is the same as say­ing soc­cer moms that inad­ver­tently drive into the ‘hood are crack deal­ers. Moronic? Most def­i­nitely. But that isn’t help­ing Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley grad­u­ates Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31 and Joshua Fat­tal, 27. All were hik­ing until their vaca­tion ended abruptly on July 31 as offi­cials held them for enter­ing the coun­try ille­gally. Tehran’s lead pros­e­cu­tor charged them with espi­onage and they are await­ing sen­tenc­ing in Evin prison.

So we can prob­a­bly all con­cur that cross­ing a bor­der with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion is ille­gal. But what if that bor­der has no real demar­ca­tion? How would you know where the bor­der was if your map didn’t mark the spot? But prison? A night in jail maybe but gain­ing entry to Evin is no pic­nic. The prison is infa­mous for hold­ing polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, jour­nal­ists and blog­gers. Free­lance jour­nal­ist Rox­ana Saberi received an eight-year prison sen­tence before being released. One Iranian-Canadian pho­to­jour­nal­ist, Zahra Kazemi, died while in prison in 2003. What crime did she com­mit? Try tak­ing pho­tos out­side the prison.

Now, the White House along with Sec­re­tary of State, Hillary Clin­ton, is call­ing the charges base­less and ask­ing for a swift release so these young peo­ple can return to their fam­i­lies. The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has detained all three since July 31 of this year. Offi­cials claim that they warned the trio about cross­ing the bor­der before they entered north­ern Iran from Iraqi Kur­dis­tan but there is no way to ver­ify this since prison offi­cials have not allowed fam­ily nor coun­sel vis­i­ta­tion rights.

The State Depart­ment wel­comed Iran’s deci­sion to allow Swiss diplo­mats to meet with the Amer­i­cans who the Islamic Repub­lic detained since their arrest for ille­gal entry in late July. Swiss diplo­mats inter­vened and rep­re­sented US inter­ests since the US has no for­mal rela­tions with the Islamic Repub­lic. So far, the Swiss ambas­sador spent about 40 min­utes with the Amer­i­cans twice, bring­ing them food and clothing.

The hik­ers have effec­tively become polit­i­cal pawns like so many oth­ers held cap­tive abroad. While Bauer is a journalist/ pho­tog­ra­pher work­ing in Syria, Shroud is Bauer’s girl­friend and an Eng­lish teacher and Fat­tal trav­eled over­seas for a fel­low­ship pro­gram with the Inter­na­tional Hon­ors pro­gram. None fit the pro­file of a spy.

The world just wit­nessed a sim­i­lar inci­dent that made head­lines involv­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton. Con­sider the recent impris­on­ment of TV jour­nal­ists Euna Lee and Laura Ling by North Korea. The jour­nal­ists were work­ing on a doc­u­men­tary about North Korea’s traf­fick­ing of women to China for Cur­rent TV, a San Francisco-based tele­vi­sion chan­nel that for­mer vice pres­i­dent Al Gore co-founded.

The sit­u­a­tion began look­ing bleak for Lee and Ling when a North Korean court sen­tenced the jour­nal­ists to 12 years in a noto­ri­ously harsh, hard labor camp. Their fam­i­lies had not seen either in four and a half months, and at the time of their release, the jour­nal­ists thought their cap­tors were sum­mon­ing them to carry out their sen­tence. Instead, for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton requested their par­don, greeted them and met with the country’s ail­ing dic­ta­tor, Kim Jong Il where he apol­o­gized pro­fusely for their transgression.

Detain­ing Lee and Ling came at a time when the United States along with its allies had sought to per­suade North Korea to return to nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment talks, which they aban­doned in 2003 after with­draw­ing from the Nuclear No-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea con­ducted its sec­ond nuclear bomb test in May and has con­ducted sev­eral mis­sile tests since. The United Nations has responded to those tests by tight­en­ing and expand­ing sanc­tions on the nation. This sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar to what we face with Iran.

Both South Korea and Iran share the same nuclear arms threat that the UN is try­ing to dis­arm. On top of that, Iran is now using Israel as its biggest bar­gain­ing chip. Iran’s pres­i­dent, Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad, effec­tively snubbed US Pres­i­dent, Barak Obama’s offer to renew ties between Wash­ing­ton and Tehran at a press con­fer­ence in Istan­bul by indi­cat­ing a rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries is con­di­tional on the US aban­don­ing its sup­port for Israel. Ahmadine­jad has remained out­spo­ken about Israel remain­ing in the region and his dis­be­lief that the Holo­caust ever existed. Please!

While Ahmadine­jad seemed to waiver on whether the Amer­i­can hik­ers did any­thing ille­gal other than cross Iran’s unmarked bor­der, he has repeat­edly indi­cated that he would ask for max­i­mum leniency and see to a quick res­o­lu­tion to their case. One won­ders how lenient and quick since it is highly unlikely that the US would ever turn its back on Israel. Ahmadine­jad has rose to great pop­u­lar­ity in Arab nations by sup­port­ing the Pales­tin­ian cause and denounc­ing Israel. Those tac­tics may work in parts of the Mid­dle East but are bound to fail mis­er­ably with the rest of the world.

Hik­ers being forced to trade their vaca­tion for a prison cell also brings up other polit­i­cal pawns like Gilad Shalit. A Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist kid­napped Shalit on June 26, 2006. Israel is now work­ing on his release but the group hold­ing him in an undis­closed loca­tion con­tin­ues to change the terms of his release. In oth­er­words, Shalit is a prime exam­ple of how a group might use a detainee’s cap­ture in a sadis­tic chess game until the oppos­ing coun­try meets its demands.

It’s worth not­ing that accord­ing to the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, Iran has the world’s sixth worst record for jail­ing jour­nal­ists and detained or inves­ti­gated more than 30 in 2008. Like many detained by for­eign coun­tries, friends of the hik­ers have cre­ated a web­site to pub­li­cize their cap­ture and gain their release.

So where does this leave Bauer from Emeryville Cal­i­for­nia, Fat­tal of Cot­tage Grove, Ore­gon and Shourd of Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia? Only time will tell as so far Tehran’s Islamic gov­ern­ment has only let Swiss diplo­mats visit the three and rep­re­sent Amer­i­can inter­ests. If Ahmadine­jad really wants to nego­ti­ate sen­si­bly he will release the Amer­i­can hik­ers and start dis­cus­sions on an even play­ing field. Telling Obama that the US needs to ditch Israel is like Amer­ica telling Ahmadine­jad that Iran needs to toss the Pales­tini­ans. Nei­ther makes sense.

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, Bauer, clinton, fattal, Gilad Shalit, Gore, Holocaust, Iran, Kazemi, Lee, Ling, Obama, saberi, shourd

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Iran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.