Chechens need justice in Grozny, not in Strasbourg

The defendant could not have spoken more bluntly.
Not only did he not withdraw his accusations, but also he reiterated them.
The current situation in the Chechen Republic, where horrendous crimes violating human rights go systematically unpunished, has given me every basis for believing in the unconditional political guilt of Ramzan Kadyrov in the death of Natalya Estemirova, declared the unrepentant Mr. Orlov, head of the Russian human rights organization Memorial.
Natalya Estemirova, a prominent campaigner investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya, was murdered last July.
No one has been arrested or charged in the case.
Shortly after the murder, Mr. Orlov had accused the Chechen president of being responsible for the crime. Mr. Kadyrov sued the director of Memorial for slander, and is demanding $300,000 in damages. Kadyrov characterized the organization as one created for the destruction of Russia.
The trial opened yesterday in Moscow.
Though it does not make him a murderer, it is clear, nevertheless, that Kadyrov had nothing but contempt for the late human rights activist. She never had any honor or sense of shame, he said in an interview with RFE/RL. She would say stupid things, he added.
Interestingly, he concluded his remarks on Estemirova with the following: so why am I to blame? Let the investigators conduct their work. If Kadyrov or his people are to blame, let them be tried and jailed, as if challenging the international community to produce the evidence that he did indeed kill, or organize the murder of, Natalya Estemirova, and prosecute him.
Officially, he blamed Islamic militants supported and manipulated by the West (and in particular, the US and Britain) for the murder, and the unrest in the North Caucasus.
Ramzan Kadyrov, president of Chechnya since 2004 (he replaced his father Akhmal Kadyrov, a former rebel, after the latter’s assassination) had gradually restored order in the troubled republic, and succeeded in rebuilding the capital Grozny, severely damaged by years of fighting and Russian military assaults to quell the Islamic rebellion in the republic.
Yet, at what price?
The young president has long been accused of achieving his aims through violence, abductions and extra-judicial killings of suspected militants.
Hence, as one Grozny resident told the journalist Gregory Feifer, of Radio Free Europe, fear still permeates Chechnya. The only people who aren't afraid are the ones who either don't know anything or never go out, she said. We're frightened for our loved ones, for you, for ourselves. The fear is always there.
One other resident interviewed added: no one here is going to talk to you about politics. It's just like Stalin's time, he said.
For Kadyrov, the situation in Chechnya is evolving quite favorably, and human rights are more under threat in the West than anywhere else: the wildest violence in the world takes place in the West. People are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Palestinians are being killed. Human rights are being completely violated. There are concentration camps and there's no individual freedom [in the West]. If someone says the wrong thing, he's an enemy, he told RFE/RL.
In addition, he added: we have complete democracy in that regard in Chechnya -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Anyone can adopt any religion here.
Yet, in spite of Kadyrov’s efforts, and the unlawful, state-sponsored exactions, notwithstanding, violence is on the rise in the republic
In August, less than a month after the Estimirova assassination, two other human rights workers were murdered.
Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, who directed a charity organization, Save the Generations, that provided aid and support to children victim of the Chechen conflict (financed in the past by both UNICEF, and the European Commission), were found dead in the trunk of their car in a Grozny suburb.
The couple, forced to leave the office of their organization by a number of men, some in black uniforms, others in civilian clothes, were shot dead.
Since they were not prominent activists, it was not altogether clear why they were abducted and murdered. Perhaps they were targeted because of Mr. Dzhabrailov’s past: he had been previously imprisoned, accused of links to the Islamic insurgency.
Furthermore, after a lull lasting several years, a number of suicide bombings have struck the republic.
On August 25th, a suicide bomber killed four police officers in the village of Mesker-Yurt.
The preceding week, two suicide bombers riding bicycles killed four police officers in Grozny.
On September 16th, another bomber, reportedly a woman, wounded six police officers on Putin Avenue (named in honor of the former Russian president, and current prime minister), the capital’s most prominent.
Sine July, six suicide bombings have occurred, killing twelve people.
Kadyrov denied that there was anything to worry about: there are explosions. But there are explosions in London, in America -- explosions everywhere, he said.
What should worry MM. Medvedev and Putin (the prime minister flew on August 24th to Grozny in a visible affirmation of support for Mr. Kadyrov) is that the violence is spreading throughout the region, including the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (cited by the NYT),
436 people were killed in the region between June and August this summer, compared to 150 last year. The number of attacks has increased as well.
In Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia, a truck bomb struck the police headquarters, killing 25 people, and wounding 280 on August 17th .
In June, Yunus-Bek Yevkuro, the Ingush president, barely survived an assassination attempt, when his motorcade was targeted by a car bomb.
The tactics employed by the Russians to try to put an end to the violence have been the same as in the past, unfortunately. Indeed, the security forces have responded harshly, thus fueling the rebellion.
According to Mashr, a Russian human rights organization, 210 people have already been abducted and killed, nearly as much as all of last year (212), when the figure had already doubled!
Since the Russians began intervening in Ingushetia, in 2002, some 1,000 people have been found dead.
Contrary to what Russian authorities claim, the violence, for the most part, is not the work of Islamic fanatics with ties to international terrorist organizations.
Osama Basairov, of Memorial, told The Observer: in our investigations we question everybody we possibly can who is connected to the murdered or disappeared, and in just about all the cases we find they are innocent people in no way connected to the rebels. It is this killing of innocents that is driving more and more men into the woods to join the war.
Mashr, for its part, is holding the FSB (the post-Soviet KGB) responsible for the rise in violence and the number of victims.
It appears more and more obvious that repression, the Kadyrov method, to restore and maintain order is no longer adequate and is failing.
Yet, will Mr. Medvedev, or Mr. Putin, or both, have the courage to change course?
Will Medvedev have the authority to do so even if that is his intention?
In any case, a civilized society simply cannot resort to violence, exactions and extra-judicial killings to resolve what is primarily a political problem: the rights, and aspirations of the people of the Caucasus must be recognized, and their yearning for justice satisfied.
Until that happens, there will be no end to the unrest.
Only when their grievances have been addressed can extremism be then effectively confronted.
In the meantime, Chechens are seeking justice elsewhere, since the Russians refuse to be held accountable for what is happening on their soil.
Since no redress has been possible in Russian courts, Chechens have appealed instead to the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France.
Last Thursday, the court ordered Russia to pay EUR 90,000 as compensation to the families of two Chechens who disappeared in 2002 and 2003.
According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Strasbourg court said Russia failed to provide it with the required documentation concerning the cases. The court also said the kidnappers were members of Russia’s security services, and ruled that the Russian authorities were guilty of the deaths of the missing people.
In 2008 alone, the court ruled 245 times against Russia.
This is a start, and no doubt a source of solace to the Chechens.
However, it is in Grozny and Moscow that they should be finding justice, and not in Strasbourg…
In essence, until the need for justice is taken seriously in Moscow, violence will flourish in the Caucasus…
(the photograph, of the police headquarters in Nazran after the August 17th attack was found here)
　
　
　
　
　

Israel's wasted opportunity

If no serious debate concerning Israel’s conduct during last Winter’s Operation Cast Lead is to take place in the country, it is all Mr. Goldstone’s fault, according to David Landau (The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity).
The report issued by the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict so offended the Israelis that nothing or no one can now induce them to revisit the important issues that the report, and the conflict raised, and first and foremost: how does the modern, efficient army of a democratic state, possessing the most technologically advanced weapons confront the militants of a resistance movement devoid of but the crudest of weaponry, in a densely populated urban setting?
According to Mr. Landau, the report could have stirred the conscience of the nation.
The fact that it shall not is Mr. Goldstone’s sole responsibility.
One would have thought that a twenty-two day onslaught on the Gaza Strip, whose borders were sealed by Israel, which destroyed entire neighborhoods, and killed some 1,400 Palestinians, a third of them children, would already have achieved that awakening.
Apparently not, and now Mr. Goldstone, who happens to be Jewish himself, and his report are to blame if that essential national debate that should have taken place does not…
As a democratic and civilized nation, whose army never lacks an opportunity to describe itself as the most moral in the word, Israel should not need to be coaxed or bullied into initiating that debate.
Mr. Ragev, the prime minister’s spokesman, recently told the world that Israel was conducting its own enquiries, a thousand times more serious than the UN’s.
What conclusions did these enquiries, conducted by the IDF (that is to say, the IDF was asked to assess the conduct of…the IDF), draw?
Apparently, none, other than Israel’s Defense Forces rigorously respected the laws of war, and their own strict code of ethics.
Mr. Landau takes exception to the mission’s conclusion, namely that it considers the (military operation’s ) plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.
Considering that Israel has been imposing a blockade on Gaza since 2007 in order to punish the Gazans for having democratically elected Hamas to govern the area, it is not altogether surprising that so many civilians died in the onslaught.
This form of collective punishment, a violation of the Geneva Convention and of international law, is still rigorously imposed, such that the Israelis have even prevented the Gazans from rebuilding all that the IDF so thoroughly destroyed in twenty-two days of bombing, including civilian infrastructure and thousands of homes.
Whereas more than four hundred products were allowed into the territory before the blockade, only thirty-two are now authorized, principally only food and medicine.
Everything else is prohibited, so as not to benefit Hamas.
Only last week, a request to allow the importation of clothes, shoes and candy for the celebration of the Eid al Fitr festival marking the end of the Ramadan was denied by the Israeli authorities.
Israel’s conflict with Hamas spares no one in time of peace.
Why should it spare anyone in time of war?
Furthermore, overwhelming force, inevitably producing unacceptably high casualty figures, is part and parcel of Israeli military doctrine.
Daniel Levy (Israel must now heal itself) referred to it as the Dahiya doctrine.
Dahiya is a Beirut, pro Hizbullah suburb that was flattened by the IDF during the 2006 war with Lebanon (incidentally, over 1,100 Lebanese civilians were killed in that conflict).
The UN report quotes a senior military official as having stated the following:
what happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on … we apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there … This is a plan, and it has been approved.
Levy’s conclusion: Israel applied the Dahiya doctrine in Gaza.
Considering the Israeli approach- collective punishment on the Gazans, and a military doctrine emphasizing the use of overwhelming force,- should any one be surprised by the extent of the destruction and loss of innocent life? As Uri Avnery points out (War Crimes Denial), the casualty ratio was 200 to one…
Consequently, should Mr. Landau be surprised that many observers indeed concluded that the Israelis went after civilians?
In essence, the idea was to teach Hamas and the Gazans a lesson they will never forget, in Mr. Avnery’s words.
Lambasting the report, and impugning the character of Mr. Goldstone or the credentials of the UN Human Rights Council (of which the US is a member) and which commissioned the report, is a waste of time.
It must be emphasized that there would have been no commission to begin with had Israel launched a rigorous, independent enquiry of its own.
It steadfastly refused to do so, and when the UN intervened, Israel refused to cooperate with the UN mission. Mr. Goldstone’s commission was barred from entering Israel and could only access Gaza through Egypt.
Israel, therefore, has only itself to blame if it feels that the report does not sufficiently take into account its point of view.
So, there will be no national introspection, and no investigation.
Nine Israeli human rights organizations requested that such an investigation take place, but were rebuffed.
Why?
Is it because, according to Uri Avnery, they knew that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusion it (UN Goldstone commission) did reach?
It is not too late…
Let the Israelis confound all those who claim that they dare not investigate the doings of the IDF because they fear the results, and that Pandora’s box would then be opened, and the nation’s attitude towards the Palestinians would need to be reexamined?
Would that be such a negative development?
Only authoritarian regimes fear the truth.
Democracies are strengthened and vivified by it…
Israel has six months to decide…
Then, if the situation has not evolved, the matter will be referred to the UN Security Council for deliberation.
Is that truly what Israel wants?
A democratic society cannot long afford to turn its back on inconvenient, corrosive truths, if it hopes to remain one.
(the photograph of the child in front of the ruins of Gaza can be found here)

This is worth it

Wielding chains, they charged the crowd in the late afternoon.
The Basijis and paramilitaries were determined to clear the streets of all opposition demonstrators.
Yet, some refused to budge, and instead retaliated, throwing bricks, stones, and in some cases, punches: people seemed less fearful compared to previous demonstrations, one protester said. This time, they were fighting back.
The confrontation lasted well into the evening, until finally, an abundant use of tear gas drove away the most recalcitrant participants.
The security forces arrested some 35 people in Tehran, for vandalizing public property…
Interestingly, the regular police did not intervene against the anti-government demonstrators, and at times, even shielded them from attack!
Some police officers actually encouraged the protesters: come on, don't be afraid, one policeman told a demonstrator. Be brave. We die once, and this is worth it.
Quds Day (Quds being Jerusalem in Arabic) is an annual event organized by the authorities designed to show the Iranian nation’s support for the Palestinian cause.
It takes place the last Friday of the Ramadan, the four-week period during which all practicing Muslims fast, and was established in 1979, by Ayatollah Khomeini himself.
This year, the opposition forces led by Mir-Hussein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and former president Mohammad Khatami infiltrated the official ceremonies in order to demonstrate against the regime and president Ahmadinejad, who was fraudulently reelected last June.
The authorities, fearing the possibility that large crowds would attend and disrupt official proceedings had issued dire warnings in the days leading up to the event:
This nation's brave children who are in the security bodies and the police, or in the Revolutionary Guards or the Basij (are ready) to confront firmly any deviation, and anti-revolutionary ... moves, the Revolutionary Guards told the news agency IRNA.
In addition, to ensure that the opposition would have no official platform on this day, the speaker who was to deliver the sermon at Friday prayers, and who had done so on Quds Day for the past twenty-five years, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a Mousavi supporter, was replaced by Ahmad Khatami, a conservative cleric close to the president.
Yet, the opposition was not without backing from the clerical establishment. Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, attended, explicitly indicating why: Quds Day is international; it is not exclusive to Quds, he said. It is a day for the oppressed to resist against the oppressors.
Hence, the opposition and their supporters transformed the event: no longer just a manifestation of support for the Palestinians, it was also an opportunity to denounce all oppressive governments, including their own.
The Green movement demonstrators initially gathered that morning at Seventh of Tir Square, and made their way toward Tehran University where the Friday prayers were to be held, followed by a speech by Ahmadinejad.
Though subdued at first, as the crowd grew larger it became more exuberant.
Access to the campus was blocked by a ring of public buses, and paramilitaries ensured that no Green trouble makers penetrated in the restricted area.
Mohammad Khatami participating with other demonstrators near Palestine Square, in the vicinity of Tehran University, was assaulted by a group of thugs led by Abolfazl Shriatmadari, whose father is the editor of Kayhan, a pro-government newspaper close to the security apparatus. Protected by the demonstrators, he was quickly taken away to safety.
Mousavi himself was attacked by another pro-government mob at another demonstration, and had to be swiftly driven away from the scene.
Mehdi Karroubi was also present on Friday, and similarly protected by fellow-demonstrators, was not harmed.
Pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrators also marched in large numbers (many were driven to the capital in buses, according to The New York Times) , near the Mousavi supporters clad in Green, the color of the opposition, who flashed V-for-victory signs with their fingers, and vociferously chanted slogans such as death to the dictator, not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’ll die for Iran, and, prior to Ahmadinejad’s speech, liar, liar, and get lost liar.
Even as Ahmadinejad was giving an interview to Iranian television, IRIB’s Channel Two, opposition slogans could be heard in the background, such as Ahmadi, Ahmadi, resign ,resign. As a result, the president quickly put an end to it.
During his vile speech, Ahmadinejad once again displayed his rabid anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel: the existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to human dignity, he said. They just try to support the myth of the Holocaust and at same time they hoist the flag of supporting the Jews.
What were Ahmadinejad’s intentions?
What can he possibly gain by making such ignorant and despicable statements?
Perhaps he deliberately cultivates contempt from abroad, and particularly the West, to spur a nationalist reaction at home, and thus, support for the regime.
In any event, he only further tarnished what was left of his reputation around the world, and countless Iranians were no doubt cringing with shame after the speech.
Furthermore, many in the opposition crowd were not the least interested in his anti-Semitic rants: we are unable to make ends meet as the prices go up and up. Who cares about Israel? 'Down with Israel' does not make jobs for our youths or grow our money, one old man told The Los Angeles Times.
How many opposition demonstrators attended the event?
Over 100,000, and tough they were outnumbered-the regime had done its utmost to mobilize its supporters- the opposition stole the day, to quote The Los Angeles Times.
Equally significant was the fact that opposition demonstrators took to the streets of many other Iranian cities, including Shiraz, Tabriz, Mashhad, Qom and Kermanshah.
The Green movement is obviously still alive and well: I did not expect such a huge number of young people, one student told the LAT. We asserted ourselves and changed the agenda of the day.
The opposition’s grievances not having been addressed, the confrontation continues.
In spite of the Revolutionary Guards’ threats, thousands and thousands of Iranians bravely marched in the streets to vent their anger at their votes being ignored, and demands for justice and democracy dismissed.
And a special tribute must be paid to the fearless women of Iran: the protesters' daring stunned some observers. At one point Friday, a tall woman holding a green balloon flashed the opposition's signature "V" sign with her fingers as she walked nonchalantly past a sidewalk packed with pro-government rally attendees, wrote the LAT.
It will not be easy for the regime to remain oblivious to the demands of people as courageous and determined as this demonstrator was…
That very evening, Green supporters disrupted another event televised across the nation.
The coverage of the soccer game pitting Estghlal against Steel Azin was interrupted, as, in the stadium filled to capacity at 70,000, Moussavi supporters wearing green were clearly heard chanting anti-government slogans. The coverage resumed but in black and white and without sound, before being interrupted again.
The game was finally broadcast, though not live: there was still no sound, and no crowd scenes were shown, only action on the field…
The day’s events clearly indicated that the Green movement has not lost its stamina, will not bow to pressure, intimidation, arrest and abuse…
Further unrest could be only days away …
On the 23rd of September, the nation’s universities reopen for the Fall term…
(the photograph is by Caren Firouz, Reuters)　

The perpetrators must be held to account

No!
That was the Israeli response to one of the main recommendations issued by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, its twenty-two day onslaught on Gaza last winter.
The Goldstone report took issue with the conduct of both Hamas and Israel during the conflict, and urged both to investigate, in a serious and thorough manner, what it identified as potential violations of international law, some of which may be deemed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
If they fail to expeditiously take up the issue, then the president of the commission Richard Goldstone will refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.
No!
So replied the attorney general of Israel to a demand this time formulated by nine Israeli human rights organizations that he establish an independent commission to investigate potential violations of international law by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces).
The IDF answer to no one but themselves, it seems…
They are conducting their own enquiries, a thousand times more serious than the UN investigation, claimed Marc Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister.
Clearly, the IDF require neither assistance, nor advice.
Should the Israelis really entrust an investigation into an institution’s ethical conduct to that very institution? How reliable and objective can we expect such a process to be?
But that is an irrelevant question, no doubt…
The UN report is useless because it is fatally biased, and one-sided, according to Israel.
The Israeli president, Shimon Peres, called it a mockery of history. Apparently, it was nothing but a petty political exercise designed to embarrass Israel.
According to Asa Kasher, a professor of ethics at Tel Aviv University, who devised the IDF’s code of ethics, politics also play a significant role here, since this report was commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that unfairly deals mostly with Israel. These are anti-Israel politics that contain a level of anti-Semitism in them, he said.
Anti-Semitism?
The ultimate accusation, designed to discredit and disqualify anyone criticizing Israel (no matter how warranted the criticism may be) reappeared in the debate, presumably to clinch the argument, and end the discussion there and then…
Yet, judge Goldstone stood by his report.
If he accepted the mission, he wrote in an article in the New York Times , it was, above all, for the following reason: I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.
Contrary to what the Israeli foreign ministry claims, the commission’s objective was not to ignore Israel’s right of self-defense.
Israel’s right to defend itself is not the issue here.
Israel, as does every other nation, possesses this right.
But, simply put, it is Israel’s responsibility, both moral and legal, to defend its people in a civilized, appropriate, and proportionate manner…
That is all anyone is asking…
Who, in fact, challenges Israel’s democratic values and rule of law, to quote once again the foreign ministry, if not Israel’s own conduct?
Laws apply even in time of war, and no one has the right to ignore them, not even Israel. Absolute faith in the legitimacy of your cause does not justify the use of overwhelming force against a population without the means to defend itself.
What did the Goldstone commission find?
Israel should have refrained from attacking clearly civilian buildings, and from actions that might have resulted in a military advantage but at the cost of too many civilian lives. In these cases, Israel must investigate, and Hamas is obliged to do the same. They must examine what happened and appropriately punish any soldier or commander found to have violated the law, Goldstone wrote in his article.
This is not how civilized societies conduct themselves! They do not dispose of human lives so recklessly, particularly those of civilians, of women and children…
It must be said, unequivocally, that nothing, absolutely nothing will ever justify the use of missiles by Hamas to terrorize entire Israeli neighborhoods.
We do not expect much from Hamas, for it has never displayed a clear commitment to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It is a resistance movement that has never hesitated to resort to terrorism when it considered it necessary.
But, unlike the Gaza of Hamas, Israel is a democratic state.
As such, it is morally bound to investigate these violations of the laws of war, of morality itself.
If it has only contempt for its own laws, for international law, and for simple justice, what kind of democratic state is it?
Yet, as far as Israel is concerned, only Hamas is to blame. If civilians were killed, Hamas is solely responsible: what is a civilian? wonders Gerald Steinberg, of Bar-Ilan University. They used to be people who don’t wear uniforms and are outside the military. But if you have Gaza or Southern Lebanese guerrilla forces who don’t wear uniforms, who are illegal combatants, when is it a legitimate target?
Since the militants wear civilian garb, and live and operate in dense urban areas, it is difficult to identify them, argue the IDF. Considering that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, (4,118/sq km; for LA, it is 3,168) one can only wonder where the militants are expected to go, all the more so as Israel has sealed the borders, so that no one can enter the strip or leave it. That is another reason why there were so many casualties: the Gazans had nowhere to flee…
A simple solution was found to the quandary: all civilians became legitimate targets (how else are we to explain the fact that, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, 1387 Palestinians were killed, 773 of which were civilians, and 330 combatants. Among the dead were 320 minors), because they are either militants or, in all likelihood, sympathizers, for why else would they have been in the IDF’s sights?
Must we remind them that it is not because it is difficult to identify the militants in any given theatre of operation that they should be dispensed from even trying to do so!
It is the ethical responsibility of the IDF, all the more so as it prides itself upon being the most moral army in the world, to attack only combatants.
The directive given to the IDF should have been the following: when in doubt, do not fire…Alas, those instructions were clearly never given or never followed…The casualty figures speak for themselves.
Yet, the IDF sees nothing untoward, here: I do not see in any of the reports a reason to change the values or ethics of the IDF or the military's doctrine, which places an emphasis on the value of life, professor Kasher said. I also have no doubt that the claims of deliberate and disproportional killing are baseless. If they weren't, and IDF troops shot deliberately at innocent Palestinians, then there should have been thousands of dead Palestinians. If the IDF killed freely then the dead should be half women and half men like the population in Gaza. The fact is that the IDF did not do this.
Where was this emphasis on the value of life during the onslaught last winter? 320 children were killed!! What became of these vaunted values and ethics? How do they account for this figure?
Collateral damage, evidently….They have no doubts, no regrets, they see nothing amiss in their conduct! They are quite satisfied with themselves and their war…..
The IDF’s enquiries will lead nowhere, except to their complete exoneration…
The matter will perhaps be referred to the International Criminal Court, but since Israel does not recognize the court, it has no jurisdiction. What is left of Israel’s reputation would suffer, but no one would risk prosecution.
Those seeking justice will have to look elsewhere.
In certain European countries such as the UK, private individuals can sue a foreign nation. An expert in international law, Dr. Robbie Sabel told Ynet: the report can be used as ammunition against Israel, since the legal establishment does not interfere in the process of filing complaints, leaving their validity for the case judge to decide.
As such, Israel may have to answer one day for the crimes committed in Gaza: the Goldstone report is highly unusual, since it states Israel's inquests into the operation were unworthy. The bottom line is that this report brings us one step closer to seeing foreign courts hear war crimes cases involving Israeli officials, indicated Michael Sefard, an Israeli human rights lawyer.
It should not have come to this.
Had Israeli acted responsibly, were it now willing to act in accordance with its own professed values, the issue would be under review in Israeli courts….
It may rue the day that it made the decision to precipitously close the case…
the report may prompt Western countries to detain and try Israeli officers and officials. The UN Security Council can delegate the ICC to launch an official probe, but the US' veto power renders that unlikely as well, Sefarad added. A true, comprehensive investigation of the operation and the allegations of war crimes by Israel and the IDF, could have prevented any international proceedings.
Let us hope that someone in Europe will have the courage to seek justice on behalf of a people who have long been denied it, and that Israel, at last will have to justify its conduct in a court of law.
It is vital that it be held accountable, for the protection of civilians in future conflicts depends on it…..
If civilians can be slaughtered in all impunity, than no one is safe anywhere.
What then, would remain of the concepts of justice, and international law?
Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account, wrote Richard Goldstone in the New York Times….
May the judge successfully carry out his noble mission…

(the photograph is by AP)

That hapless land called Gaza

What was there to investigate?
It was a war of self-defense, one imposed on the Israeli nation by the enemy, Hamas.
So, and from the outset, they refused to cooperate.
As a result, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict was barred from entering Israel, and prohibited from entering Gaza through the state of Israel. It had to enter Gaza through Egypt.
Israel witnesses were compelled to fly to Geneva in order to testify before the investigating committee…
According to a report issued yesterday by the mission however, the assault on Gaza that began on December 22nd, 2008, and lasted twenty-two days amounted to a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.
The investigation, far from comprehensive, examined 36 incidents it considered representative of the way the conflict was waged by the IDF.
Of particular interest was the death of 22 members of the Samouni family. Instructed by the IDF to find refuge in a house in Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, the building was then shelled by Israeli forces.
In addition, the mission identified at least seven instances in which Palestinian civilians waving white flags were shot as they were leaving their homes.
Also, the report described an attack on the Gaza City al-Quds hospital as direct and intentional.
The Israelis regularly accused Hamas of hiding militants and weapons in mosques. As such, it targeted the Maqadmah mosque one evening, and killed fifteen people.
Instead of bombing the building at night, when no one would have been present, the IDF chose to do so during evening prayers, attended by some 300 worshippers!
The fact that no secondary explosions occurred suggests that the mosque was not, in fact, a weapons cache.
The report, furthermore, denounces the attack on the principle warehouse of the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which was then harboring some 700 refugees, and contained a major fuel depot. The building was struck by up to ten shells, some of which contained white phosphorus, and whose use is illegal in urban, populated settings. The report characterized Israel’s use of this weapon as systematically reckless.
The mission also examined the current status of Gaza, and described the blockade currently imposed (which prohibits the entry of all but humanitarian goods such as food and medicine) as collective punishment, a violation of the Geneva Convention. It concluded that the series of acts that deprive Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing ... could lead a competent court to find the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been committed.
What was Israel’s reaction to the report?
Considering it had done its utmost to prevent the mission from expeditiously completing its work, it was predictable.
The Israelis accused the mission and its president, Richard Goldstone, a respected South African judge who played a key role in investigating political violence in his homeland in the early 1990s and was chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and who happens to be Jewish, of bias.
Israel considers that the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned the report, lacks the necessary credibility to undertake such an investigation.
An official Israeli spokesman, Mark Regev declared: it (the report) was born in sin. Countries with atrocious human rights records sit there and criticize Israel. It's not just Israel that criticized the Human Rights Council. Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon have criticized its obsession with Israel.
Yet, the report also condemns Hamas’ conduct during the conflict. It characterizes the launching of rockets on Israeli neighborhoods as a war crime. Since 2001, Hamas and other Islamic militants have fired over 8000 rockets on Israel. During the Gaza war, four Israeli were killed (including three civilians) by the missile attacks.
Mr. Goldstone, for his part, defended the commission’s work and emphasized that there should be no impunity for international crimes that are committed. It's very important that justice should be done.
Furthermore, he added, it is grossly wrong to label a mission or to label a report critical of Israel as being anti-Israel. That, however, is precisely what is happening…
Just how many Gazans were killed during the assault?
The various parties cannot even agree on that…
According to the Israeli government, 1166 Palestinians were killed, 89 of which were under the age of 16. The majority, 60%, were Hamas militants. Israel considers anyone remotely connected to Hamas or the Hamas government as a legitimate target.
The authorities did not reveal their sources, but it must be said that they compiled their figures without having access to the survivors, or the victims’ families on the ground in Gaza.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (In the Image) reached different conclusions. The organization could rely on two members in Gaza, even though the IDF prevented all outsiders from penetrating into the strip.
According to its research, 1387 Gazans were killed, 320 of which were under 18.
Only 19 of the latter were found by the organization to have been combatants.
B’Tselem found that 773 civilians (55%) were among the dead. The 248 policemen killed were classified as neither civilians nor combatants.
The organization has sent evidence concerning the most egregious cases directly to the IDF prosecutor. It concluded that the extremely heavy civilian casualties and the massive damage to civilian property require serious introspection on the part of Israeli society.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights found that 1419 Gazans were killed, 252 of which were combatants. Children accounted for 318 of these casualties.
Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician, and an outspoken critic of Israel, who was present during the conflict claimed that among the patients killed and injured at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical facility, 80 to 90 percent we saw were civilians.
Attacks on NGOs and the UN on the part of the Israeli government have intensified of late, all the more so as the Netanyahu government was expecting the IDF to be taken to task by the Goldstone commission.
The authorities and an Israeli NGO, NGO Monitor, have repeatedly accused organizations such as B’Tselem, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of
systematic anti-Israeli bias in their work.
The fact that some pro-Israeli bloggers discovered that a prominent HRW researcher, Marc Garlasco, collected WWII German military memorabilia further diminished that organization’s credibility in the eyes of many Israelis…
And yet, the facts are there, they speak for themselves, and the Garlasco diversion notwithstanding , they must be addressed.
The report will be officially presented to the Human Rights Council on September 29th.
It will then decide whether or not to send it to the Security Council if it considers further action is warranted.
The International Criminal Court will have no role to play, as it is not recognized by Israel…
Yet, justice must not forever be barred from the land of Palestine…
That gross acts of injustice were committed by the IDF in its onslaught on Gaza is obvious to any one with even a pedestrian interest in the issue.
That some attacks may qualify as war crimes is equally obvious….
That the Israelis, who like to remind the rest of the world that their nation is the only democracy in the region and that they share our western values, have not the slightest inclination to investigate these blatant violations of the laws of war, and of morality itself, is deeply disappointing…
It behooves us in Europe and the United States to do all we can to make them reconsider so, that, at last, justice may finally visit that hapless land called Gaza…

(the photograph can be found here)
　
　
　
　
　

C'est le siècle chien-loup qui sur moi s'est jeté

Depuis qu’il est rentré d’un voyage en Crimée, voici quelques mois, nous sommes alors en 1934, le grand poète Russe Ossip Mandelstam aime cité ce vers de l’un de ses anciens poèmes: Oh, j’aimerai tant entrer dans la danse, causer sans frein, articuler la vérité (p.17).
En effet, ce voyage fut une révélation. C’est alors qu’il prît pleinement conscience des conséquences tragiques et criminelles de la politique Stalinienne de la collectivisation forcée des campagnes: famine, déportations des Koulaks, exode de millions de paysans vers les villes…Combien d’êtres humains périrent alors, trois, quatre, dix millions?
Ainsi, au début du beau livre de Robert Littel , L’hirondelle avant l’orage (The Stalin Epigram), le poète se trouve à un tournant dans son existence, aussi bien en tant qu’homme que poète, même si le second est indissociable du premier.
D’ailleurs, lorsqu’il est appelé à décliner son identité, il se présente toujours ainsi: Je suis le poète Ossip Mandelstam…
Il a donc pris conscience de ce qu’était le communisme dans sa variante Stalinienne, et ne peut tout bonnement plus faire preuve de complaisance à son égard. Comme le précise la narratrice du premier chapitre, Nadejda Yakovlevna, son épouse, Mandelstam ne mâchait plus ses mots (p.17)….
Chaque chapitre aura son narrateur. Ainsi, se succéderont Nadejda, Vlassik, le garde du corps de Staline; Fikrit Shotman, ancien champion d’haltérophilie; Anna Andreïevna Akhmatova, poétesse reconnue, et amie des Mandelstam et de Pasternak; Boris Pasternak; l’actrice ami d’Ossip, Zinaïda Zaitseva-Antonova, et le poète lui-même.
Staline amorcera également un virage déterminant au cours de cette année 1934.
En effet, il saisira comme prétexte l’assassinat de Sergeï Kirov, le chef du parti à Leningrad, pour engager une politique de répression massive qui ne prendra fin que cinq ans plus tard…
Les grandes purges auront pour objectif d’éliminer toute opposition, réelle ou potentielle, dans le parti, l’armée, ainsi que dans la société toute entière.
Cette vague emportera tous les dirigeants historiques de l’URSS, les Bolcheviks, à l’exception de Staline lui-même: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Boukharine seront exécutés.
Trotski, expulsé du pays, réfugié au Mexique, sera assassiné par un agent du NKVD (la police politique du régime), Ramon Mercader.
L’arrivée au pouvoir de Hitler, ainsi que le déclenchement de la Guerre d’Espagne, inciteront Staline a frappé également tous ceux suspectés d’alimenter une hypothétique cinquième colonne, et qui pourraient profiter d’une éventuelle guerre impliquant l’URSS pour s’en prendre à lui.
Ainsi, au plus fort de l’hystérie répressive, et notamment entre 1937 et 1938, plus de mille personnes étaient exécutées…par jour.
C’est dans ce contexte que le poète sent que sa situation va vite devenir intenable. Il considère d’ailleurs, en homme lucide, que son sort est scellé (p.20).
Car, dans la société Stalinienne, rien ne peut être publié, voire écrit, qui ne soit conforme à la ligne du parti. Les conséquences sont évidentes: il s’agit de la fin de toute liberté d’expression, de la mort de l’art, tout simplement.
Si l’art, en tant que tel, est interdit par le parti, le poète est condamné à mort, ou au silence…
Lors d’une réunion d’artiste organisé par Staline et dont Maxime Gorki est l’hôte, le dictateur défini cette ligne idéologique: le réalisme socialiste proclame que l’art ou la culture n’existe pas dans l’abstrait. Tout art et toute culture servent la Révolution et le parti, ou pas. Les auteurs, poursuit-il, ont l’obligation morale d’inspirer au prolétariat soviétique des rêves socialistes (p.45).
La culture est donc une arme politique à la disposition du régime. Les artistes doivent se contenter de demeurer des militants soutenant la ligne du Parti, et rien d‘autre. Toute tentative de tracer sa propre voie risquerait d’être interprétée comme un acte subversif.
Lors de la réunion avec les écrivains, Staline fait l’éloge de sa politique de collectivisation, qu’il décrit comme un succès cataclysmique (p.46), expression révélatrice des effets dévastateurs ce cette campagne. Mais, en URSS, il n’y a que des réussites, selon la règle de l’infaillibilité du Parti (basé sur ce que le dictateur appellera l‘irréfutable marxisme scientifique). Même dans ce cas, l’écrivain a le devoir de justifier la collectivisation auprès des masses (p.46).
L’utilité politique de l’écrivain est précisément de justifier l’injustifiable auprès de ces concitoyens, y compris de telles entreprises criminelles. Les plus enthousiastes à accomplir cette tache seront choyés, et récompensés par les autorités.
Dans ce contexte, tout un chacun est sommé de devenir complice de la politique criminelle menée par le régime. Ceux qui s’y refusent, n’étant plus d’aucune utilité politique, seront éliminés. En effet, soit on collabore, soit on est broyé par l’appareil répressif.
Au cours de la réunion, un jeune auteur, Sergo Saakadzé, ose apostropher le dictateur au sujet de la collectivisation, sujet qu’il connaît bien, car sa propre famille en a souffert, et met l’accent sur ses effets dévastateurs…
Staline précise que les excès sont à la mesure de la réussite de cette politique: en somme, plus le succès est éclatant, plus grand est le nombre des victimes　!
Mais, une fois la réunion terminée, la colère du dictateur éclate, car un malotru osa le contredire en public: critiquer la collectivisation ou agiter le spectre de la famine en public est l’équivalent moral du sabotage. Que les Organes de sécurités s’occupent de lui (p.49), dit-il à son garde du corps…
Ainsi, le citoyen sera contraint de soit devenir complice du régime, soit se murer dans le silence, s’il souhaite continuer à vivre…
Voila le dilemme devant lequel se trouve tout individu, et particulièrement, tout artiste souhaitant conservé son autonomie, et sa dignité.
Tout artiste digne de ce nom s’efforce d’exprimer la vérité, tout du moins la sienne…Que faire, alors?
Anna Akhmatova perçoit chez Pasternak et Mandelstam cette volonté de s’exprimer: ils sentaient tous deux une responsabilité de dire la vérité dans cette friche de mensonges (p.61).
Rechercher la vérité, et l’exprimer, c’est préserver son indentité, son humanité aussi.
Quiconque emprunte cette voie refuse catégoriquement de se voir ravalé au rang d’instrument, d’objet du pouvoir. L’individu signifie ainsi son ambition de garder la maîtrise de son existence, et de sa pensée.
Dans un contexte de répression grandissante, cela devient de plus en plus difficile et dangereux de ne pas abdiquer, et de tenter de rester soi.
L’espace vital de l’individu libre se réduit progressivement, il est constamment, partout, sous surveillance. Chacun surveille l’autre, les espions du régime veillent, afin de repérer au plus vite toute activité non conforme aux diktats du Parti, et la dénoncer immédiatement aux Organes, afin de n’être pas soi même suspecté de complicité.
C’est à qui démasquera l’autre le premier, dans cette véritable course à la dénonciation!
Mandelstam fera cet amer constat: J’ai l’impression que le monde se referme sur moi (p.63). L’individu est contraint de se replier sur lui-même pour ne pas se faire remarquer, et échapper ainsi aux innombrables dénonciateurs.
Dans ce contexte de répression terrible, la poésie tient une place plus importante qu’ailleurs. Il en va de même pour le poète, sa responsabilité étant d’autant plus grande!
J’ai de la chance de vivre dans un pays où la poésie compte-on tue des gens parce qu’ils en lisent, parce qu’ils en écrivent (p.63), constate-t-il…
Il revient au poète, mais également à tout un chacun, dans son domaine respectif, de déterminer jusqu’où il doit aller. Cette lutte, cette obligation morale que l’on endosse de ne pas transiger, sans pour autant se mettre en danger, est épuisante.
Je suis usé par l’impossibilité de changer les choses. Je vis dans la foi et la poésie, la foi et la peur, la foi et le travail (p.64), dira Pasternak à ses amis Mandelstam et Akhmatova.
La peur est omniprésente. Nul n’est jamais à l’abri d’une dénonciation, même la plus fantaisiste. Le pauvre Fikrit sera dénoncé par un collègue du cirque où il travaille parce qu’il y a une vignette de la Tour Effel collée sur sa malle. Il sera accusé de complot Trotskiste, et condamné à quatre ans de camps de travail! Aussi, comment ne pas redouter que l’action la plus anodine ne sera pas considérée par le pouvoir comme un délit anti-soviétique　?
Il faut constamment être sur le qui vive, à chaque instant, partout, à fortiori si vous êtes un poète célèbre! La pression exercée sur vous par le régime est intense. Il compte sur vous pour le soutenir, explicitement et ouvertement, à toute occasion.
Pour être soi, on risque donc de transgresser toutes les lois de cette société, et notamment la plus importante: la vérité est une valeur de nature politique en URSS, et déterminée par le régime en fonction de ses intérêts politiques immédiats.
Ainsi, contredire la vérité officielle est un acte de pure folie, suicidaire! Cela relève de l’article 58 du code pénal soviétique: propagande antisoviétique et activité contre-révolutionnaire.
Mandelstam s’en rend compte, suite à une remarque de Pasternak au sujet de Hamlet:
moi, je feins d’être sain d’esprit pour justifier mon incapacité à agir, dans la mesure où aucune personne saine d’esprit ne ferait ce que dois faire (p.67), dit-il.
Staline a érigé une société où dire la vérité est réservé aux fous, car celui qui l’exprime risque la mort. Seul, en effet, un fou ou un désespéré s’y hasarderait…
Mais Mandelstam sent que le temps est venu pour lui d’agir: il (Staline) n’a pas cessé depuis, de tuer l’espoir, de nous pousser toujours plus profond dans un nouvel âge de glace. Il faut l’arrêter (p.69).
Mais comment se débarrasser de Staline?
Grâce à la poésie, une arme qui susciterait une prise de conscience, un mouvement d’opinion, un soulèvement, une révolte de la nation opprimée toute entière!
Je crois profondément au postulat selon lequel le noyau d’un poème renferme lui aussi un pouvoir explosif. Je suis capable de libérer ce pouvoir, je peux déclencher l’explosion si je réussis à abandonner ma raison, si je deviens assez fou, dans les deux sens du terme, pour laisser éclater le cri de la révolte coincé au fond de ma gorge (p.69), affirme le poète.
En quoi consiste ce pouvoir　?
Il s’agit du pouvoir de la vérité, vérité qui jusqu’à présent, était restée enfoui dans l’âme d’un peuple terrorisé, transformé en armée d’esclaves et de médiocres indicateurs.
Qui sait quel effet libérateur l’expression de la vérité provoquerait…
Si le poète arrive à vaincre sa peur et clamer la vérité, quoi qu’il lui en coûte, peut être que le peuple pourrait ensuite se défaire de la sienne.
Le régime n’existe et ne perdure que grâce à la peur qu’il inspire (lors de sa première visite en Pologne en tant que Pape, en 1978, Jean Paul II enjoindra ainsi la foule : n‘ayez pas peur!).
Il sera perdu le jour où le peuple n’aura plus peur de lui…
Vaincre la peur, c’est effectivement un moyen d’abattre le régime.
La poésie possède donc bien une dimension subversive réelle, ce qui explique toute l’attention que le régime porte à Mandelstam.
Le poète doit donner l’exemple, et le poème, en tant qu’ acte fondateur de la révolte, se transforme en instrument d’un réveil civique.
La révolte du poète est donc, un acte de courage impressionnant, mais aussi la manifestation d’un orgueil démesuré, le poète se prenant tout à la fois pour un prophète, un révolutionnaire, mais aussi un martyre!
Il fait également preuve de démesure et de folie, car, en appelant au sursaut et à la révolte, il signe son propre arrêt de mort.
Anna Akhmatova, bien qu’admirative ne peut cacher son inquiétude et désarroi:
Vous vous proposer de détruire Staline avec un poème!, s'écrie-t-elle (p.69).
Un poème explosant d’une vérité dont l’écho se propagera à travers le pays comme les ondulations créés par une pierre, lancée dans l’eau stagnante. Quelque chose d’aussi direct que «　Le roi est nu», répond-il (p.69).
La vérité, de nature subversive car intraitable, réveillera un peuple abasourdi par plus de quinze ans de dictature féroce, et Staline lui-même ne pourra résister aux conséquences de ce réveil: la fin de la soumission. Si le peuple peut être conduit à voir le régime et le tyran tels qu’ils sont, il se soulèvera. Il ne supportera plus de vivre dans le mensonge et la crainte.
Pasternak résumera bien les conséquences d’une telle initiative:
Il vous tuera.
Le but est de sauver la Russie, pas moi, rétorque Mandelstam (p.70). Le poète, tel le Christ, s’offre en sacrifice pour sauver le peuple et la nation Russe.
Les termes du débat sont ainsi clairement posés, et sont au cœur de l’œuvre de Littell:
*a quoi sert la poésie si elle ne peut être elle-même, si elle dissimule la vérité ou s’accommode du mensonge　?
*A quoi sert le poète s’il doit surveiller son langage, et réprimer ses pensées et émotions les plus profondes, les plus authentiques, s’il doit taire les vérités criantes　?
*Un poète peut-il se cantonner dans l’anodin, lorsque des milliers de ses concitoyens sont martyrisés par un régime paranoïaque et sanguinaire　?
* un poète digne de ce nom doit-il aller jusqu’à risquer sa vie pour ne pas trahir son art　?
Voilà les questions auxquelles sont confrontés Mandelstam et ses amis, dans la Russie de Staline.
Anna tente d’échapper à cette logique, en affirmant la dernière chose dont la Russie ait besoin est la mort d’un poète de plus (p.71). Elle ne dit pas à quoi doit servir un poète vivant…
Mandelstam écrira son poème explosif…Le voici (L’épigramme à Staline, 1934, p.98):

Nous vivons sourds à la terre sous nos pieds,
A dix pas personne ne discerne nos paroles.

On entend seulement le montagnard du Kremlin,
Le bourreau et l’assassin de moujiks.

Ses doigts sont gras comme des vers,
Des mots de plombs tombent de ses lèvres.

Sa moustache de cafard nargue,
Et la peau de ses bottes luit.

Autour, une cohue de chefs aux cous de poules,
Les sous-hommes zélés dont il joue.

Ils hennissent, miaulent, gémissent,
Lui seul tempête et désigne.

Comme des fers à cheval, il forge ses décrets,
Qu’il jette à la terre, à l’œil, à l’aine.

Chaque mise à mort est une fête,
Et vaste est l’appétit de l’Ossète.

Mandelstam sait que ses jours sont comptés (il se décrit comme mort, mais pas encore enterré, p.99,) mais qu’importe. Il ne supporte plus de courber l’échine, de collaborer, de feindre de prendre des mensonges pour la vérité, de vivre une vie qui n’en est plus une. Le poète ne veut plus vivre, si vivre signifie vivre soumis: il vaut mieux ne pas vivre du tout que de vivre dans l’opprobre, écrira des années plus tard Vaclav Havel (Interrogatoire à distance, éditions de l'aube, 1989).
La réaction de Nadejda (qui signifie espérance en Russe) est ambivalente:
J’étais excitée, fière et anéantie tout à la fois: excitée par son audace, fière d’être la complice de cet acte de pure défi et anéantie de voir que son instinct de survie- la sienne autant que la mienne- était en effet moribond (p.99).
Dire la vérité est devenu plus important que vivre, si vivre signifie vivre dans le mensonge.
Ce défi est un acte de désespoir, certes, mais pas uniquement. Le poète espère néanmoins que ce sera également un acte fondateur, démystificateur: en appelant un chat un chat, le peuple finira par prendre conscience dans quelle société il vit, s’insurgera contre ceux qui lui imposent ces conditions humiliantes et terrifiantes, et se soulèverez contre le régime:
C‘est un poème de vérité qui ne louvoie pas, selon Ossip. C’est un poème purificateur, qui peut permettre à la Russie de faire table rase et de repartir sur des bases saines (p.115).
Pour Pasternak, l’initiative de son ami est suicidaire, mais Mandelstam estime que l’heure n’est plus à la modération: la Russie a besoin d’un peu plus de folie et d’un peu moins de raison (p.103). Plus tard, il apostrophera ainsi son ami: vous avez vous-même soutenu que l’art était une prise de risque (p.103).
Si on est perpétuellement prudent, peut-on rester un être humain, s’interrogera à son tour Alexandre Soljénitsyne (Le Premier Cercle, Livre de Poche, 1968, p.14) ?
En effet, la véritable œuvre d’art n’est en premier lieu au service que d’elle-même, pour le bien de tous. Dès qu’elle se range derrière une bannière, cesse d’être libre et authentique, pour se muer en propagande, elle dépérit…
Aussi, l’art véritable est par essence subversif, car au service de la vérité: il se doit d　‘exprimer, de refléter l’âme humaine, et ses aspirations. Il se meurt s’il se voit contraint, condamner à soutenir la ligne d’un parti, à fortiori un parti à idéologie totalitaire.
Par définition, l’art ne peut exister en URSS.
Pour créer, il faut braver les interdits. En URSS, cette audace là se paie très chère.
Mais Mandelstam ne peut ni se taire, ni faire marche arrière, car rester amorphe, composer avec le tyran équivaut à cautionner le régime et sa politique répressive et criminelle. Voila l’aspect le plus diabolique de ce régime: il vous contraint à choisir entre rester en vie, ou devenir complice de ses crimes!
Mandelstam refuse désormais ce dilemme, et agira en poète: j’ai fini de louvoyer, dit-il à Pasternak. Quelqu’un doit écrire un poème qui dénonce la malfaisance de Staline et qui soit compréhensible par n’importe quel idiot… Quand, sinon maintenant? Qui, sinon moi? (p.104)
Le défi est également dans la nature du poète, le panache, aussi. Il faut de surcroît bien de l’orgueil pour croire qu’un poème sera en mesure d’abattre un tyran, mais il s’estime condamner au défi.
Ce geste, cependant, s’adresse aussi au aux autres poètes, afin de les inciter à faire preuve du même courage et le rejoindre dans cette lutte…
Pasternak ne le suivra pas, mais reste sensible à la témérité de son ami: je vous admire en tant que poète. Je vous aime comme un frère. Je vous souhaite une longue vie, Ossip Emilievitch (p.106).
Une jeune actrice, amie du couple Mandelstam, Zinaïda Zaitseva-Antonova, fut présente lors de la première lecture du poème subversif, et détient le seul exemplaire manuscrit, qu’elle s’empressera de livrer aux organes de sécurité, et ce, par souci de survie…
La police apprendra fatalement un jour ou l’autre l’existence de ce poème, et qu’elle était présente lorsque Mandelstam le récita pour la première fois. Soit elle prend les devant et dénonce le poète (le prix de sa propre sécurité), ou bien elle ne fait rien, et subira le même sort qui lui est réservé!
Paradoxalement, c’est au poète qu’elle en veut, et non au régime, de la mettre dans une pareille situation: Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce qui lui prend, de lire un poème pareil à des gens innocents? Il n’a pas moralement le droit de faire des autres des complices de ce qui est, après tout son crime (p.107).
Lire un poème constitue donc un crime!
La propagande du régime est particulièrement efficace: le peuple, certes, mais même certains appartenant à l’intelligentsia semblent avoir assimilé, et adopté, l’échelle des valeurs du parti.
Le crime, de fait, n’est pas d’écrire des poèmes mais de persécuter les poètes.
Assister à la lecture d’un poème n’est pas davantage un crime. Seul un régime répressif et paranoïaque peut le prétendre.
En leur livrant le poème, et donc le poète, Zinaïda devient le complice des tortionnaires et des bourreaux.
Mais tout le monde n’a pas le courage, l’inconscience de Mandelstam. En associant autrui à son acte subversif, il les condamne à subir les foudres du régime, à savoir, le goulag et la mort. Le régime ne propose à l’individu que le choix suivant: la trahison, incessante et constante, ou bien la mort.
Combien aurait le courage de ne pas trahir?
C’est en cela que ce régime est ignoble. Il pousse au crime en exploitant la faiblesse, la lâcheté humaine.
En URSS, un individu ne peut survivre que dans la honte de soi. S’il refuse de vivre dans le mensonge et l’ignominie, il sera broyé: la honte, la soumission ou la mort..
Pour se dédouaner d‘être lâche, on accuse l’individu courageux de provocation criminelle, de se conduire de manière suicidaire et irresponsable.
Ce cher Ossip ne m’a pas vraiment laisser le choix, se dit Zinaïda pour soulager sa conscience, donc je n’ai pas le sentiment d’avoir trahi sa confiance, non. De plus, il est évident que le pauvre homme essaie de se suicider. En prévenant les Organes, j’ai seulement fait ce que, au fond de lui, il voulait me voir faire (p.108).
Ainsi, elle lui rend service en le dénonçant! Logique implacable et indispensable pour rester en vie en URSS…
On fait endosser à un innocent un crime qui n’en est pas un et qui n’existe que dans l’esprit de ceux qui tiennent le pouvoir, et ne tiennent qu’ à cela, et feront tout et n’importe quoi pour le conserver.
Les objections d’Anna Andreïevna concernant le poème subversif seront de natures artistiques: c’est une chose de risquer votre vie pour un poème authentique, mais c’en est une autre de mettre en danger votre vie- ainsi que votre production à venir- pour un texte polémique, lui dit-elle (p.116).
Elle estime qu’il fait de la politique, et non de la véritable poésie. Il s’agit effectivement d’un poème à caractère politique puisqu’il s’attaque au dirigeant du pays.
C’est précisément dans cet aspect là que résident son audace, et son caractère révolutionnaire. La mission du poème n’est pas seulement artistique: comme toute œuvre audacieuse, elle se veut subversive, de nature à transformer la manière dont les êtres perçoivent le monde! Le poème se veut fondateur, car destructeur.
Il s’agit de révéler au grand jour la nature du monstre, de réveiller le peuple, l’émanciper, lui donner le courage de redevenir lui-même.
L’arrestation du poète ne tardera pas…
Lorsqu’on lui demande s’il est armé, Mandelstam répondra　:
Je suis armé du pouvoir explosif enfermé dans le noyau des poèmes. Je cache les poèmes en question dans mon cerveau (p.123).
Le fait même qu’il soit arrêté démontre tout le bien fondé de cette affirmation. C’est précisément parce que le régime redoute le pouvoir enfoui dans ces poèmes qu’il le persécute.
Lors de l’écrou à La Loubianka, célèbre et terrible prison moscovite, le garde inscrira dans le registre à coté de son nom: intellectuel et parasite (p.132).
Celui qui ne sert pas le régime est effectivement inutile　!
Il partage une cellule avec Fikrit et Sergo.
Les conditions sont rudes, et le sommeil interdit: l’épuisement permet de débarrasser l’esprit de l’illusion bourgeoise de l’innocence. Si vous êtes là, c’est que vous êtes coupable de quelque chose (p.135), lui explique Fikrit.
Personne n’est innocent. Le parti, en fonction de ses intérêts, désignera les coupables le moment venu.
Refusant de se plier à ce simulacre de justice, Sergo est torturé, à petit feu.
Pourquoi le tuent-ils, demande Mandelstam à Fikrit? Parce qu’il refuse d’admettre qu’il est coupable, répond-il (p.135).
S’il reconnaissait les crimes dont il est accusé, il ne serait pas sauvé pour autant: le processus serait simplement moins éprouvant et douloureux pour l’intéressé.
On est en Union Soviétique, explique Fikrit. La justice socialiste triomphe toujours. Dès que Sergo aura avoué, ils arrêteront de le battre, et le fusilleront (p.136).
La justice socialiste est plus expéditive, et donc moins sadique avec ceux qui se montrent coopératifs, et jouent le jeu, font semblant, jusqu’au bout…
Si Fikrit lui-même n’avoua pas tout de suite, ce n’était pas par esprit de résistance, mais par simple ignorance. En effet, il n’avait pas la moindre idée de ce qu’ on avait à lui reprocher, quelle loi il avait bien pu enfreindre! J’ai pas avoué, parce que je savais pas de quoi j’étais coupable…Les coups et le fait de pas pouvoir dormir m’ont aidé à voir la vérité, expliqua-t-il à Mandelstam (p.136-137).
Ils s’acharneront sur le prisonnier tant que celui-ci refusera de jouer son rôle, le rôle du coupable.
Une foie les aveux (fantaisistes) obtenus, ils le fusilleront sans tardé. C’est sans doute cela, la clémente justice socialiste.
Fikrit sera un coupable exemplaire, et jouera son rôle à merveille lors de son procès public. Certains procès le sont, à des fins pédagogiques: impressionner les foules, leur faire croire que la justice existe en URSS, et justifier les purges et les rafles massives en cours et à venir.
Afin que tout se passe bien, il s’entraîne: je suis en train d’apprendre les détails par cœur des aveux qu’on lui a chargé de faire pendant l’audience, précise-t-il (p.137).
Fikrit donnera ce conseil au poète: découvrez de quoi vous êtes coupables et avouez-le, et les choses seront beaucoup plus facile pour vous (p.138).
Kristoforovitch, spécialiste des interrogatoires des auteurs et artistes moscovites et qui se charge de Mandelstam, lui explique sa stratégie: l’expérience de la peur est utile au poète- elle peut lui inspirer des vers. Soyez assuré que vous connaîtrez ici la peur dans sa pleine mesure, dit-il au poète (p.140).
La peur constitue, en effet, l’outil principal pour s’assurer la collaboration de l’accusé et futur coupable. Ceux qui n’ont pas peur ne leur sont d’aucune utilité, car ils refuseront de se prêter à cette parodie de justice, et ne reconnaîtront jamais les crimes factices dont-ils sont accusés. Aussi ne cautionneront-ils pas le système judiciaire répressif et ses méthodes expéditives. Ceux-là, tels le pauvre Sergo, seront broyés, suppliciés et exterminés dans l’anonymat le plus complet.
La tentation de se laisser faire, et de jouer son rôle est donc grande.
Sauvez votre peau. Sauvez Nadejda et les autres d’un sort pire que la mort, lui conseille Kristoforovitch (p.154). En effet, si vous refusez de coopérer, ils se vengeront en s’en prenant à vos proches, et leur feront subir le sort de Sergo (on vous brisera les os, à raison d‘un par jour, p.154), sans la moindre hésitation, le moindre scrupule.
Résister ne sert donc à rien, car la douleur finira bien par pousser le supplicié à avouer tout et n’importe quoi.
Mandelstam ne peut dissimiler son indignation: vous prétendez être des bâtisseurs mais vous n’êtes que des tortionnaires, rétorque-t-il courageusement (p.154).
Pour le tortionnaire, seul l’objectif compte: vous faites une grossière erreur de calcule, répond-t-il, (p.154). Nous, les bolcheviks, vivons selon notre conscience. Nous croyions au principe selon lequel la fin justifie les moyens. Comme la fin en question est la construction du communisme, notre conscience nous dicte que tous les moyens, n’importe lesquels, sont justifiés.
Aussi, érigeront-ils le paradis sur terre, même s’ils doivent massacrer jusqu’au dernier homme pour y parvenir.
Le dictateur lui-même, s’intéresse au sort du poète et le fait convoquer dans son bureau.
Mandelstam ne peut s’empêcher de ressentir une attirance hypnotique en sa présence (p.160).
Le tyran aspire à l’immortalité et se rend compte que seul le poète peut la lui conférer, en lui consacrant une grande œuvre. Il exige que le poète s’exécute: J’aurai votre poème, Mandelstam. Si, pour une raison ou pour une autre, je ne peux pas l’obtenir, vous serez écraser sous le poids de l’état, menace-t-il (p.165). Bien que Mandelstam affirme n’être aucunement une menace pour le pouvoir soviétique (p.166), Staline le redoute néanmoins: oh si, vous êtes une menace pour le pouvoir soviétique. Quiconque refuse de se plier à la volonté de Staline risque de se plier à la volonté de ses ennemis. Il n’y a pas de terrain d’entente, pas de compromis possible: celui qui n’adore pas le sol foulé par Staline le profane (p.166).
Staline est le pouvoir, et quiconque n’est pas avec lui est contre lui, et doit être éliminé. L’ancien séminariste exige rien de moins que l’adoration. Celui qui ne se soumet pas aveuglement à lui sera livrer à l’inquisition soviétique.
Mais l’art ne se décrète pas, et Mandelstam refuse de se plier à la volonté de Staline: je suis incapable de produire du faux, dit-il. Un chef d’oeuvre dithyrambique en hommage à un tyran est effectivement inconcevable.
La poésie, au nom du vrai, du beau, doit résister, sinon, elle se corrompt, se trahi et meurt. Et si le poète n’a pas le courage de suivre ce chemin là (ce qui, dans un pays tel que l’URSS serait fort compréhensible), alors il faut renoncer à écrire et se résoudre au silence…
Staline l’épargnera, mais le condamnera à l’exile, à Voronèje, dans l’Oural, ou il composera les Cahiers de Voronèje (1935-1937)…
Il survivra à cette expérience éprouvante, mais reviendra à Moscou diminué…
De nouveau arrêter en 1938, il sera incarcéré à La Loubienka et partagera, cette fois ci, la cellule de Kristoforovitch, le tortionnaire muni d’une conscience bolchevik et qui se retrouve, désormais, du côté des ennemis du peuple. Pour être efficace, la terreur doit frapper au hasard, dira Staline (p.177).
Mais l’époque des interrogatoires était révolue.
Les temps nouveaux, la guerre menaçant, exigeaient des mesures plus expéditives encore…
On raflait, on accusait, puis on condamnait…
Lors d’une seconde rencontre, Staline avouera ceci au poète: ma campagne contre les ennemis potentiels doit être guidée par le principe que l’innocence n’existe pas (ce principe lui avait été inculqué par son père, qui le battait). Pas dans ce monde. Sur les cent cinquante millions de Russes, chacun jusqu’au dernier, à l’exception de ma sainte mère, est coupable de quelque chose (p.309).
J’étais un ennemi du peuple, écrira Ossip à Nadejda, (p.310), un saboteur, un agent de Boukarine, lui-même discrédité et exécuté. Il ne restait plus qu’à déterminer le châtiment approprié à mes crimes imaginaires.
Il sera condamné à cinq ans de travaux forcés en Sibérie.
Dans la mesure ou il était physiquement très diminué, il s’agissait bel et bien d’une condamnation à mort…
Il mourra en détention le 27 décembre 1938.…
En évoquant cette terrible décennie, et la vie en URSS, Anna dira ceci　:
Et l’humiliation et la douleur. Une humiliation sans fin, une douleur sans fin…(p.325).
Comment vivre lorsque vivre, vivre dignement devient impossible, lorsque le personnage que l’on fut contraint de devenir- celui qui compose avec le mensonge, pactise avec le système, et accepte toutes les compromissions pour survivre- nous devient insupportable?
Que doit-on faire?
Que peut-on faire?
Reste-t-il une autre solution que le suicide, qu’il soit actif (dire la vérité et être liquidé par les organes répressifs) ou passif (se supprimer)　?
Peut être que la folie est le seul et dernier recours…
Dans l’épilogue du livre, Nadejda livrera ceci à propos de son époux　:
Quand j’y repense, je me rends compte que, pendant de longues périodes, Mandelstam trouvait refuge dans la folie pour échapper à la terreur (p.330).
Ce régime abominable aura accompli le terrible exploit de transformer en crime la noble ambition de devenir un être humain à part entière, et de vivre décemment et dignement.

Mandelstam sera réhabilité, enfin, par ce même régime soviétique (dirigé alors par Gorbatchev) le 28 octobre 1987, quelque cinquante ans après sa mort…
Mais l’histoire lui rendit justice, ainsi qu’à toutes les autres victimes: ce régime criminel sombrera et disparaîtra le 12 décembre 1991...
(la photo du NKVD est de 1938, lors de la seconde arrestation de Ossip Mandelstam)
(L’hirondelle avant l’orage, Editions Baker Street, 2009. Traduit de l’américain par Cécile Arnaud.
Titre original The Stalin Epigram, Simon & Schuster, 2009)

The enemy is everywhere

Perhaps it was a victory after all, albeit a meager one, and yet, better than nothing…
Twenty-one of his twenty-four ministers (which, for the first time since 1979, included a woman, Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, at the health ministry) were approved by the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, last week.
Yet, what of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s political influence? It is doubtful that it was enhanced in the process.
The Supreme Leader himself, Ayatollah Khamenei, had to step in to ensure the restive assembly would not repudiate even more presidential appointees.
The day before the vote, he informed parliamentarians that the leader of the revolution would like all proposed ministers to get votes of confidence.
The Supreme Leader clearly feared that anything short of a robust show of support for Ahmadinejad, following his fraudulent June election victory and the massive protests that followed, would further undermine confidence in, and cripple, the regime.
The fact, however, that three (but only three) ministers were repudiated, one for the energy post, and those offered the education and social security ministries, both women, was clearly meant to demonstrate that the mechanisms designed to check the power of the executive were alive and well and that the system was still viable, both Islamic and republican.
Ahmadinejad stacked the cabinet with loyalists, and particularly at two strategic posts, the security and oil ministries.
Controlling the latter is essential, for it provides the president with the financial means to support his core supporters and their related business activities, namely the security apparatus.
Yet, to rally the support of the Majlis, and, implicitly of the Iranian nation itself, Ahmadinejad claimed that the contempt and hostility the West evinced towards the Islamic Republic demanded but one reply: enemies made efforts to damage (the) national might of the dear Iran. I believe it deserves a crushing response from lawmakers in order to disappoint them, he told the legislators. The deputy chief of the Iranian armed forces, Muhammad Bagher-Zolghadr also urged the nation to beware: the enemy is everywhere, he admonished…
The efforts of the regime to intimidate the nation into supporting the current leadership continue.
A staunch Ahmedinejad ally, Kamran Daneshjoo, the official who engineered last June’s rigged election, was selected and approved as the new minister of higher education.
His mission is clear: purge the universities of all opposition supporters, and purify the curriculum in order to eradicate all foreign and alien content.
All that is deemed secular and thus blasphemous will be repudiated.
In a recent speech delivered to an audience of teachers and students, the Supreme Leader stated: many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings…
Teaching these subjects leads to the loss of belief in godly and Islamic knowledge, he concluded.
The regime is afraid, afraid of its own students, of the Iranian nation’s youth…Unable to comprehend and respond to the aspirations of an entire new generation, puzzled and indignant at its demands for change, the regime has responded with a rigged election, and violent crackdown.
Now, it is about to further alienate them by severing the ties of the nation’s universities with the modern world, and modern ideas…
The president’s very own presidential advisor, Ayatollah Muhammad Tagi Mesbad Yazdi, the arch enemy of the reform movement, speaking at a gathering of new cabinet ministers, asserted that the Islamic Azad University of Tehran, with campuses around the nation (and that is, incidentally, administered by members of the Rasfanjani family, the most prominent member of which, Ali Akbar Hashemi Ransfanjani, a former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a supporter of Mir Hussein Mousavi) this university must once again be purified. This purification must occur at the management level and other levels. You see just how many who do not believe in religion, Islam and God have attended and graduated from this university.
The universities had suffered a similar onslaught in 1979, following the revolution…
The regime is thus about to ban any idea that it considers incompatible with Islam.
For the conservatives, Western ideas have corrupted the youth of the nation. No longer is it capable of determining who are the genuine defenders of the nation and Islam, but has allowed itself to be hoodwinked by alien concepts peddled by those who are but the agents of hostile, nihilistic foreign powers.
Daunted by its own youth and its thirst for freedom and modernity, the regime is bent on punishing all those who dared to support Karroubi and Mousavi in last June’s election.
They and all those who participated in post-election demonstrations will be suspended, if not arrested, as in Mashad last week.
Concomitantly, the regime has intensified its campaign against the leaders of the opposition reform movement.
Tuesday, the security forces raided the office of Mehdi Karroubi, a confidant of the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and a former parliament speaker. They arrested the director of his website, Mohammad Davari, and seized scores of documents. Karroubi has accused the regime of abusing and raping detainees in its prisons, and claims to have ample evidence to buttress his assertions. The accusations have visibly stung the authorities (whose legitimacy always rested on its Islamic, ethical roots), and they have vigorously denied them.
His daily newspaper had already been banned by the authorities several weeks ago.
Also on Tuesday, the offices of the Association for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights were closed, and that evening, a top Mousavi aide, Alireza Hosseini-Behesti (son of Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic) , was arrested. He chaired a committee investigating the abuse of prisoners taken into custody during the post-election turmoil.
A day earlier, another Mousavi aid was taken into custody. He had angered the government by stating that 72 and not 30 (the official figure) demonstrators were killed by the security forces in the post-election unrest.
Is the regime confiscating (and thus destroying) all the evidence of its misdeeds that it can find, and striving to intimidate any other potential muckrakers?
The opposition leaders, however, remained determined.
Mehdi Karroubi vowed to pursue his political activities come what may: I won't go underground, he told The Los Angeles Times. I act publicly and openly. Even if I am arrested and jailed and released, I will go back to open activities…I feel I am obliged to defend the rights of people. I want it to be remembered in the future by coming generations that somebody someday from the clerical establishment stood up for his stances and principles to defend the people.
Though he is openly defying the Iranian president, and the Supreme Leader, the very incarnation of the 1979 Revolution, he has no intention of attempting to overthrow the regime: political changes can come in two forms. The change we are calling for is change within the system and constitution, the observation of citizenship rights.
Mir-Hussein Mousavi shares this approach, the quest to fulfill the regime’s true potential, the conciliation of the nation’s Islamic heritage with modern democratic rights. If he is also campaigning against the conservative forces dominating all the branches of government, it is because they have betrayed the spirit of the 1979 Revolution, which first and foremost, overthrew a tyrannical regime, and then reconciled the nation with its Islamic roots: we want to maintain the Islamic republic and its system, we want social calm, we are against any violence and radicalism - but we also believe that these can only be made possible through respecting people's will and implementing the constitution, he wrote on his website last Saturday…Islam is frequently referred to but seldom followed. He thus accused the current leaders of the country of being hypocrites. These advocates of non-violent resistance within the existing framework believe the republic can only become truly Islamic if it respects the rights of the Iranian people.
Other opponents of the regime have responded more virulently to the crackdown.
On Sunday, former president Khatami declared: we are against those who, in the name of opposing Western liberalism, are trying to force people down their own preferred path with fascist methods and totalitarian ideas. I warn all the system's supporters to rebuild public trust before all chances are completely lost.
He clearly has lost faith in the country’s leaders, and their ability and willingness to respect the tenets of the Islamic Republic. The survival of the current system is therefore at stake in the current confrontation.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a perennial rival and opponent of the Supreme Leader who was sentenced to five years of house arrest in 1997 for having publicly called into question the latter’s qualifications to occupy such an august function, has not hesitated to attack the very foundations of the regime.
His harsh and acerbic criticism of the Islamic Republic’s shortcomings had already provoked a severing of relations with the Republic’s founder Khomeini, whom he was suppose to succeed. Instead, the establishment preferred the innocuous and bland Khamenei...

The biggest oppression ... is despotic treatment of the people in the name of Islam, Montazeri wrote on his website last month. I hope the responsible authorities give up the deviant path they are pursuing and restore the trampled rights of the people…I hope authorities ... have the courage to announce that this ruling system is neither a republic nor Islamic and that nobody has the right to express opinion or criticism.
It remains to be seen whether he truly believes that a system calling itself the Islamic Republic is even feasible.
Is it? That is indeed a legitimate and relevant question…
Hence, as the universities are about to reopen for the Fall term, on September 23rd, the regime, as we have seen, is clearly uneasy, and intent on doing its utmost to intimidate all those seeking to revive the post-election agitation, and prevent large gatherings from occurring.
An annual religious event, which was to have taken place between September 9th and 11th at the Imam Khomeini shrine was cancelled, for the first time in twenty years.
Khatami had been slated to appear, and his presence would undoubtedly have drawn significant crowds .
Yet, opportunities to mobilize the regime’s opponents abound, first and foremost by hijacking official events, such as Qud’s Day, on September 18th .
An official demonstration, it is designed to mobilize all Iranians against Israel and its policies.
Karroubi has asked all his supporters to attend: on Quds Day you will once again see the power of the people and realize which side the people support.
Though the regime refuses to yield and make any concessions, it has not yet chosen to cross the Rubicon…
And yet, the regime cannot simultaneously arrest and prosecute prominent members of the opposition and its supporters, and allow the leaders of the reform movement to go about their business, without appearing weak and incoherent.
Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader have not yet dared take the fateful step of arresting them…
Such a drastic move may be inevitable, as no other measures have succeeded in cowing MM Khatami, Karroubi and Mousavi.
It remains to be seen whether the Iranian people would tolerate such a brazen act…

(the photograph on top: from left to right, Mir-Hussein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami)