Personal Narrative: The Iranian Revolution

Imagine standing at the gate of the happiest place on earth. Completely in awe at its beauty, it's magic, and it’s history; knowing you can't go in. Living in the United States, you may be thinking the magical place I can't get into is Disneyland, but it is my home country, Iran. My family had to leave Iran during the revolution; the Iran I left, the home I loved and the place I grew up in no longer exists. What stands now is what's left of a country torn apart by war. I cannot return to my country for fear I will be imprisoned for treason; I can stand on the mountain top and look at its beauty and remember what was, but I cannot go inside. As in this example, after civil unrest, war, and revolution, people sometimes live in exile. They fear for their lives because their lives appear to not mean anything to their government. They will be able to watch their native land change, for better or for worse, but they will not be able to affect or experience it firsthand. Fortunately, countries

usually change for the better. Transitional justice mechanisms, the steps that a government will take to democratically recognize human rights violations and pay tribute to the victims of such violations, help to usher in a more just future. South Africa successfully used several mechanisms to transition from apartheid to democracy; Iran’s futile attempt to transform from an out-of-touch monarchy to an oppressive democracy only affected the international connotation of the government.
For a long time, Iranians have been discontent with their government.

First, the Shah, out-of-touch with what his people wanted, became the catalyst for massive xenophobic and anti-Western feelings to spread throughout the nation. By giving up traditional Islamic ideals and becoming sort of a “puppet” for the U.S. and the Western world, the Shah made a mockery of himself and of those traditional Islamic values, which were paramount in Iran. For many years, Iranians wrote letters to the Shah, voicing their discontent with many aspects of his rule — the spread of the Bahá’í Faith, the collapse of Islamic traditions, and the crumbling economy. The Shah, however, did nothing to fix these issues. Instead, he designed a political reformation movement, hoping to silence his opponents, to introduce personal rights for women, and to establish a sense of fiscal equality. This series of reforms, which appeared to be a blatant attempt to Westernize Iran, became known as the “White

Revolution.”
Enraged by the Shah’s ignorance and obvious lack of concern for what they actually wanted, Iranians rallied for the removal of the Shah and the current system of government. Under the guidance of Ayatollah Khomeini, religious leaders pushed the disillusioned, discontent Iranians to revolt (Fischer ). Eventually, the Shah fled the country and Ayatollah Khomeini declared himself Supreme Leader of Iran.
The new government under Khomeini was a theocracy based on Islam and Sharia law. Religious minorities were prevented from attending public universities, practicing their religions openly, and holding the presidential office. Although all religious minorities (anyone outside of Shia Islam) faced discrimination, the Iranian people despised no group as much as they despised the Bahá’ís. They were blamed for everything wrong in Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted from 1981 to 1988, the Iranian government began arresting Bahá’í people for petty offenses, and refusing them due process. Throughout their indefinite, unofficial sentence, those who were detained were subjected to ill-treatment or even torture. After the Mojahedin invaded Iran and attempted to take Tehran,however, the political prisoners, including the Bahá’ís, became a target.
These prisoners underwent a second, unpublicized trial to distinguish where their loyalty lay. When asked if they belonged to the Mojahedin or the Monafeqin (“hypocrites”), there was only one right answer. The people that answered correctly were returned to their cells; the people that answered “Mojahedin” were brought to the auditorium, made to write their last will, and finally hanged. In total, between 2,800 and 5,000 political prisoners were executed.
Half a decade later, a war crimes tribunal was established and modeled after the Russell Tribunal. Set in the Hague for its history, the Iran Tribunal tried individual people for their crimes against humanity and then gave them amnesty (“About Iran Tribunal” ). As a result, no real justice was ever achieved – only the truth was brought to light.
Unfortunately, religious minorities in Iran currently face similar discrimination as to what they faced thirty years ago.
The Boer War – the fight between the English and the Dutch – ended in 1902. The Boers (Dutch descendents) established a democracy in South Africa after the country gained its independence from England. They quickly elected themselves to be in charge of the country – a country in which they were the minority – through an all white election. The popular political party at that time, the National Party, highlighted the migration of black people into “white spaces” as a threat to white people’s physical, financial, and social security in order to win the election.
Once in power, the National Party devised a way to separate black people from white people – apartheid. Using the same techniques that won the election, the National Party popularized their plan with the Boers and set it into motion. They established “pass laws,” introduced “forced migration,” and did everything in their power to maintain the uneven power structure. With these new laws, black people were forced to move from where they lived to “Bantustans,” which were built in the most infertile, inhospitable areas in South Africa. After that, when they left the Bantustans, they had to carry domestic passports at all times. Otherwise, they would face arrest and possibly worse.
Eventually, the people of South Africa had had enough. Black people united and together refused to carry their pass books, which led to the Sharpeville massacre. In Sharpeville, even school children were murdered for not carrying their pass books. Outside influences of the Western world were even calling for reform in South Africa. Finally, the National Party sat down with the African National Congress (ANC) to negotiate the end of the conflict, and, by extension, apartheid. These meetings, called the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC had the power of both a truth commission and a war crimes tribunal – to subpoena, to convict, and to pardon individuals– but it did not have the power to condemn apartheid or the National Party. By the end of the hearings, the TRC was able to recommend that, since the perpetrators were pardoned and could not be sued in civil cases, the government should pay reparations to each and every victim of apartheid. Today, most victims still have not received the bulk of their reparations ("Ignoring Cries for Justice, South Africa Fails Victims of Apartheid-era Crimes" n.pag.). Even after apartheid ended, the Boers continue to assure themselves that apartheid was morally right because of their ideology – they believed that the advantages they received from apartheid were their God-given right.
Ultimately, neither country truly achieved justice for the victims and the perpetrators. No existing legal body, whether national or international, wanted to bring Iran up on formal charges, so the people of Iran realized that they would have to establish their own war crimes tribunal. Modeled off of the Russell Tribunal, the Iran Tribunal was a two-phase campaign – fact finding and the actual trial – designed to expose the mass executions of prisoners in the 1980s (“About Iran Tribunal” n.pag.). However, the Iranian government never took any action after the proceedings. Similarly, South Africa established CODESA to negotiate the end of apartheid, which, in turn, created the TRC to cast blame on any individual, to avoid South Africans blaming the government (Mamdani. n. pag.). The government did not want to accept that apartheid was wrong; it did not want to accept that it was morally, ethically, and conceptually flawed. In addition to pointing fingers at individuals rather than the system, the government never took any official action on the TRC’s findings. Although there was never any closure for the victims, South Africa’s CODESA and TRC allowed South Africa to transform into a democracy, whereas Iran has the illusion of democracy, but it is truly a dictatorship – only one group of people has had any influence on the government in Iran since the Islamic Revolution.
It is not possible for the transitional justice mechanisms that worked in South Africa to have worked in Iran because of the climate of the conflicts. By the time CODESA was established in 1991, all of the momentum behind apartheid had leaked out of South Africa; the traditionalist current pushing the Islamic Revolution is still thriving. Furthermore, the human rights violations have not stopped, nor is there any indication of them stopping anytime soon (Nassiri n.pag., “Iran” n. pag.). Because nothing really changed in either country, these transitional justice mechanisms were clearly only an illusion.
Throughout history, countries have used transitional justice mechanisms to introduce democracy as a new form of government; some work, others do not. The only way to organize effective transitional justice mechanisms in the future is to analyze the mistakes and to model the successes. Like anything in life, failures are simply learning tools and successes are the building blocks for a stable society.