A Movement Builds in Iran

By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, December 18, 2002; Page A24

Gholam Reza Mohajery Nejad, 30, an Iranian student leader who has been jailed and tortured along with other organizers of a growing secularist movement that is demanding a referendum on religious rule, asserted in an interview Monday that the Islamic republic is losing popular support. He predicted that a war against Iraq would fuel unrest in Iran.

Nejad, who was granted U.S. political asylum after 18 months in Los Angeles, said he was in touch with students at home by e-mail, cell phone and the Internet to keep track of the demonstrations now taking place at the rate of one a week.

"I chose to come out and bring the voice of students calling for democracy, freedom of speech, equality and human rights to the outside world," he said. He posts recent arrests and examples of violations of activists' rights on a Web site, along with announcements of organized protests so Iranians can join them and the world can follow what happens.

He said members of Islamic reform groups, who believe in a moderate religious regime that does not concentrate too much power in the hands of the clergy, are beginning to defect to the more secular student movement. He estimated the number in the thousands.

Nejad said workers, women, teachers, young people and students are joining hands after realizing that the system of unquestioned clerical leadership is "not reformable." He asserted that the movement was stronger than the initial student movement in Yugoslavia, which helped result in the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. "We don't believe in violence, but we believe we have more popular support," he said. "Things are going so fast. No one can predict what may happen. The splits within hard-liners and reformists within the ruling establishment are growing."

Reformist clerics are concerned about losing followers and some are saying that President Mohammad Khatami's time is over, he added. Others, he said, believe it is time to establish ties with the United States, because this is what young people want.

Abbas Abdi, one of the organizers of the U.S. Embassy takeover at the start of the Iranian revolution in 1979, was jailed several weeks ago because he suggested that ties with Washington are now necessary.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company