Sanctions Against Iranian Students in the Netherlands

[Image by Sem Paradeiro via Flickr] [Image by Sem Paradeiro via Flickr]

Sanctions Against Iranian Students in the Netherlands

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was released by Open Democracy on 10 August 2012.] 

While the Netherlands awaits elections at the end of the summer to elect a new cabinet after their government suddenly resigned in April, the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the Immigratie en Naturalisatie Dienst(IND), controversially halted processing visa and residency applications made by Iranian citizens. Students for example at the Technical University in Delft received private messages like this one from their human resource departments: 

“The Dutch Immigration Service (the IND) have sent us information about the consequences, due to the EU Council`s new Regulation to implement enhanced sanctions against Iran, No. 267/2012 of 23 March 2012. The Dutch government has decided to put every MVV- or residence permit application, from Iranian nationals, on hold. In other words: the IND will not decide on any of these applications (already submitted / in process) for the time being.” 

“This regulation applies to all kind of applications: MVV visa, residence permit extensions, change of purpose application, stay with family member permit, knowledge migrant/researcher permit, et cetera.”

After a close reading of the EU Council’s new regulations of March 23rd, they appear to be  primarily economic sanctions. It is therefore possible that the steps taken by the Dutch authorities can be interpreted as discriminatory, and contrary to Dutch and European law.

There has been much confusion in the Iranian student communities in the Netherlands about who could be hit by these regulations. Listening to and reading their stories is often heartbreaking. Ali, a researcher in Isfahan told me that he had received the offer of a scholarship but could not accept it because of the suspension of visa applications for the Netherlands. “I am really stressed out. Please! I really hope this works out.” Or Reza, a dentist doing research on biomaterials. He received a letter from the university stating that it was unsure whether he could continue his research.

By now it has become clear that the groups that are facing the most serious problems are mostly PhD students or applicants, students who have recently finished their Master degree programme in the Netherlands, and students whose discipline is considered to be “sensitive”. What studies exactly are considered sensitive has not been cleared up and is taking too long. Are all petrochemical studies for instance problematic? Or just some degree programmes? And how should these regulations be interpreted given the 2010 verdict of the Dutch court that Iranian nationals cannot be excluded from facilities or study programmes based on their nationality? In practice, there seems to be a lot of confusion and many grey zones. The IND has taken steps to process student and jobseekers’ applications, so some PhD students have received requests to provide information about their research. The combination of not being clear about the rules and having to monitor PhD students seems, at best, clumsy.

On the website of Delft University of Technology, where in recent years several hundred Iranian students have studied, a page titled “Additional Information for Iranian Students” reads, “The MSc program [Masters degree] Aerospace Engineering is listed or contains elements that are sanctioned. You [Iranian students] will therefore have to submit an additional document to Delft University of Technology stating that you have obtained an exemption to the sanction. This exemption can be given by the Dutch Ministry of Education. If you cannot provide this document, you won’t be able to get a visa to start your study programme. 

This July, an Iranian student hoping to enroll in a Masters of Science degree programme received an exemption rejection letter from Halbe Zijlstra, the State Secretary of Education, Culture, and Science, which read, “My consideration is that allowing you to take this course of study would present an unacceptable risk of contributing to Iran’s proliferation-sensitive activities or to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems in Iran.” This specific student was simultaneously accepted into a different Dutch university programme, and was able to still receive a visa. The degree programme in question involved developing cleaner industrial processes, better medicines, and methods for combating diseases. In other words, she was not a rocket scientist. It seems that the Secretary of State has some incentive to exaggerate and politicise the situation of an ordinary young Iranian woman hoping to get a degree outside of the country.

The Netherlands’ stringent measures against Iranian students is an exception amongst European Union member states. No other EU countries have taken the same steps as the IND has in The Netherlands, although there were informal incidents with Iranian students or jobseekers in other EU countries as well. Yet still, Sander Eijk, a spokesman of the IND told the Persian Dutch Network, “we [IND] just follow the EU regulations and if anyone is going to make a complaint they should address the European Commission or the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs…  Iranians are welcome in the Netherlands, but they need to meet EU regulations.” However, mounting stress and debilitating uncertainty afflict the minds of many Iranian students in the supposedly “welcoming” Netherlands.

Iranian students have circulated a petition that labels the Dutch regulations as “arbitrary, discriminatory, unmerited, and unjustly punitive of Iranian people.” A signatory of the petition, Harry van Bommel, is a Socialist Party member of the House of Representatives and a staunch critic of the government’s policy. Marietje Schaakjes (D66, progressive, social-liberal party), member of the European Parliament, has asked parliamentary questions on the issue: “Does the Commission share my view that Iranian students, by enjoying (a part of ) their education in Europe, upon their return to Iran, could improve mutual understanding between Iranian and European citizens, which in turn could have a beneficial impact on EU-Iranian relations?” So far, no answer has been forthcoming.

Iranian students have been targeted before in the Netherlands, though not as randomly as currently. In 2008 Iranian students were excluded from taking certain academic courses and visiting designated places such as the nuclear energy facility in Delft. A discontent group of Iranian students challenged the policy by filing a law-suit against the government for what they believed amounted to a violation of Article 1 in the Dutch Constitution which states, “Discrimination on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race, or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted.”

As the case made headlines, some among Dutch civil society sympathized with the Iranian students. The President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences at the time, Robbert Dijkgraaf, wrote a letter to the Minister of Education, Culture, and Science to protest the “indefensible” sanctions regulations. He reached the conclusion that the “far-reaching implications of the sanctions regulation [is] contrary to the free and international conduct of science”, and that the damage it was doing to the Dutch reputation of being “a country that welcomes science and scientific researchers” must end. This episode eventually came to an end two years later when a Hague court said there was “no objective and reasonable justification” for the Dutch government’s targeting of Iranian students. The issue remains sensitive in Holland, because of the memory of Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of Pakistan`s top nuclear scientists who studied in Delft and left the country in the 1970s with secret blueprints, among others, for uranium centrifuge.

Iran is among the countries in the world with the highest brain drain. Especially Europe, Canada, and the United States benefit from these individuals. They come to countries like the Netherlands not only for work and study, but also for its culture of tolerance. As Schaakjes implied, however bad international relations may be, the Dutch door must stay open for the exchange of good intentions. Knowledge and culture are prime exemplars thereof. 

We are all aware that there are complex political problems inside and with the Islamic Republic, but tensions are only exacerbated by making the lives of ordinary students in countries like Holland impossible. They are an important bridge between Iran and the western world, have much to offer and are eager to learn. Iranian students in ‘sensitive’ studies should not be seen as posing a threat. They are usually not secretive nuclear scientists, but scientists, artists, architects, economists, and so forth. These students are amongst the brightest minds from Iran. Their talent and perseverance is the reason why Dutch universities and businesses took them on to begin with. Together with other international students, they make a significant contribution to what is known in Holland as the “Dutch knowledge economy”. Morever, they are also a source of income for the universities since they usually pay full tuition. Making Iranian money transfers more difficult has worried the universities, for example the president of the Technical University in Delft who has criticized “disproportional” interpretations of the sanctions.

The Netherlands has a fair, talent-absorbing system in which international students get the opportunity to pursue a career in Holland after they graduate. Their visa is extended for a year and they are allowed to search for a job in that period. If successful, they can and often do prolong their stay and eventually acquire citizenship. However, because of the suspension of Iranian applications, companies are refusing to hire Iranians because there are too many formal insecurities.

Maryam, a young Iranian woman who graduated in Sweden, received a job offer from Philips Healthcare but got into trouble because there were insecurities about her residence permit. Her employer wrote to the IND that they would terminate her contract if the issue would take up too much time. Another student currently in Sweden, a statistician, wanted to work together with a professor in The Netherlands. He was told: “I would like to discuss options for a PhD position, but before doing so I would like to know what your nationality is. It seems that you are of Iranian origin and if you have an Iranian nationality, then it might not be possible at all because of visa issues that I cannot do much about.”

The story of Nadjla, an Iranian female in Holland, is very telling. She sent me a message that read, “You may have already heard about my visa problem due to which I lost a job opportunity. My field of study is Engineering and Policy Analysis, which is not sanctioned. Having passed the first interview, I was invited for the second round. Everything went well in the interviews. [Then] I received an email which said despite the very positive impression I left, the company could not proceed with the my contract because of visa restrictions placed by the IND.”

In July, the IND began to properly process residency permit applications from Iranian nationals after a serious backlash from Iranians and Dutch citizens alike. “Applicants from Iranians who are not working in the sanctioned sectors will be processed as normal”, read the Dutch Immigration Service’s website. The Dutch interim Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uri Rosenthal (VVD, Liberal Party) reiterated the IND’s statement by promising that Iranian applications would be processed as soon as possible. One month later, the issue has not yet been resolved.

There has been extensive and widespread confusion amongst the Iranian student community in the Netherlands as a result of these regulations. Having partially retracted from their earlier suspension of visa applications, the interim Dutch government seems to be equally confused about how to proceed. It should come as no surprise then, that while lawmakers reflect and deliberate on what course of action to take, the lives of innocent Iranian students with no mal-intent are left unjustly hanging in the balance. The situation has sadly increased their scepticism towards Dutch politics in specific and European regulations in general 

The perverse interpretation of the Dutch authorities to suspend Iranian applications even before being sure what their stance is on the matter, and in contradiction to the verdict of a Dutch court only two years ago, should be seen in a broader xenophobic context. For example, the government has tried to ban dual nationality for all citizens, stating that individuals with other nationalities cannot be fully loyal to The Netherlands. Cosmopolitan Dutch citizens in New York and elsewhere however have successfully protested against this narrow mindedness. In reality, they were not the object of the amendment but considered as unfortunate collateral damage. The real intent of the new law is to force Turkish citizens and other “non-western allochtons”, non- western non-natives, to severe ties with their immigrant background and “integrate”. Today the amendment has been changed to accommodate cosmopolitan Dutch persons. The Dutch New Yorkers can keep their Dutch passport, but newcomers who are given the Dutch passport, for example Turkish citizens, are forced to give up their other nationality. It is a sad case of closet discrimination turning into blatant discrimination, and without any sense of shame.

When tourists enter the Amsterdam Museum today, they are sold a narrative about how tolerance is engrained in the “Dutch DNA”. Indeed, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were a safe haven for great thinkers such as John Locke, who wrote his Letter concerning toleration in Holland. During that time, the Golden Century, a period that is often looked back on to glorify the Dutch nation, the Dutch Republic saw a spectacular growth in international students. It fits a flourishing and open society to be hospitable and to protect foreign intellectuals. Especially those who live in dark times. If The Netherlands closes its borders for Iranian knowledge migrants, it betrays the values that it professes to respect.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Hatem Bazian addresses the historical trajectory of Islamophobia and its significance in understanding geopolitical transformation in the post-Cold War world. As Western ideologues shifted from their focus on the Soviet Union after the Cold War, and increasingly adopted the Clash of Civilizations paradigm to undergird their maintenance of global hegemony, Islam and Muslims replaced communism as the chief bogeyman. Bazian explains how and why this came about, and the centrality Palestine played in its development and operation, both in the West and for Israel. He also addresses US government disciplining of universities and particularly student activists.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      In this episode of Long Form, Hala Rharrit discusses the factors that led her to resign from the US State Department, the mechanisms by which institutional corruption and ideological commitments of officials and representatives ensure US support for Israel, and how US decision-makers consistently violate international law and US laws/legislation. Rharrit also addresses the Trump administration’s claim that South Africa is perpetrating genocide against the country’s Afrikaaner population, and how this intersects with the US-Israeli campaign of retribution against South Africa for hauling Israel before the ICJ on charges of genocide.

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412