Letter Concerning Imprisonment and Maltreatment of Omid Kokabee

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Letter Concerning Imprisonment and Maltreatment of Omid Kokabee

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).]

3 January 2013

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran

c/o  H.E. Mohammad Khazaee
Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations
662 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017 

Your Excellency,

I write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to express our grave concern regarding the imprisonment and maltreatment of Omid Kokabee, a doctoral student in physics at the University of Texas at Austin.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 3000 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

MESA has learned that Mr. Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 during a visit to Iran and incarcerated at Evin Prison without clear charges or a trial. After Mr. Kokabee had spent 15 months in prison, one of them in solitary confinement, his case was finally brought before a judge in May 2012. The Tehran Revolutionary Court found Mr. Kokabee guilty of having communicated with a hostile government and having received illegitimate funds. After refusing to make a public confession, Mr. Kokabee was sentenced to 10 years in prison. At no time during the trial was Mr. Kokabee allowed to meet with his lawyer. Mr. Kokabee has repeatedly denied all the charges made against him and clarified that the contacts alleged in the charges actually consisted of normal professional interactions with international scholars. He has also stated that the allegedly illegitimate funds he received concern a publicly accounted for scholarship for his graduate studies. Although no conclusive evidence was presented at court to substantiate the charges, Mr. Kokabee’s sentence was upheld by the court of appeal in August 2012. 

In addition, it has come to our attention that Mr. Kokabee’s health has been deteriorating in prison, but he has been denied necessary medical attention. The reported lack of medical care, as well as the long incarceration without charges, a long delayed trial, obstruction of contact between the accused and his lawyer, and the appeal being upheld despite unsubstantiated charges are violations of basic human rights and international standards of due process, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory. Most importantly, they are also violations of Iran’s 1979 constitution, which states in Article 32 “No one may be arrested except by the order and in accordance with the procedure laid down by law. In case of arrest, charges with the reasons for accusation must, without delay, be communicated and explained to the accused in writing, and a provisional dossier must be forwarded to the competent judicial authorities within a maximum of twenty-four hours so that the preliminaries to the trial can be completed as swiftly as possible. The violation of this article will be liable to punishment in accordance with the law.” We urge the government of Iran to uphold its obligations to the people of Iran, and to uphold its international obligations.

MESA condemns this latest instance in Iran of the government’s infringement upon academic freedom and the pursuit of knowledge and free expression without fear of reprisal.  MESA urges Iran to preserve the rights of its nationals to travel and pursue academic research, as well as to support unfettered exchanges between scholars across the world.  MESA calls on you to defend the principles of academic freedom in Iran and to take all appropriate measures to secure the immediate release of Omid Kokabee and the lifting of any charges and convictions related to his academic activities.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Peter Sluglett
MESA President
Professor, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

Cc:
Head of the Judiciary
Sadeqh Larijani
Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh
(Office of the Head of the Judiciary)
Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave. (south of Serah-e Jomhouri)
Tehran 1316814737
Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: info@dadgostary-tehran.ir

Committee of Concerned Scientists, Inc.
c/o Sophie Cook
400 East 85th Street, Apt. 10K
New York, NY 10028
Email: sophiecook@earthlink.net

The Honorable Hillary Clinton
United States Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520 USA

The Honorable Navanethem Pillay
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland 

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