By Alysa TeichmanThe Daily Northwestern

After six years of torture and solitary confinement in an Iranian prison, Akbar Ganji was finally granted his freedom in March. Yet in speaking before a crowd at Northwestern’s Fisk Hall Wednesday night, he may have risked a return to that personal hell.

He said that when he finishes his speaking tour of the West, he plans to go back to his family in Iran, where the government will undoubtedly have copies of the night’s remarks.

But the threat of reimprisonment did not keep him from revealing many of his stories to an auditorium filled with many Farsi speakers.

Ganji, an Iranian dissident, has traveled around the West since July in an attempt to spread his gospel of creating democracy in a country where theocracy is the only way.

“In Iran, if there was an election, for sure the free-minded democrats would win,” Ganji said.

Speaking in Farsi with two translators by his side, Ganji said his political career began during the Islamic revolution of 1979 when Iran made the transition from a constitutional monarchy to a theocracy. Ganji became a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps at 19 and fought in Iran’s war with Iraq during the 1980s.

“Revolutions often try to create heavens on earth,” Ganji said. “They often create hell instead.”

Ganji said he became disenchanted with the revolution during the war but has no regrets in supporting the justice it stood for.

“The old discourse (during the Revolution) was about justice, not freedom and democracy,” Ganji said. “This discourse right now is about freedom and democracy.”

As one of the top journalists in Iran, he wrote a series of articles in the 1990s that linked Iran’s intelligence ministry to the deaths of dissidents like himself. Ganji’s writings and other literary work led to his prison term. He spent much of that incarceration in solitary confinement or on hunger strikes. There were times where he was only hours or days away from death.

“No authoritarian regime will just come and say it wants to share power,” Ganji said. “It takes sacrifice, pain and toiling.”

His sacrifice comes in the form of peaceful resistance, he said. Ganji often compared his actions to those of famous peaceful protesters such as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.

Ganji said he believes in massive civil disobedience in his quest for democracy in Iran. Fighting from below, he said, is the best way to pressure the regime and create change.

“No country can achieve democracy without paying a price,” Ganji said. “Democracy is not a free sandwich that you can just give to anybody.”

Ganji’s negotiations have come from his peaceful protest, which has not only included hunger strikes, but also writing. Investigative journalism is his avenue to change and his way to persuade the people and negotiate with the government.

“I have no problem with negotiations,” Ganji said. “But the regime does not want to negotiate with me on this subject.”

Ganji’s severe distaste for the Iranian theocracy does not mean he wants to copy Western models of democracy. He said he rejects the institutional secularism of countries like France.

He also challenged the unilateralism of the White House.

“President Bush is behaving like he is a representative of God on earth today, ” he said. “This Islamaphobia cultivates fundamentalism.”

Reach Alysa Teichman at [email protected].

Timeline of a Political Struggle

A long-time critic of Iran’s theocracy, Akbar Ganji’s struggle climaxed with his arrest more than six years ago.

April 19, 2000 Ganji attends a conference in Berlin titled “Iran After the Elections,” during which political and social reform in Iran is discussed.

April 22, 2000 Ganji is arrested for participating in the Berlin conference.

January 13, 2001Ganji is sentenced to 10 years in prison and five years of internal exile. There are reports of torture during his imprisonment.

May 15, 2001An appellate court reduces Ganji’s sentence to six months in prison, but the Iranian Supreme Court overturns the ruling.

July 16, 2001Ganji is sentenced to six years in prison for his participation in the Berlin conference and a series of articles he wrote. Some of the articles, compiled in a book titled “Dungeon of Ghosts,” implicated former Iranian leaders in the murders of several dissidents in 1998.

May 19, 2005Ganji begins a hunger strike.

May 29, 2005Ganji is allowed medical leave. He is reported missing on June 7 but is returned to prison on June 11.

July 12, 2005The White House calls for Ganji’s release, calling him “only one victim of a wave of repression and human rights violations engaged in by the Iranian regime.”

July 17, 2005Ganji’s hunger strike ends when he is rushed to a hospital in northern Tehran.

March 17, 2006Ganji is released from prison.