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Free Thinker
"The regime's biggest weakness is human rights. This is the issue on which it loses face with its people," says Akbar Ganji, released in March after six years in jail.
(By Bruno Vincent -- Getty Images)
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Ganji did not always oppose the Iranian theocracy. He was once part of the regime he lambastes today.
A prototype revolutionary, Ganji grew up in the scruffy suburbs of south Tehran, a bastion of the 1979 rebellion against Iran's monarchy.
As a young man, he rallied behind Ayatollah Khomeini, served in the elite Revolutionary Guards at the same time as Iran's current hard-line president, then worked in the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, churning out its propaganda.
But Ganji gradually soured on the revolution -- then began trying to undo it.
"We wanted to create a heaven. We didn't want a shah, but we were not clear on what we desired," he reflected in his soft voice, his hands constantly in motion, pulling a label off a water bottle, picking at the clasps on his black cloth briefcase or gesticulating in the air. His nervous anger is in his hands, not his voice.
"The more we had repression, executions, as the revolution started swallowing its own children, I started to see this unbelievable reality, and from the other side I started to read about revolutions throughout history. And I ended up seeing one pattern: that all revolutions are the same, they follow the same rules. . . .
"I realized that repression is in the essence of revolution," he said, smiling. "And I realized that we cannot produce democracy with revolution."
Ganji emerged in the 1990s among a burgeoning group of reformers who challenged rigid theocratic rule and pushed for a freer press. As new independent newspapers started publishing, he began writing articles that probed the regime, corruption by top clerics and the killing of reformers and intellectuals.
His career came to an abrupt halt when he was charged in 2000.
In the isolation of prison, Ganji secretly started writing again. His book-length "Republican Manifesto" -- released in two parts, one in 2002, the other in 2005 -- and a series of letters to the "free people of the world" and top Iranian thinkers were sneaked out of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison and published on Freeganji.blogspot.com.
In a letter on the 43rd day of his hunger strike last year, addressed to his mentor, Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, Ganji wrote angrily of the ruling mullahs who "hide their corruption under their robes. . . . They know nothing but claim to be the holders of divine secrets."
Iran's theocracy is headed by a supreme leader -- currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who has veto power over all acts of an elected president and parliament. The ruling cleric, Ganji said, has "the status of a god" and is at the heart of the problem.
