Do Any Journalists Have The Guts To Ask Ahmadinejad These Questions?

Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has composed a list of questions to ask Ahmadinejad during his annual appearance at the UN--"culled from Iranian democracy and human rights activists who don’t have a chance to query the president directly".


Here are some of them:

o Somayeh Tohidlou, a 32-year-old female sociology PhD student, recently received 50 lashes in prison for having “insulted” you by campaigning for Mousavi in 2009. Do you believe that men lashing women for their political views is an appropriate form of punishment?

o You said last September that “freedom is a divine right.” Does that apply to Iran’s Bahais, who are persecuted for practicing their faith, discriminated against in the workplace andimprisoned for attempting to educate their youth, who have been barred from university?

o In March you claimed that Iran is “the best example for asserting human rights in the world.” So why has your government refused to allow the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, to visit your country and investigate allegations of human rights violations?

o In a BBC survey of 27 countries, including non-Western nations such as China, Nigeria and the Philippines, Iran ranks as “the most negatively viewed of all countries rated,” even below North Korea, with just a 16 percent favorability rating. Why?

o Nongovernmental organizations, including Transparency International, Freedom House and the World Bank, have said that Iran’s rates of corruption, economic malaise and repression during your tenure are higher than those of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia. Are you confident you won’t share their fate?During your presidency Iran has had the highest per capita execution rate in the world, including recent public executions and executions of people accused of being homosexual. Are you proud of this record? 

o Ali Vakili Rad, who was convicted by the French in 1991 for the brutal stabbing death of 77-year-old Iranian democracy activist Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris, was given an official hero’s welcome at the Tehran airport upon his release from prison last year. Why does your government glorify assassins?

Take a look at the entire list.


Even better--take a look at the list of questions Sadjadpour put together last year, questions that journalists in the West just don't ask Ahmadinejad.


Technorati Tag: Ahmadinejad and Iran.