Protesters Disrupt Discussion on Iran

Despite a disruptive protest by the Iranian Students' Association (ISA), Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, and members of the Committee for Intellectual and Artistic Freedom in Iran (CIAFI) spoke to about 100 people at MIT last night on "the Shah of Iran's repression of human rights."

Speaking over a podium draped with a banner which read "Free Iran's Political Prisoners," Reza Berahini, Iranian poet and former political prisoner, said President Carter's recent reception of the Shah of Iran in Washington was "a stab in the back of every Iranian who felt he (Carter) was sincere about standing up for human rights."

Berahini said there are more than 100,000 political prisoners in the Shah's jails, most of whom are constantly subjected to torture. He added that Iranian law treats women as "second-class citizens," regarding them as inferiors in society.

The ISA protest began as the crowd entered the MIT lecture hall. CIAFI members who were sponsoring the meeting distributed leaflets warning the audience of threatened violence and assault from the ISA activists.

"For public safety," CIAFI sponsors originally barred ISA activists from the meeting. Members of the audience eventually voted to permit the ISA members to enter the meeting and present their own speaker.

The ISA speaker, who wished to remain anonymous, accused CIAFI of misrepresenting the Iranian people, and said Berahini is a CIA agent.

Berahini and Chomsky rebutted the ISA speaker. Berahini said that neither he nor the ISA represent the people of Iran, "the people who were fighting in the streets of Tabriz." He defended his credentials as a poet and an activist against the Shah, and said his goal at MIT was to expose the "violation of human rights" and plight of Iranian political prisoners to the American people.

Chomsky added that the object of the CIAFI meeting was not to advocate violent revolution in America against the Shah, but to inform Americans about the situation in Iran and to put pressure on the U.S. government to end American financial and military assistance to Iran.

"It is not feasible to build revolution against the Shah in the United States. It is feasible to expose Iranian repression here and build pressure to end support for that regime," he said.

Chomsky added he thought the bickering of the ISA over the credibility of Berahini detracted from the main issues of the evening and "turned a lot of potentially sympathetic Americans off" to the issue of human rights repression in Iran.

"One group is trying to expose the Shah, one group here is trying to denounce the other. I have no doubt which I support, and no doubt which I would support were I working for the Shah."