Ruzbeh Saadati – 22 September 2011
Dedicated to Two Friends: Abbas Lisani and Saeed Matinpour
In 1920, while the Communist Party was celebrating in Baku after overthrowing the Musavat Party, in the gardens of Ganja, writers such as Firidun bey Kocharli were hanging from gallows.
The social life of human beings has led to the emergence of norms and laws aimed at creating order and solving the problems of society — whether they be related to security, economics, or otherwise. Societies have always demanded that their members follow these norms and avoid deviating from them. Through the process of socialization, individuals internalize the values and norms of their society and, through the formation of social conscience, refrain from rejecting or violating these dominant social codes. Consequently, society — or the governing power within it — imposes punishments to control those who act against the prevailing norms and values.
On the other hand, not only do norms, individual perspectives, and value systems vary from one society to another, but due to the constant development of societies, we also witness transformations in a single society’s value system over time. A norm or value might eventually become a vice or a deviation — and vice versa. Accordingly, as values and norms evolve, so too do punishments and penalties. In fact, legal texts, crimes, and punishments are formulated based on society's view of these concepts. It is the society itself — within its value system — that determines the boundaries of punishment. Consider a ruling that was once easily issued and executed by a punishing authority: today, societal perspectives toward that ruling may have changed. The individual might still be seen as a criminal, yet society may consider the execution of that past ruling as unjust, leading to public pressure against the authority and questioning its legitimacy.
In such cases, the role of psychologists and social criminologists is to observe this shift in social attitude and recommend the suspension of such punishments — a recommendation grounded in respect for society's evolving perspective. These fluctuations in penal philosophy pave the way for the development of human societies in accordance with human rights principles and respect for human dignity.
However, the situation in our society is different. Here, the extraction of authoritarian concepts and punishments by the ruling power — without considering the viewpoint of society — forms the foundation of institutions tasked with confronting those who deviate from the official (and often unwritten) narrative of the regime. Notably, the inhumane and unlawful treatment of critics of the status quo, especially Azerbaijanis advocating for their undeniable human rights, is worth paying close attention to.
This raises an important question:
Can Azerbaijanis who seek their human rights be labeled as criminals?
To answer this, we categorize social norms into three levels:
-
Laws governing society
-
Customs and traditions of the society
-
Cultural values and inherited social norms
Consequently, norm violations can also be classified into three types:
-
Lawbreaking (crime): such as theft, murder, etc.
-
Ordinary norm violations: such as innovation in traditional ceremonies
-
Value-based norm violations: such as intellectuals or elites striving for transformation in a traditional society
According to this categorization, Azerbaijani activists fall into the third group. They do not commit crimes; rather, they call for the dismantling of the discriminatory practices imposed on the Azerbaijani nation across all sectors. Discrimination that, in contemporary Iran and its system of governance, has become a custom — even a calculated will — aimed at altering the true identity of a people and replacing it with a fabricated one.
In reality, the actions and demands of Azerbaijani activists are efforts toward transforming the current situation into a more humane one and replacing unjust norms with human values. Therefore, calling such individuals criminals or lawbreakers lacks any logical justification.
Among these activists, figures like Abbas Lisani have played a more prominent role in transforming the current state toward a more desirable, human rights-oriented society. His "norm-breaking" is a natural reaction to the unequal and discriminatory distribution of cultural, political, and economic resources in present-day Iran. Interpreting this norm-breaking as lawbreaking is an aggressive act by the ruling regime. All of Lisani’s efforts in recent years have aimed at transforming a society whose value system has been deliberately overturned by formal and informal mechanisms of the dominant power.
Lisani’s emphasis and address to Tehran is an attempt to clarify that Iranian societies are not a unified, homogeneous entity bound by a single culture. The current order is a political order, not one based on shared culture and values among the peoples living in Iran. If Tehran continues to delay the realization of rights and persists in imposing the dominant group’s values on the Azerbaijani nation, this order will collapse.
 |
| Abbas Lisani and other South Azerbaijani Turkish activists raise their voices at the 2003 Babek Castle gathering, calling attention to the plight of their nation with the powerful message on their sign: 'O world, I am a whole nation, my existence is being strained. |
If the aspirations and efforts of the National Government in 1946 — which sought to restore the lost and denied values of the Azerbaijani people — were sabotaged by international intervention and a fully armed military, and if the public then remained indifferent due to lack of awareness, today the denial of Azerbaijani rights is no longer possible. This is because the emergence and expansion of a national discourse in Azerbaijan in recent years has raised at least a minimal level of awareness among the Azerbaijani people about their violated rights — a development that has disrupted Tehran’s comfortable slumber. Tehran reacts with hostility and seeks to restore the previous societal arrangement based on the values of the ruling power. Thus, it turns to its psychologists and criminologists.
In free and democratic societies, one of the roles of psychologists and social criminologists is to mitigate and reform punishments in accordance with the evolving societal perspective on crime and deviance. But here, they are given a different role — because the ruling power has shown no intention of accepting changes in social values and norms. The psychologist, aligned with the regime, is tasked with formulating the desired value system of the regime; the criminologist with fabricating crimes for critics of the status quo; and the law becomes a mechanism to control Azerbaijani activists and protect the ruling elite’s position. Even the role of enforcement agents and informal social control elements in pressuring Azerbaijani activists and issuing harsh sentences cannot be overlooked.
The ruling power, in its effort to preserve the status quo, cannot tolerate any critique or challenge from Azerbaijan. But if norm-breaking by figures like Lisani gains social acceptance and legitimacy, the pressure from the authorities will weaken, and any coercive action against Azerbaijani activists will provoke a strong social backlash from within Azerbaijan. In such a situation, regime-aligned psychologists and criminologists will offer prescriptions to undermine the activist's social base, and others will attempt to implement those prescriptions.
"Uncle Napoleon Thinking" and Labeling
One of the key methods for implementing the aforementioned strategy is to maximize the indifference of Azerbaijani society and national movement activists toward the discrimination and injustices inflicted upon them. This indifference is cultivated through the injection of "Uncle Napoleon" thinking into the collective mindset.
It can be said that this mindset is one of the intellectual traditions of modern Iranian society. The promoters and carriers of this empty narrative consistently emphasize that any change in social structures — especially power structures — in Iran over the past century has occurred due to behind-the-scenes manipulation, and that national demands and the role of the people have had no real impact.
For example, some claim the late Pishevari was merely a Soviet pawn — a pawn killed by those very forces he was allegedly associated with. And, of course, the accusation of “foreign ties” is always ready at hand.
It’s as if the job of these always-unknown behind-the-scenes hands is to occasionally appear, press the "revolution" or "change" button, and then vanish.
Injecting this kind of thinking leads our society toward apathy, because this perspective rules out the possibility of change and development for Azerbaijani society and minimizes the role of the people in shaping that change. The spread of "Uncle Napoleon" thinking paves the way for defenders of the status quo to dominate even more easily. The indifference it produces allows the authorities greater freedom to impose whatever labels they wish on Azerbaijani activists.
As previously noted, equating norm-breaking by Azerbaijani activists with lawbreaking (criminality) is itself an illegal act. The treatment of activists like Abbas Lisani — his arrest and labeling as a criminal — is not because he has committed a crime, but because he is arrested, he is called a criminal.
In truth, the label "criminal" is an entirely false and legally baseless one as applied to Lisani. No actual crime can be identified in such cases. And the labeling of Lisani doesn’t stop there — it continues through various channels and domains.
In recent years, we have frequently witnessed labels being applied to individuals like Lisani by both opposing and even supposedly aligned factions. These labels are rooted — directly or indirectly — in the same brand of psychology discussed earlier, one that serves the interests of the ruling power, and are perpetuated by a misunderstanding among anti-elite elites within the Azerbaijani national movement.
In Lisani’s case, the ultimate goal of this labeling is to alter the national movement’s perception of his role and positive contribution, thereby paving the way for further actions by state-aligned institutions.
The Arrangement of Reactionary Values
The foundation of the Azerbaijani national movement and its activists is built upon recovering lost concepts and recreating values and ideals with a human rights-oriented approach — values that have long been denied to the Azerbaijani people. Concepts such as mother tongue, long repressed by the discriminatory system, and values such as freedom, long denied, are central to this struggle.
However, the ruling power sees its benefit in isolating and suppressing these values. Therefore, it seeks to inject alternate concepts and values meant to halt the progress of Azerbaijanis.
One such tactic is the aggressive promotion of individualism — not in its positive aspects, but in a way that intensifies selfishness among Azerbaijani individuals, aiming to weaken the collective spirit and belief of the Azerbaijani people. This is carried out through various channels of the regime on a daily basis, and is meant to delay the process of nation-building among Azerbaijanis.
Within the Azerbaijani national movement, this project of imposing reactionary values takes on a different form.
Recent months have seen the behavior of a small number of activists which can be viewed as evidence of this claim. Their entire focus has been on altering the core values of the national movement and producing reactionary values within it.
Their constant emphasis on "rationalism" — not as a practical and responsible rationality, but rather a static and isolationist one — is part of this project. Their orientation is directly opposed to the positions taken by Lisani.
This direction feeds political conservatism and, in some cases, pushes the Azerbaijani movement to the right. A quick look at the orientations and actions of a small group of activists and their media affiliates over recent months clearly shows this trend.
The defamation, media boycotts, and a series of articles aimed at sowing distrust among activists toward the political methods of figures like Lisani — and undermining those efforts — are examples of this trend.
These campaigns resurface from time to time, often under false names, and usually at critical junctures in the movement, attempting to steer the overall atmosphere of the Azerbaijani national movement toward indifference, and to diminish the grassroots sensitivity toward arrests and the resulting court rulings.
If this atmosphere becomes widespread and activists like Lisani are marginalized, then the conditions desired by the state institutions will be met. They will enjoy greater freedom to apply pressure and issue heavy sentences.
Thus, breaking the media blackout, and showing respect and support for the core values of the national movement, are obligations that must be upheld now more than ever.
In the end, only an inner compulsion, arising from our human identity and our relationships with others, affirms the reality of who we are.
A compulsion that allows one to withstand intimidation, even when standing alone.
A compulsion that, perhaps, many of us these days lack.
نظم موجود ، نظمی سیاسی ست
Original Farsi Article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120221023005/http://ruzbeh-s.blogfa.com/post-13.aspx