The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy.
It comes in the wake, for example, of the embarrassing silence regarding Darfur, in Western Sudan, where no-Muslim black tribes, are massacred by a radical, genocidal Islamic government. We are dealing with a genocide in the 21st century, which is approved by the government, also in name of backstage negotiations supposedly more effective.
May the dead corroborate it. Meanwhile, the mass murders go on with more than 200 thousand people eliminated in addition to those who are mutilated for life. In celebrating the Black Conscience Day (November 20), this is a banner that should have been vigourosly raised, on behalf of a more energetic condemnation of the extermination of these African black tribes.
Ahmadinejad’s visit happens, precisely, after a “national election” domestically and internationally condemned for being rigged, even by ayatollahs of the regime itself, including a former president and a former prime minister. Even they rebelled against the more and more totalitarian direction of the regime, trying, this way, to distinguish two Islamic ways: the radical one, of totalitarian tendencies, and another one that isn’t like that.
They were banished, belittled, and some of their allies and relatives, tortured and murdered. There were generalized outcries with the population daring going to the streets to protest. And it did bravely, because it had to confront the notorious “Revolutionary Guard”, a kind of SS of the Iranian government.
Meanwhile, president Lula limited himself to say that it was nothing more than a mere soccer match, with the losers grumbling after their defeat. This is an insult to those who, there, fight for democracy, for freedoms.
The Iranian president has in his résumé, which reads more like a criminal record, a series of declarations and attitudes that well illustrate his totalitarian mentality. He keeps on announcing the “inexistence of the Jewish holocaust,” which eliminated 6 million people, only because they belonged to another religious creed.
He advocates the elimination of the state of Israel, getting himself involved directly in the Middle East’s conflicts, giving weapons and financing Hamas and Hezbollah, who share his same ideology.
By the way, the president of the Palestine National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, forcibly condemns this interference in the Gaza Strip. We have, here, to differentiate the reception given to the president of the Palestine National Authority, a man of peace and dialogue, who is different in every way from the Iranian president. Mixing both things can only be the result of ignorance or bad-faith, being this last alternative the most probable.
The persecutions conducted by the Ahmadinejad government strongly affect the Baha’i community for the simple fact that we are dealing with a religious creed that deviates from the official religion. The theocratic government of Iran does not tolerate disagreement, opposition, singling out everything as deviant behaviors that must be eliminated in the name of the health, of the political “purity” of this regime.
Deviant behaviors are also those of homosexuals, object of condemnations and persecutions, which are quite revealing of the totalitarian nature of the ayatollahs regime, adverse to religious, moral and political tolerance.
Women are equally considered inferior beings, who cannot use their free choice capacity, having to subject themselves to religious leaders who impose their codes of conduct. We need to stress that before the ayatollahs rise to power Iranian women enjoyed much more freedom, the current situation configuring a clear step backward.
Now, it is this regime that the Brazilian government believes is worthy of being welcomed and, further more, considering everything that happens in that country as being a mere product of simple domestic disputes. Our president even ended up saying that the Iranian nuclear project is “pacific,” just taking Ahmadinejad’s word for it.
Can you believe the word of a person who denies historical facts? Can you believe the word of a person who rigs the elections in his country? Can you believe the word of a person who eliminates freedom of press and of the media in general? Can you believe the word of a person who imposes his decisions through his political police, his SS, his “Revolutionary Guard”?
Trying to support the Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia in the name of an alleged non-interference in domestic affairs of another country is just another patent hypocrisy, because this is precisely what Brazil is doing in Honduras, with the embassy turned into in a Bolivarian insurgency focus, also of a totalitarian type.
Against all international treaties, the embassy gave Manuel Zelaya not a “refuge,” offering him headquarters from where Hugo Chavez’s directives are disseminated throughout the world, thanks to TeleSur, also there installed.
The diplomatic incoherence is plain when constitutionally scheduled elections, even before Zelaya’s ousting, are about to be held. The electoral fraud in Iran is praised, it’s a domestic affair, while the Honduran elections are condemned.
It seems that our diplo-MÁ-cia has an elective affinity with totalitarian regimes, something never before seen in our diplomatic history.
The celebrated South-South dialogue is nothing more than a mask that hides an option for the progressive disrespect to democratic choices and human rights.
If this is the price to be paid for a seat at the UN’s Security Council, the obligatory question is the following: is it worth the price?
Denis Lerrer Rosenfield is a Philosophy professor at the UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). He can be reached at Denisrosenfield@terra.com.br.
