By Sara Samavati

December 30, 2009

Source:

Ezatollah Sahabi, an opposition activist and the head of the council that runs the group known as Religious-National group spoke with Rooz Online about his concerns over the recent events in Iran and stressed on refraining from violence, adding, “This regime is imposing violence on people. It is doing this in an effort to radicalize people’s struggle.” Read on for the details.

Rooz: In view of the events that took place in Tehran and other major cities in Iran, do you think that the peaceful struggle is taking a different direction?

Ezatollah Sahabi: We have specific information that the regime desires and insists that this struggle turn into violence so that it can comfortably suppress it. This is why we stress now and more than before that violence should be avoided and that the struggle needs to continue peacefully.

Rooz: But what are people supposed to do?

Sahabi: People must refrain from violence and continue their democratic struggle making it least costly with the same vehemence that the other side is insisting on violence, even on a day such as Ashura. People must exercise restraint. This is our understanding and experience of political struggle in this country and this is what we request from the Iranian nation. How well they accept this request is a different matter. We can only try and that is all we can do under these conditions. Our twenty five year experience of the revolution shows that those who wanted to response with violence gradually turned into violent as well. Furthermore, if violence becomes the norm, the rulers have the instruments of violence in their hands and are more violent.

Rooz: It appears that the rulers have decided to act violently. Today’s events have resulted in that people too are not becoming aggressive, when compared to the past.

Sahabi: We all know that the rulers are violent and are imposing violence on the public. We know that they are imposing violence and pressure so that the people’s movement becomes radicalized so that they can in turn suppress it. But what we are saying is that if violence becomes the basis of action then this regime has no constraints even if it has to kill one million people. They have decided to stay their course. Therefore, our fellow Iranians that I see in the streets should exercise restraint and sacrifice. Sacrifice of course does not necessarily mean that I should go and face the bullets of the enemy. Sometimes it means that I should control myself so as to prevent going where my enemy wants me to go.

Rooz: How optimistic are you about the strategy that you just mentioned?

Sahabi: There is no struggle that can be precisely predicted, particularly in the complex environment of Iran. I think there is no other society in the world as complex as ours. Still, we must have plans to move on from one phase to the next. We are not the only ones who are concerned about violence. Mr. Mousavi and Mr. Karoubi too, among others are concerned about this. Mr. Khatami has been advocating the non-violent approach for twelve years now and has been defending it. We must focus our struggle on removing Mr. Ahmadinejad and take a step forward in this goal and this would push the threat of greater harm to the country by this government one step away and thus give us breathing space to seriously think about the future of our country.