HISTORYAT A GLANCE |
THE REVOLUTION(Part 2.)
The activities of the revolutionary courts became a focus of intense
controversy. On the one hand, left-wing political groups and populist clerics
pressed hard for "revolutionary justice" for miscreants of the former regime. On
the other hand, lawyers' and human rights' groups protested the arbitrary nature
of the revolutionary courts, the vagueness of charges, and the absence of
defense lawyers. Bazargan, too, was critical of the courts' activities. At the
prime minister's insistence, the revolutionary courts suspended their activities
on March 14, 1979. On April 5, new regulations governing the courts were
promulgated. The courts were to be established at the discretion of the
Revolutionary Council and with Khomeini's permission. They were authorized to
try a variety of broadly defined crimes, such as "sowing corruption on earth,"
"crimes against the people," and "crimes against the Revolution." The courts
resumed their work on April 6. On the following day, despite international pleas
for clemency, Hoveyda, the shah's prime minister for twelve years, was put to
death. Attempts by Bazargan to have the revolutionary courts placed under the
judiciary and to secure protection for potential victims through amnesties
issued by Khomeini also failed. Beginning in August 1979, the courts tried and
passed death sentences on members of ethnic minorities involved in
antigovernment movements. Some 550 persons had been executed by the time
Bazargan resigned in November 1979. Bazargan had also attempted, but failed, to
bring the revolutionary committees under his control. The committees, whose
members were armed, performed a variety of duties. They policed neighborhoods in
urban areas, guarded prisons and government buildings, made arrests, and served
as the execution squads of the revolutionary tribunals. The committees often
served the interests of powerful individual clerics, revolutionary
personalities, and political groups, however. They made unauthorized arrests,
intervened in labor-management disputes, and seized property. Despite these
abuses, members of the Revolutionary Council wanted to bring the committees
under their own control, rather than eliminate them. With this in mind, in
February 1979 they appointed Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani head of the
Tehran revolutionary committee and charged him with supervising the
committees ountrywide. Mahdavi-Kani dissolved many committees,
consolidated others, and sent thousands of committeemen home. But the
committees, like the revolutionary courts, endured, serving as one of the
coercive arms of the revolutionary government.
In May 1979 Khomeini authorized the establishment of the Pasdaran (Pasdaran-e
Enghelab-e Islami, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or Revolutionary Guards).
The Pasdaran was conceived by the men around Khomeini as a military force loyal
to the Revolution and the clerical leaders, as a counterbalance for the regular
army, and as a force to use against the guerrilla organizations of the left,
which were also arming. Disturbances among the ethnic minorities accelerated the
expansion of the Pasdaran.
Two other important organizations were established in this formative period.
In March Khomeini established the Foundation for the Disinherited (Bonyad-e
Mostazafin). The organization was to take charge of the assets of the Pahlavi
Foundation and to use the proceeds to assist low-income groups. The new
foundation in time came to be one of the largest conglomerates in the country,
controlling hundreds of expropriated and nationalized factories, trading firms,
farms, and apartment and office buildings, as well as two large newspaper
chains. The Crusade for Reconstruction (Jihad-e Sazandegi or Jihad), established
in June, recruited young people for construction of clinics, local roads,
schools, and similar facilities in villages and rural areas. The organization
also grew rapidly, assuming functions Trouble broke out among the Turkomans, the Kurds, and the Arabic-speaking
population of Khuzestan in March 1979. The disputes in the Turkoman region of
Gorgan were over land rather than claims for Turkoman cultural identity or
autonomy. Representatives of left-wing movements, active in the region, were
encouraging agricultural workers to seize land from the large landlords. These
disturbances were put down, but not without violence. Meanwhile, in Khuzestan,
the center of Iran's oil industry, members of the Arabic-speaking population
organized and demanded a larger share of oil revenues for the region, more jobs
for local inhabitants, the use of Arabic as a semi-official language, and a
larger degree of local autonomy. Because Arab states, including Iraq, had in the
past laid claim to
in rural areas that had previously
been handled by the Planning and Budget Organization (which replaced the Plan
Organization in 1973) and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Khuzestan as part of the "Arab homeland," the government
was bound to regard an indigenous movement among the Arabic-speaking population
with suspicion. The government also suspected that scattered instances of
sabotage in the oil fields were occurring with Iraqi connivance. In May 1979,
government forces responded to these disturbances by firing on Arab
demonstrators in Khorramshahr. Several demonstrators were killed; others were
shot on orders of the local revolutionary court. The government subsequently
quietly transferred the religious leader of the Khuzestan Arabs, Ayatollah
Mohammad Taher Shubayr al Khaqani, to Qom, where he was kept under house arrest.
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