NWIP Delegation to Iran 2-7th of April 2007

 
In April 2007 a group of medical students from Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project visited their fellow students in Tehran. The delegates included Camilla Mattsson, Karin Svensson and Wenjing Tao from Sweden, and Jakob Gierten from Germany. This was the first NWIP delegation to Iran and was a follow-up to the last visit the Swedish affiliate of IPPNW (SLMK) made to Tehran 20-23rd of January 2007. Our host in Iran was students and doctors from SCVWS – Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support, who is on their way of forming a suborganisation so called PSR Iran that will become the iranian affiliate of IPPNW. During the last visit, the Iranian students showed great interest in starting up local activities in Tehran. Therefor the planning of a second student delegation to Iran was initiated with the aim of informing the Iranian students about the IPPNW student movement and helping them starting up a local active group under the frame of IPPNW.

 
Part 1: Visit in Andimeshk 2-4th of April

Before the activities in Tehran, two students from the NWIP-delegation (Wenjing Tao & Karin Svensson) had the opportunity to visit Andimeshk, a small city situated in the west of Iran. There we stayed at the home of a doctor from SCWVS, Dr Soheil Saki, and his family.

During the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-88), Andimeshk was a strategically important city, as soldiers going to/from the southern front passed here. Being close to the border of Iraq and also an important military target, Andimeshk was affected hard by the war. Even today the Iran-Iraq war plays an important part of the everyday life of people in this city, as well as the rest of Iran. Many inhabitants have strong memories from the time when Andimeshk was heavily bombed by military airplanes. Most of the people had either themselves been injured or had friends and family members who died or were injured, e.g. Dr Saki had lost his father during the war.

We were told that Andimeshk is called „the City of 1100 martyrs“, as 1100 soldiers from this city were killed during the war. On many walls around the city there were huge paintings of famous martyrs. Being in Andimeshk we had a great opportunity to learn more about a war that is more or less unknown to many European students. We visited many places that had connection to the war, amongst others a former battlefield, a military base that was now turned into a museum and a graveyard for only martyrs that can be found in every city in Iran. Some of Dr Saki‘s friends had wide knowledge of the war. They guided us through these places and answered all of our questions about the war. 

Except for discussing the Iran-Iraq war we also had a great time meeting the friends and relatives of Dr Saki, experiencing everyday-life and discussing various topics with them. We often ended up in the field of politics and we clearly realized something that should have been obvious for us from the beginning; i.e. that Iranian people have so different opinions between themselves. Some are strictly religious and others are not, some are supporters of the government while others are more liberal. It was not at all the one-track, fundamentalistic picture of Iran that has sometimes been painted out in western media. During discussions with the people we met, it was clear that they didn’t have any hard feelings toward people from Iraq, Europe or America, but that the blame was to put on the government of USA. They blame US government for not stopping the Iran-Iraq war and supporting Iraq during the war*, and likely we can all agree that the current political situation does not improve their image of US. No matter if we agreed on each others point of view or not, we always showed great respect for each other – even during the most intense debates.  

Our visit to Andimeshk greatly widened our perspectives and helped us achieving a more heterogenic view of Iran – both of the people and the country, which was really helpful for the work done in Tehran afterwards. We were warmly welcomed and experienced the friendly and familiar atmosphere of the Iranian people, not to mention Iranian hospitality most likely being one of the greatest in the world. This experience was truly invaluable to us and we learned things that no book could teach us.

*The UN never interfered in the Iran-Iraq war until the end, in spite of use of chemical weapons (mustard gas and nerve agents) both on the battlefields and against civilians in Iran, an act that was clearly violating the 1925 Geneva protocol to ban the use of Chemical weapons.

Part 2: Meeting with SCWVS students in Tehran 5-7th of April

Thursday 5th of April 2007: At the medical university

During the first day of our 3 day long meeting, we listened to a presentation about the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war by Dr. Shariar Khateri at the medical university, together with a group of Iranian medical students from SCWVS. This was a very informative presentation and many new facts were presented to us, e.g. that 50000 people in Iran still suffer from medical effects from mustard gas and nerve agents.

After SCWVS’ presentation, we made a short presentation about IPPNW and the student movement. Since all students were a bit tired and seemed a little shy, we decided to wait with group discussions until Friday, and instead spent some time with getting to know each other first.

Friday, 6th of April 2007: Peaceful workshops in Tochal mountain

This day started early for all us as we planed to have a social day with peaceful workshops on Touchal mountain, which is in the mountain range surrounding Teheran.

Friday in Iran is like Sunday in western countries and many people were enjoying hiking and some fresh air outside of Tehran’s heavy traffic. After climbing half-way up the mountain, we had a delicious Iranian breakfast. The view was wonderful and we found a nice place to sit down to have our first workshop:

Workshop: Nuclear Weapon Basics

As we didn’t know what knowledge the students had about nuclear weapons our first workshop aimed at delivering some basic facts about nuclear weapons and to answer questions risen by the students. We started off with brainstorming in smaller groups, so the students could pin down what they already know, discuss with fellow students and write down open questions about nuclear weapons. After each group presented their points we gave a presentation about Nuclear weapons, trying to cover all the topics that were brought up during the brainstorming. Our presentation included medical effects of nuclear weapons, basic facts like numbers, nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states, NATO countries etc. We also explained the NPT and talked about the possible risks connected to nuclear weapons. As for the medical effects we realised that both chemical and nuclear weapons have similar effects: they do not only damage the health dreadfully and immediately but they also have incredible long-term consequences.

The main problem with NPT, which the iranian students also pointed out, is that nuclear weapon states do not fulfil their part of the agreement but expect non-nuclear weapon states to do so. International agreements only work if all signatory states show an authentic effort to comply with the principles and rules. After the more informative part of the workshop we spend some time discussing different questions that was raised by the Iranian students.

Afterwards we took the last steep way up to the station of the cable cabin, which would take us to the very top of Touchal Mountain. It was amazing: when the cabin brought us to the top everything was suddenly covered with snow. After a snowball fight and a common lunch we got down again to warm up for the second workshop.

Workshop: Security

The aim of this workshop was to discuss the subject of security and to find out what security means personally to each of us. We opened up with a general and open question: “How can we achieve equal balance in the world?” The students discussed this question in small groups and we summoned their thoughts in an open discussion. The Iranian students answered us that mainly in order to achieve a peaceful and equal world we would need to incorporate religion in our lives and politics. This was something that we were a bit surprised (positively!) to hear, as religion was not a factor that had occurred to us. We were very curious to hear them motivate their answers and this was some of the points they brought up: First of all, religion is against offensive war. Second of all, religion encourages respect and unselfishness. Every human being is considered equal and therefor we shall share the resources with others. Thirdly, religion sees honesty as the foundation for communication and co-operation, instead of the mistrust that is shadowing the relationship between nations today. Talking about security one should seek to get to the real cause of problems and not going down the road of using threat of nuclear weapons to control conflicts, terrorism etc. Deterrence is not a concept that brings long term security. All of this seems utopian. However, discussing these questions helps to transform this utopia into awareness amongst people, which is the first step towards change. We rounded off the workshop with presenting the concepts of “Old and New Security” developed by Dr Hans Levander from IPPNW Sweden and we discovered that there are many similarities between these concepts and the religious principles. We established a common ground with the Iranian student by agreeing that it’s not religion in itself that is the foundation for a peaceful world, but a certain way of thinking that is fundamental for all religions and which is also emphasised in “Old and New Security”. 

Some of the concepts of Old and New Security

Saturday 7th of April 2007

We made a visit to SCWVS’ peace museum, which contained a very nice exhibition of paintings, booklets and photographs of the victims of both nuclear and chemical weapons. The similarities of the injuries were striking, and it was interesting to see that organizations in Japan and Iran had exchanged experiences and worked together against weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Edalat from Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII, campaigniran.org) was invited by Dr Khateri to participate in a plenary discussion about Iran’s nuclear program, together with us and some students from Canada. He had a quite interesting talk about the history of Iran’s nuclear program, which he assured us was totally peaceful. He claimed that the US just used nuclear weapons as an excuse to have a regime change in Iran. Due to him, USA (Rumsfelt and Cheney) actually persuaded Iran to start their ambitions for nuclear technology during the 70’s. He explained that the people in Iran still are very upset that Iraq used chemical weapons against them during the Iran-Iraq war, without any protests or resolutions from the UN until the end of the war. They still haven’t got any excuses, and no one has been accused for the crimes. He also believed that Iran’s crime against the NPT had been of minor significance, and that i.e. Taiwan and South Korea had made worse things without the rest of the world giving a notice. Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy according to article 4 of the NPT, whilst the US is braking against article 6 all the time. He was sure that Iran had no nuclear weapon ambitions, and part of the reasons to why he was convinced was that there is a fatwa against weapons of mass destruction and that Iran never used chemical weapons against Iraq. He also said that it’s not in Iran’s strategic interest to develop nuclear weapons, as developing these weapons of mass destruction while claiming that they do not have such intentions would make Iran loose credibility amongst the Islamic countries.

Our impression was that many people feel that Iran is being threatened by the US, Great Britain and Israel, and that the country is treated unfairly. The memories from the Iran-Iraq war are still very painful, and people feel that justice still haven’t been made.

We continued the third day of our meeting with presenting Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project, the dialogue methods and one last workshop.

Workshop: Activism

We divided the participants into groups of four and they brainstormed for 20 minutes on ideas for future peace activities in Iran that they would be interested to engage in. We suggested that they could brainstorm about activities involving chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, peace, environmental question etc, and reminded them that the IPPNW students’ agenda was quite broad. Each group then presented their best ideas for each other, and interesting enough, all the groups had discussed activities against weapons of mass destruction. They seemed to be very inspired after our three days together, and the ideas they had were:

Inform other medical students about IPPNW, SCWVS, chemical and nuclear weapons by arranging meetings at their university, e.g. inviting victims of chemical weapons attacks to inform about medical effects of chemical weapons and case studies etc.

• Make a journal about IPPNW, SCWVS, CW och NW and distribute to students
• Create a website
• Make an exhibition at the university
• Arrange workshops at the annual Medical Students Conference in Iran 
• Arrange workshops about the effects of chemical weapons at regional or international IPPNW-conferences
• Arrange Target X or Nuclear Weapon Free Cup of Tea at their university

The students seemed very interested and inspired to start these activities, and they moved on to discuss more concrete plans on how to get started for another 20 minutes. The plans they had made were then presented for the big group.

 
Recently we received a mail from the student representative of PSR Iran, Leila Moein, about the plans they had made after our delegation, which was very encouraging to read. The students are planning a photo exhibition of the recent IPPNW student activities at Tehran University to attract more students to the group. They also plan two workshops about chemical weapons and its effect at the next IPPNW congress. We are looking forward to see the results of these activities and how they will move on, and we will be really glad to meet them on upcoming IPPNW international meetings. We believe that the Iranian students would and will be a very important part of IPPNW’s international peace movement, and we hope that NWIP have contributed to introducing them to our organization.

Conclusions

We all agree that the meeting was of satisfaction for all parts. As NWIP members, we have learned a lot from this visit and widened our perspectives, not least due to the many interesting discussion we had with the students. We received very positive response from the Iranian students, who felt that they had learned a lot about Nuclear weapons and IPPNW. The last workshop (Activism) went beyond our expectations, and we truly hope for long term effects of this delegation. We think that knowledge about the Iran-Iraq war is essential for many different reasons, amongst others because it was a war that had and still has great impact on the young generation in Iran today. This is something that needs to be considered when discussing politics with the Iranian people. The Iran-Iraq war also teaches us another lesson; nobody expected chemical weapons to be used after WWI, but it was used by the Iraqi troops in Iran and Iraq (Halabja). Today nobody expects nuclear weapons to be used again, but as history has proven us wrong before, how can we be sure now?