OPEN LETTER TO FARAH DIBA
Good morning, Mrs. Pahlevi,
The idea to write to you came to us, as we were reading the “New Revue” dated May 7th and 14th in which you describe your life as an empress. We thereby received the impression that your concerns as a Persian are insufficiently informed. Therefore you also misinform the German readers of this magazine.
You say: “Summer in Iran is very hot, and like most Persians I travel with my family to the Persian Riviera by the Caspian Sea.”
“Like most Persians” – isn’t that exaggerated? In Balutschestan or Mehran for example,“ most Persians” suffer from inherited syphilis. And most Persians are farmers with a yearly income of less than one hundred dollars. Most Persian women lose every second child – fifty of a hundred – die from hunger, poverty and illness. And children who knot carpets fourteen in fourteen hours daily work - do they –most of them? - in the summers, travel to the Persian Riviera at the Caspian Sea?
When you were returning that summer of 1959 from Paris and drove to the Caspian Sea, you were “really hungry for Persian rice and especially for our naturally sweet fruit, for our sweets and all the things, which a genuine Persian meal consists of, and which you can only find in Iran.”
You see most Persians aren’t hungry for sweets but for a piece of bread. For the farmers of Mehdiabad for instance “a Persian meal” consists of straw soaked in water, and only one hundred and fifty kilometers outside of Teheran farmers protested against extermination of grasshoppers since grasshoppers are their main food. One can also live on roots of plants and date pits: not long, not well, but starving Persian farmers try – and die at the age of thirty: which is the average life expectancy of a Persian. But you are still young, only twenty eight years old – you would have two more years ahead of you -, “which one can supposedly only get in Iran.”
At that time you had found also the city of Teheran had changed: ” Buildings had risen out of the ground like mushrooms, streets had gotten wider and larger. My girlfriends too had grown more beautiful, had become real young ladies.”
Housing of the “lower millions” you thereby overlooked for your own sake: the 200’000 people in the south of Teheran that live in underground caves and overcrowded clay huts, which resemble stables for rabbits, according to the New York Times. The police of the Shah makes sure that you don’t get to see these things. In 1963, when close to a thousand people looked for refuge on a building site close to a living are for the wealthy, hundreds of policemen thrashed and chased them away, in order not to hurt the aesthetic perception of those who travel to the Caspian Sea in the summer. The Shah considers it entirely bearable that his people live in such housing; he only perceives the sight of it for himself and you as unbearable. It is said, though, that people living in the cities are still doing a lot better. ” I know children “ – a travel story from the south of Iran says -, “ who for years wallow in the dirt like worms and eat weeds and foul fish.” Even though these children are not your children, which you certainly must be glad of, they are children.
You wrote: “In arts and science Germany as well as France, England Italy and the other great cultures – play a leading role, and that will remain so in the future.”
That angered the Shah. In respect to Germany, you had better leave such prognosis up to German cultural politicians—they understand more of it. But why not simply admit that 85 % of the Persian population can’t read or write, and 96% of people in the countryside are illiterate. Out of 15 million Persian farmers, only 514,480 can read. The 2 billion dollars of development aid that Persia received after the uprising against Mossadegh 1953, according to American investigations, have simply vanished. Schools and hospitals that should have been built with that money, remain undetectable. But the Shah now sends his soldiers to the villages, to teach the poor – an “army of knowledge” as they are called. People will look forward to that and will forget hunger, thirst and death. You know the phrase by the Shah which Hubert Humphrey spread: ”Thanks to the American support, the army supposedly is in good shape and capable of dealing with the situation and the people. The army doesn’t prepare to fight against the Russians; it prepares to fight its own people. “
You say that the Shah is a “simple, excellent and dutiful person, just like any other normal citizen.”
That sounds a bit euphemistic, if you consider that the monopoly on opium plantations alone brings him millions a year, that he is the main distributor of narcotics smuggled to the US, and that in 1953, heroin was still unknown to the Persian people, while today, thanks to the emperor’s initiative, 20 % of all Persians are addicted to drugs. Here, people involved in that kind of business aren’t called dutiful, and they aren’t considered normal citizens, but criminals.
You write: “ The only difference is that my husband isn’t just anyone, he has to carry greater and heavier responsibilities than other men.”
What do you mean by “has to?” The Persian people haven’t asked him to govern in Iran. The American secret service – You know, the CIA – paid 19 million to topple Mossadegh. We can only guess where the money from the developmental aid has gone, since with the bit of jewelry that he gave you – a diadem for 1.2 million US dollars, a broach for 1.1 million Deutschmarks, diamond earrings for 210,000 Deutschmarks, a bracelet made of brilliants, a golden purse -Two billion aren’t spent yet, but don’t worry, the West won’t be so small-minded as to judge the Shah for his embezzlement of a few billion, opium deals, bribe money to business men, relatives and secret service people, and the bit of jewelry for you. He promises that never again will Persian oil be state owned, as it was under Mossadegh, not before the resources are all exhausted, at the end of the century, when all the contracts signed by the Shah will expire. He ensures that no money flows into schools which could teach the Persian people to take their destiny into their own hands: use the oil to build an industry and spend dividends to buy agricultural machines, to water the land and master hunger. Isn’t he also the one who decrees that rebellious students can be shot down at any time, that parliament members who fight for the good of the country are arrested, tortured and murdered? He also makes sure that a 200,000 man army, 60,000 man secret service, and 33,000 man police force, well equipped with US money, and well fed, led by 12,000 army counselors, keep the country in check, to ensure that never again will what could be the only salvation of the country happens: that the oil is state owned as it was on May 1 under Mossadegh. Don’t tie the mouth of the ox when he is threshing. The millions the Shah spends in St. Moritz and deposits into Swiss banks are nothing compared to the billions and trillions that his oil earns for British Petroleum, for Standard Oil, for Caltex, Royal Dutch Shell and many more English, American and French oil corporations. By God, it is a greater and heavier responsibility that the Shah has to carry for the profits of the West than other men!
But maybe you didn’t think of the money, but more likely about the reform of property. The Shah spends six million dollars a year for public relations that picture him to the world as a benefactor. As a matter of fact 85 % of the agricultural land formerly belonged to big corporations. Now only 75 % does. A quarter of the land now belongs to the farmers. Who have to pay off 10 % interest over 15 years. Now the Persian farmer is free, now he doesn’t only receive a fifth, but two fifth of the harvest (one for his labor, one for the land that anyways belongs to him), the remaining three fifths belong to the big corporations, who only sold the land—not the irrigation system, not the seed, not the animals. Therefore the farmer was successfully made even poorer, even more dependant, more vulnerable, more docile. Truly an “ intelligent, smart” man, the Shah, as you remark rightfully.
You write about the Shah’s worries about the successor for the throne. “On this point Persian law is very strict. The Shah of Persia has to have a son, who one day will step up to the throne, and in whose hands the Shah will later lay the destiny of Iran. On this point the Persian law is extremely strict and unwavering.”
Strangely, the Shah on other occasions doesn’t take the constitution very seriously; he, for example, unconstitutionally decides upon the composition of his parliament, and the representatives have to sign an undated letter of resignation before they enter the parliament. In Persia no uncensored material gets published. Not more than three students are allowed to stand together on the University premises of Teheran. Mossadegh’s minister of justice was brutally tortured. Trials are held under exclusion of the public and torture is daily part of justice. Isn’t the Persian law in these matters less strict and unwavering?
What follows are a few examples of torture in Persia:
“At midnight of the19th of December the judge began with his questionnaire. First he asked questions and wrote my answers down. Then he asked me about things I didn’t know anything about or that didn’t concern me. All I could say was that I didn’t know anything. The prosecutor hit me in the face, and then, first on my right and then on my left hand, with a rubber club. He injured both my hands. With each question he hit again. Then he forced me to sit naked on a heated plate. Finally he took the heating plate and held it against my body until I fell unconscious. As I regained consciousness, he began to ask questions again. He fetched a bottle with some acid from another room, poured the contents into a measuring glass and dipped the club into the container.”
Do you wonder that the president of Germany, with the knowledge of all this terror, invited you and your husband to our country? We don’t. Why don’t you ask him about his knowledge of concentration camp facilities and construction. He is an expert in this field.
Do you want to know more about Persia? Lately In Hamburg, a book got published by a fellow citizen of yours, who, like you, is interested in German science and culture, who like you has read Kant, Hegel, the Grimm brothers and brothers Mann: Bagman Nirumand: “Persia, model of a developing country, or the dictatorship of the free world.” With a commentary by Hans Enzensberger. The facts and quotations we have lightly familiarized you with are taken from it. I don’t know if there are any human beings who can sleep well at night after reading this book without feeling deeply embarrassed.
We don’t want to offend you. And neither do we wish the German public to be insulted by such articles as yours in the
“ Neue Revue ”.
Sincerely,
Ulrike Maria Meinhof
Good morning, Mrs. Pahlevi,
The idea to write to you came to us, as we were reading the “New Revue” dated May 7th and 14th in which you describe your life as an empress. We thereby received the impression that your concerns as a Persian are insufficiently informed. Therefore you also misinform the German readers of this magazine.
You say: “Summer in Iran is very hot, and like most Persians I travel with my family to the Persian Riviera by the Caspian Sea.”
“Like most Persians” – isn’t that exaggerated? In Balutschestan or Mehran for example,“ most Persians” suffer from inherited syphilis. And most Persians are farmers with a yearly income of less than one hundred dollars. Most Persian women lose every second child – fifty of a hundred – die from hunger, poverty and illness. And children who knot carpets fourteen in fourteen hours daily work - do they –most of them? - in the summers, travel to the Persian Riviera at the Caspian Sea?
When you were returning that summer of 1959 from Paris and drove to the Caspian Sea, you were “really hungry for Persian rice and especially for our naturally sweet fruit, for our sweets and all the things, which a genuine Persian meal consists of, and which you can only find in Iran.”
You see most Persians aren’t hungry for sweets but for a piece of bread. For the farmers of Mehdiabad for instance “a Persian meal” consists of straw soaked in water, and only one hundred and fifty kilometers outside of Teheran farmers protested against extermination of grasshoppers since grasshoppers are their main food. One can also live on roots of plants and date pits: not long, not well, but starving Persian farmers try – and die at the age of thirty: which is the average life expectancy of a Persian. But you are still young, only twenty eight years old – you would have two more years ahead of you -, “which one can supposedly only get in Iran.”
At that time you had found also the city of Teheran had changed: ” Buildings had risen out of the ground like mushrooms, streets had gotten wider and larger. My girlfriends too had grown more beautiful, had become real young ladies.”
Housing of the “lower millions” you thereby overlooked for your own sake: the 200’000 people in the south of Teheran that live in underground caves and overcrowded clay huts, which resemble stables for rabbits, according to the New York Times. The police of the Shah makes sure that you don’t get to see these things. In 1963, when close to a thousand people looked for refuge on a building site close to a living are for the wealthy, hundreds of policemen thrashed and chased them away, in order not to hurt the aesthetic perception of those who travel to the Caspian Sea in the summer. The Shah considers it entirely bearable that his people live in such housing; he only perceives the sight of it for himself and you as unbearable. It is said, though, that people living in the cities are still doing a lot better. ” I know children “ – a travel story from the south of Iran says -, “ who for years wallow in the dirt like worms and eat weeds and foul fish.” Even though these children are not your children, which you certainly must be glad of, they are children.
You wrote: “In arts and science Germany as well as France, England Italy and the other great cultures – play a leading role, and that will remain so in the future.”
That angered the Shah. In respect to Germany, you had better leave such prognosis up to German cultural politicians—they understand more of it. But why not simply admit that 85 % of the Persian population can’t read or write, and 96% of people in the countryside are illiterate. Out of 15 million Persian farmers, only 514,480 can read. The 2 billion dollars of development aid that Persia received after the uprising against Mossadegh 1953, according to American investigations, have simply vanished. Schools and hospitals that should have been built with that money, remain undetectable. But the Shah now sends his soldiers to the villages, to teach the poor – an “army of knowledge” as they are called. People will look forward to that and will forget hunger, thirst and death. You know the phrase by the Shah which Hubert Humphrey spread: ”Thanks to the American support, the army supposedly is in good shape and capable of dealing with the situation and the people. The army doesn’t prepare to fight against the Russians; it prepares to fight its own people. “
You say that the Shah is a “simple, excellent and dutiful person, just like any other normal citizen.”
That sounds a bit euphemistic, if you consider that the monopoly on opium plantations alone brings him millions a year, that he is the main distributor of narcotics smuggled to the US, and that in 1953, heroin was still unknown to the Persian people, while today, thanks to the emperor’s initiative, 20 % of all Persians are addicted to drugs. Here, people involved in that kind of business aren’t called dutiful, and they aren’t considered normal citizens, but criminals.
You write: “ The only difference is that my husband isn’t just anyone, he has to carry greater and heavier responsibilities than other men.”
What do you mean by “has to?” The Persian people haven’t asked him to govern in Iran. The American secret service – You know, the CIA – paid 19 million to topple Mossadegh. We can only guess where the money from the developmental aid has gone, since with the bit of jewelry that he gave you – a diadem for 1.2 million US dollars, a broach for 1.1 million Deutschmarks, diamond earrings for 210,000 Deutschmarks, a bracelet made of brilliants, a golden purse -Two billion aren’t spent yet, but don’t worry, the West won’t be so small-minded as to judge the Shah for his embezzlement of a few billion, opium deals, bribe money to business men, relatives and secret service people, and the bit of jewelry for you. He promises that never again will Persian oil be state owned, as it was under Mossadegh, not before the resources are all exhausted, at the end of the century, when all the contracts signed by the Shah will expire. He ensures that no money flows into schools which could teach the Persian people to take their destiny into their own hands: use the oil to build an industry and spend dividends to buy agricultural machines, to water the land and master hunger. Isn’t he also the one who decrees that rebellious students can be shot down at any time, that parliament members who fight for the good of the country are arrested, tortured and murdered? He also makes sure that a 200,000 man army, 60,000 man secret service, and 33,000 man police force, well equipped with US money, and well fed, led by 12,000 army counselors, keep the country in check, to ensure that never again will what could be the only salvation of the country happens: that the oil is state owned as it was on May 1 under Mossadegh. Don’t tie the mouth of the ox when he is threshing. The millions the Shah spends in St. Moritz and deposits into Swiss banks are nothing compared to the billions and trillions that his oil earns for British Petroleum, for Standard Oil, for Caltex, Royal Dutch Shell and many more English, American and French oil corporations. By God, it is a greater and heavier responsibility that the Shah has to carry for the profits of the West than other men!
But maybe you didn’t think of the money, but more likely about the reform of property. The Shah spends six million dollars a year for public relations that picture him to the world as a benefactor. As a matter of fact 85 % of the agricultural land formerly belonged to big corporations. Now only 75 % does. A quarter of the land now belongs to the farmers. Who have to pay off 10 % interest over 15 years. Now the Persian farmer is free, now he doesn’t only receive a fifth, but two fifth of the harvest (one for his labor, one for the land that anyways belongs to him), the remaining three fifths belong to the big corporations, who only sold the land—not the irrigation system, not the seed, not the animals. Therefore the farmer was successfully made even poorer, even more dependant, more vulnerable, more docile. Truly an “ intelligent, smart” man, the Shah, as you remark rightfully.
You write about the Shah’s worries about the successor for the throne. “On this point Persian law is very strict. The Shah of Persia has to have a son, who one day will step up to the throne, and in whose hands the Shah will later lay the destiny of Iran. On this point the Persian law is extremely strict and unwavering.”
Strangely, the Shah on other occasions doesn’t take the constitution very seriously; he, for example, unconstitutionally decides upon the composition of his parliament, and the representatives have to sign an undated letter of resignation before they enter the parliament. In Persia no uncensored material gets published. Not more than three students are allowed to stand together on the University premises of Teheran. Mossadegh’s minister of justice was brutally tortured. Trials are held under exclusion of the public and torture is daily part of justice. Isn’t the Persian law in these matters less strict and unwavering?
What follows are a few examples of torture in Persia:
“At midnight of the19th of December the judge began with his questionnaire. First he asked questions and wrote my answers down. Then he asked me about things I didn’t know anything about or that didn’t concern me. All I could say was that I didn’t know anything. The prosecutor hit me in the face, and then, first on my right and then on my left hand, with a rubber club. He injured both my hands. With each question he hit again. Then he forced me to sit naked on a heated plate. Finally he took the heating plate and held it against my body until I fell unconscious. As I regained consciousness, he began to ask questions again. He fetched a bottle with some acid from another room, poured the contents into a measuring glass and dipped the club into the container.”
Do you wonder that the president of Germany, with the knowledge of all this terror, invited you and your husband to our country? We don’t. Why don’t you ask him about his knowledge of concentration camp facilities and construction. He is an expert in this field.
Do you want to know more about Persia? Lately In Hamburg, a book got published by a fellow citizen of yours, who, like you, is interested in German science and culture, who like you has read Kant, Hegel, the Grimm brothers and brothers Mann: Bagman Nirumand: “Persia, model of a developing country, or the dictatorship of the free world.” With a commentary by Hans Enzensberger. The facts and quotations we have lightly familiarized you with are taken from it. I don’t know if there are any human beings who can sleep well at night after reading this book without feeling deeply embarrassed.
We don’t want to offend you. And neither do we wish the German public to be insulted by such articles as yours in the
“ Neue Revue ”.
Sincerely,
Ulrike Maria Meinhof
