• Home
• Sign Now!
• Conference 08
• Material
• Fact Sheets
• Press
• Contact

Internationale Konferenz

3. und 4. Mai 2008, Campus der Universität Wien (Altes AKH), Hof 2, Hörsaal C1

Statement concerning accusations and coverage of our conference on Iran

During the run-up to the international conference “The Iranian threat” from May 3rd to 4th the initiative Stop the Bomb declined a request from a representative of the state-controlled Iranian Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) for permission to attend the conference. Subsequently, the IRNA started an email-campaign against us, by spreading the assertion, that the exclusion occurred due to the representative's nationality and in addition constitutes a violation of the freedom of the press, via media mailing lists and in mails to the University of Vienna. Both accusations were raised anew in the pro-governmental Iran Daily (http://www.iran-daily.com/1387/3117/html/national.htm). The very next day András Szigetvari incorporated one of the charges in his derStandard ( http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3325059) article about our conference; Szigetvari claims the rejection of the IRNA representative is tantamount to an “infringement of the freedom of the press.”

In regards to the accusation of denying the IRNA representative access based solely on her nationality:
This charge is self-evidently insubstantial, seeing as though numerous Iranians participated in the panels and accounted for a portion of the audience. Unfortunately it is common practice in Austria to lump all Iranians together; a slap in the face of all those who for decades have fought against the Sharia and for a secular Iran. Our solidarity is aimed at them, not the IRNA.

In regards to the claim of violating the freedom of the press:
By no means does freedom of the press require a private individual or organizations to allow the press unfettered access to everywhere and everything. In fact freedom of the press consists in a private individual's right vis-a-vis the state and a rejection of the state's prerogative to interfere in activities of the press, bar any infraction of the law. When a representative of a regime, who permits newspapers and other media to publish only after they are declared compatible with Sharia law by a censoring committee, invokes the freedom of the press on the state-controlled and state-sanctioned website Iran Daily (published by IRNA), then we are witness to either a tactical ploy or a very bad joke.

The debarment of the IRNA representative took place for two simple reasons which are distinct from those insinuated by the IRNA and derStandard:

1) We do not cooperate with representatives of the Iranian regime, which threatens to exterminate Israel, which subjugates their own population under Sharia rule and furthermore openly pursues an endeavor to spread the 1979 Islamic revolution all over the world. (Ayatollah Khomeini)

2) The safety of all participants are of utmost concern to us, especially the security of the exiled Iranian lecturers and audience members. The disbarment of the IRNA occurred not least at the request of Iranian participants.

We therefore do not need to apologize or take anything back.

We would like to seize the opportunity to point out that András Szigetvari partook solely in the initial panel of our conference. Even during that panel various very distinct views were brought forward, most of which Szigetvari has unfortunately forgotten to mention in his article. All panel participants did indeed agree on the necessity of preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb - and it is utterly revealing that Szigetvari summarizes this fact in the title “war threats from the auditorium,” all the while refusing to classify the explicit objective of the Islamic Republic of Iran to finish Israel off as a war threat. Should the Iranian nuclear bomb be preventable without a war, we would be among the first to welcome it – OMV's intended billion Euro deal, against which the campaign “Stop the bomb” is directed, does however not facilitate such an outcome.