Reformist Intellectuals and Civil Society

Abstract

In the late 1990s, Akbar Ganji revealed in a reformist daily that the “chain murders” (ghatlhaye zanjirei) of dissident intellectuals were at the behest of ruling conservative elite. This particular set of calculated murders of eminent political and intellectual figures dated back to the late 1980s and culminated in a number of brutal killings in 1998. One of the main sources to reveal the reality behind the chain murders was a former deputy minister of intelligence, Saeed Hajjarian, while Ganji was himself a former Revolutionary Guard (Ansari, 2000, p. 177). It was political insiders turned reformist, such as Ganji and Hajjarian, recognized as a key reformist intellectual, who brought the issue to public attention by asserting that leading conservative figures, including clerics with political clout, were the ultimate culprits. The reasons Ganji gave in an interview as to why the murders became a focus of his writings included: the significance of every human life, his questioning of any ideology that allows the killing of those with opposing thoughts, the need to problematize how political power that comes with the responsibility to protect people can become involved in a type of extermination, and, finally, to prevent such thing from being repeated (Ganji, 2000, p. 210).¹ Ganji even claimed that one explanation for why the defendants in the chain murders were identified and arrested was because Khatami himself refused to ignore the issue and saw it as one of honor (Ganji, 2000, p. 211).