It is rare indeed to meet a person who is truly fearless in the face of raw power. The journalist Akbar Ghanji is one of those men. He has taken on the powerful of the powerful in Iran, including the Supreme Leader and the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. In his view, Iran will only be truly reformed when the Supreme Leader is a ceremonial post and when those responsible for high crimes and misdemeanors have been punished before the law.
He has paid a price for his courage in naming regime figures responsible for the murder of dissident intellectuals. As I write he is fiercely determined to a continue a hunger strike demanding, among other things, that Supreme Leader Hojjatislam Ali Khamenei step down.
Ghanji is a man of iron will and unfathomable determination. When I talked with him for hours in January 2000 he told me that the Islamic Republic had destroyed him professionally and that he had nothing left except his will to fight. He said he "expected to return to jail and that he was ready." I was humbled in his presence and I have admired him fervently ever since. If ever a man deserved our respect, it is Ghanji.
The regime is doing its best to pretend that Ghanji is not starving himself to death, and as the latest BBC report indicates, they are attempting to close the channels to him, in this case his lawyer.
This is a drama that we may not turn away from.
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