In Shift, Iran's President Calls for End to Syrian Crackdown

- By NEIL MacFARQUHAR - The New York Times - September 8, 2011

For years, posters celebrating the decades-old alliance joining Syria and Iran festooned the streets and automobiles of the Syrian capital — the images of Presidents Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embroidered with roses and daffodils.

But that alliance is now strained, and on Thursday, President Ahmadinejad of Iran became the most recent, and perhaps the most unexpected, world leader to call for President Assad to end his violent crackdown of an uprising challenging his authoritarian rule in Syria.

When the Arab Spring broke out, upending the regional order, Iran seemed to emerge a winner: its regional adversary, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was ousted from power and its most important ally, Syria, was emboldened.

But the popular demands for change swept into Syria, and now, as Mr. Assad’s forces continue to shoot unarmed demonstrators, Iran sees its fortunes fading on two fronts: its image as a guardian of Arab resistance has been battered, and its most important regional strategic ally is in danger of being ousted.

Even while it has been accused of providing financial and material support for Mr. Assad’s crackdown, Iran has increased calls for Syria to end the violence and reform its political process, a formula Tehran apparently hopes will repair its image and, if heeded, possibly bolster Mr. Assad’s standing.

“Regional nations can assist the Syrian people and government in the implementation of essential reforms and the resolution of their problems,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said in an interview in Tehran, according to his official Web site. Other press accounts of the interview with a Portuguese television station quoted him as also saying, “A military solution is never the right solution,” an ironic assessment from a man whose own questionable re-election in 2009 prompted huge street demonstrations that were put down with decisive force.

The collapse of the Assad government would be a strategic blow to Shiite-majority Iran, cutting off its most important bridge to the Arab world while empowering its main regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and its increasingly influential competitor, Turkey, both Sunni-majority nations. Iran would also lose its main arms pipeline to Hezbollah in Lebanon, further undermining its ambition to be the primary regional power from the Levant to Pakistan.

Not long ago, Iran and its Arab allies like Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were seen as folk heroes to many Arabs for their confrontational stance toward the United States and Israel.

But Iran has suddenly found itself on the wrong side of the barricades.

“Assad’s heroic image of resistance is being watered down,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at Tufts University and the author of “The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.” “That’s the problem for Iran and for Hezbollah. They are trying to find out how to have their cake and eat it, too.”

Demonstrators clogging the streets from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria are demanding freedom and democracy, forcing Iran to openly struggle with the problem of how to endorse the revolutionary spirit while simultaneously buttressing its crucial strategic Arab ally.

“They don’t fit into the framework of toppling dictators and democracy and all that,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Lebanon.

Yet many analysts say that the Iranians have tried to play both sides of the barricades, supporting their allies in Syria with all manner of aid while simultaneously voicing support for the revolutions elsewhere, initially calling them the offspring of their own 1979 revolution.

“It is mostly for the Arab gallery, rather than a tangible policy shift,” said Cengiz Candar, a prominent Turkish columnist. “In terms of the Syrian opposition, there is nobody Iran can stand on in case the regime is replaced.”

Iran has been helping Syria with everything from money to advice on controlling the Internet, analysts say, offering its expertise to help stave off the catastrophe that Mr. Assad’s collapse would be for Tehran’s regional ambitions. Aside from propping up Syria with billions of dollars, it has pressed others, including Iraq, to support Mr. Assad.

Syrian protesters take it as a matter of faith that security forces from both Iran and Hezbollah have been drawn into the fray, trading cellphone videos that are said to show Hezbollah fighters streaming across the border in black S.U.V.’s.

Given that the Assad government has had about 40 years to perfect the instruments of repression, most analysts believe that it does not really need men or much advice from the outside.

But in its ever more stringent sanctions against Syria, the European Union included the Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, accusing it of providing “technical assistance, equipment and support to the Syrian security services to repress civilian protest movements.”

Analysts are convinced that behind the scenes the Iranians are pushing for a tough line, suggesting that their repression of the 2009 democracy protests in Iran is the model to follow.

“Iran calling for Syria to dialogue rather than use force against its population is akin to Silvio Berlusconi telling Charlie Sheen not to womanize,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is a sharp critic of the Iranian leadership.

Analysts say the scale and the duration of the protests in Syria just became too great for the Iranians to ignore, and yet they still try.

“Muslim people in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and other countries are in need of this vigilance today,” the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a recent sermon marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. “They must not let the enemies hijack the victories they have gained.”

Then he talked about the oppression of people in Bahrain — which is mainly Shiite — before moving on to the famine in Somalia.

On the other hand, the constant focus on the potential repercussions of the uprisings clearly shows that Iran’s leaders are worried. Not least among their worries is that the protests could set off renewed demonstrations at home, although aside from some environmental protests in the northwest, nothing significant has been reported.

There is also an increasingly vocal school of thought in Iran that says it has too much vested in the Assad government. Among other things, it has allowed regional competitors like Turkey, a largely Sunni country, to advance at the expense of Shiite Iran. The Iranians’ minority status across much of the Arab world can make their religious credentials suspect to the majority — who might accuse them of being a force for sectarianism.

“The reality of the matter is that our absolute support for Syria was a wrong policy,” Ahmad Avaei, a member of Parliament, told the Web site Khabar Online. “The people protesting against the government in that country are religious people, and the protest movement there is a grass-roots movement.”

At stake is Iran’s image in the wider region, and its ability to add teeth to its claim to be upholding Arab and Muslim interests in confronting Israel.

“Iran wants to be perceived as the voice of the downtrodden in the Middle East, the one country that speaks truth to power,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “Their close rapport with the Assad regime undermines that image.”

Anne Barnard contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon; Heba Afify from Cairo; and Artin Afkhami from Boston.

Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot

By WINNIE HU - The New York Times - August 30, 2011

Under a new state law in New Jersey, lunch-line bullies in the East Hanover schools can be reported to the police by their classmates this fall through anonymous tips to the Crimestoppers hot line.

In Elizabeth, children, including kindergartners, will spend six class periods learning, among other things, the difference between telling and tattling.

And at North Hunterdon High School, students will be told that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander when it comes to bullying: if they see it, they have a responsibility to try to stop it.

But while many parents and educators welcome the efforts to curb bullying both on campus and online, some superintendents and school board members across New Jersey say the new law, which takes effect Sept. 1, reaches much too far, and complain that they have been given no additional resources to meet its mandates.

The law, known as the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, is considered the toughest legislation against bullying in the nation. Propelled by public outcry over the suicide of a Rutgers University freshman, Tyler Clementi, nearly a year ago, it demands that all public schools adopt comprehensive antibullying policies (there are 18 pages of “required components”), increase staff training and adhere to tight deadlines for reporting episodes.

Each school must designate an antibullying specialist to investigate complaints; each district must, in turn, have an antibullying coordinator; and the State Education Department will evaluate every effort, posting grades on its Web site. Superintendents said that educators who failed to comply could lose their licenses.

“I think this has gone well overboard,” Richard G. Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, said. “Now we have to police the community 24 hours a day. Where are the people and the resources to do this?”

In most cases, schools are tapping guidance counselors and social workers as the new antibullying specialists, raising questions of whether they have the time or experience to look into every complaint of harassment or intimidation and write the detailed reports required. Some administrators are also worried that making schools legally responsible for bullying on a wider scale will lead to more complaints and open the door to lawsuits from students and parents dissatisfied with the outcome.

But supporters of the law say that schools need to do more as conflicts spread from cafeterias and corridors to social media sites, magnifying the effects and making them much harder to shut down. Mr. Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his college roommate secretly used a webcam to capture an intimate encounter between Mr. Clementi and another man and stream it over the Internet, according to the police.

“It’s not the traditional bullying: the big kid in the schoolyard saying, ‘You’re going to do what I say,’ ” Richard Bergacs, an assistant principal at North Hunterdon High, said.

Dr. Bergacs, who investigates half a dozen complaints of bullying each month, said most involved both comments on the Internet and face-to-face confrontations on campus. “It’s gossip, innuendo, rumors — and people getting mad about it,” he said.

This summer, thousands of school employees attended training sessions on the new law; more than 200 districts have snapped up a $1,295 package put together by a consulting firm that includes a 100-page manual and a DVD.

At a three-hour workshop this month, Philip W. Nicastro, vice president of the firm, Strauss Esmay Associates, tried to reassure a group of newly named antibullying specialists and coordinators gathered in a darkened auditorium at Bridgewater-Raritan High School.

“I know many of you came in here saying, ‘Holy cow, I’m going to be dealing with 10 reports a day because everything is bullying,’ ” he told the audience, some of whom laughed nervously.

Afterward, Meg Duffy, a counselor at the Hillside Intermediate School in Bridgewater, acknowledged that the new law was “a little overwhelming.” She said cyberbullying increased at her school last year, with students texting or posting mean messages about classmates.

The law also requires districts to appoint a safety team at each school, made up of teachers, staff members and parents, to review complaints. It orders principals to begin an investigation within one school day of a bullying episode, and superintendents to provide reports to Trenton twice a year detailing all episodes. Statewide, there were 2,846 such reports in 2008-9, the most recent year for which a total was available.

In the East Hanover district, the new partnership with Crimestoppers, a program of the Morris County sheriff’s office, is intended to make reporting easier, but it also ups the ante by involving law enforcement rather than resolving issues in the principal’s office. Crimestoppers will accept anonymous text messages, calls or tips to its Web site, then forward the information to school and local police officials.

The district is also spending $3,000 to expand antibullying training to most of its staff, including substitute teachers, coaches, custodians and cafeteria aides. It is also planning its first Community Night of Respect for students and parents in October.

“We really want to be able to implement this new law and achieve results,” the district’s superintendent, Joseph L. Ricca, said, though he added that the law’s “sheer scope may prove to be a bit unwieldy and may require some practical refinement.”

In Elizabeth, antibullying efforts will start in the classroom, with a series of posters and programs, including role-playing exercises. In one lesson, students will study pictures of children’s faces and talk about the emotions expressed (annoyance, disappointment), while in another, they will practice saying phrases like “I am angry.”

“The whole push is to incorporate the antibullying process into the culture,” Lucila Hernandez, a school psychologist, said. “We’re empowering children to use the term ‘bullying’ and to speak up for themselves and for others.”

Even districts that have long made antibullying programs a priority are preparing to step up their efforts, in response to the greater reporting demands. “This gives a definite timeline,” the Westfield superintendent, Margaret Dolan, said, noting the new one-day requirement. “Before, our rule was you need to do it as quickly as possible.”

But Dr. Dolan cautioned that an unintended consequence of the new law could be that students, or their parents, will find it easier to label minor squabbles bullying than to find ways to work out their differences.

“Kids have to learn to deal with conflict,” she said. “What a shame if they don’t know how to effectively interact with their peers when they have a disagreement.”

Sound of Post-Soviet Protest: Claps and Beeps

By ELLEN BARRY - July 14, 2011 - The New York Times

MINSK, Belarus — At the time appointed for Wednesday evening’s antigovernment protest here in the capital of Belarus, scores of burly plainclothes officers were waiting in Yakub Kolas Square. Their job was to prevent it from happening.

But it was difficult for them to know who, among the skateboarders, young urban professionals and stolid-looking grandmothers, was taking part. The park benches filled up, and then the stone curbs, but the activists — following instructions posted on an Internet site — were not actually doing anything.

At 8 p.m., their phones buzzed or beeped or played music.

That was the whole protest. Plainclothes officers with camcorders meticulously filmed the face of every person in the park and forced a few demonstrators, struggling and shouting, into buses. But the sixth of the weekly “clapping protests” had eliminated clapping, which presented both the police and activists with some tough questions.

Can you really detain people because their phones are beeping?

And when you cannot tell who is protesting, is it still a protest?

Street politics have lost their relevance in many former Soviet countries, as the political opposition has withered away. But innovative forms of protest are popping up. None of them has managed to mobilize large numbers or pose any real threat to the ruling elites. They do, however, attract young people in free-form, often social-media-directed alternatives to the picketing and chants their elders employ. And the participants are proving very difficult to punish.

Russia has the “blue buckets,” activists who affix plastic sand toys to their cars (or their heads) in a protest against the traffic privileges accorded to government officials, whose cars are equipped with flashing blue lights. In Azerbaijan, where protesters are hustled away so quickly that even gathering is nearly impossible, small flash mobs have appeared out of nowhere to perform sword fights or folk dances.

The more permissive political atmosphere of Ukraine has spawned Femen, a group of young women who address such nonsexy issues as pension reform by baring their breasts in public. A woman was arrested in April for walking up to a World War II memorial in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, and frying eggs and sausages over the eternal flame.

Social scientists refer to these as “dilemma actions,” because they force the authorities to choose between two equally distasteful alternatives: to stand back and allow such activities to continue, taking the risk that they will build into something significant; or to impose harsh punishment on people who are engaged in a seemingly benign activity.

The latter route can result in a public backlash, as when Azerbaijan imposed two-year prison sentences on the so-called donkey bloggers, or when Russian authorities prosecuted Voina, a radical art collective best known for painting a 210-foot penis on a St. Petersburg drawbridge.

Belarus has opted to take a hard line. About 1,830 people have been detained by the police since June, when a small group of activists living in exile initiated the clapping protests, said Tatyana Revyako, who works for Vyasna, a human rights group. Upward of 500 people have received sentences of 5 to 15 days, she said.

The crackdown has generated a good deal of absurdity. As Belarus’s July 3 Independence Day holiday approached, the Minsk police chief, Igor Yevseyev, called a news conference and announced that citizens would not be punished for applauding soldiers or veterans. One of the people convicted of taking part in a clapping protest that day was Konstantin Kaplin, 36, who argued in court that contrary to the testimony of a police officer, he could not have been applauding because he has only one arm.

Another was Galina A. Goncharik, a diminutive woman of 68, who last week shared, with clear delight, the findings of a Minsk judge after she was detained for clapping on July 3. Ms. Goncharik, the decision said, “loudly expressed rude and uncensored profanity, waved her hands, acted provocatively, did not react to clear instructions, knowingly violated public order, the civil peace, expressing clear lack of respect for society.”

Her prosecution, she said, has shocked even relatives and neighbors who were stalwart supporters of the government.

“Everyone just laughed” when they heard the charges, said Ms. Goncharik, who was convicted during a 10-minute trial and paid a fine of about $175. “They said, ‘Have they gone completely crazy?’ ”

A spokesman for the Belarus Interior Ministry, Konstantin Shalkevich, would not say how many people had been detained on Wednesday, saying Belarussian law allows the police to detain any citizen for three hours without providing a reason. From the standpoint of the police, he said, the protesters’ tactics are irrelevant.

“Whether it’s clapping, or ringing telephones or any other action is all the same,” Mr. Shalkevich said. “Any activity being organized in Minsk is an activity of mass disorder. The people who organize it are located far from the territory of Belarus.”

He added: “We have the power and the means to guarantee order in Minsk, and we will guarantee order. That is my commentary.”

The arrests have had a powerful chilling effect. For this reason, the protest’s organizers changed their tactics this week, instructing participants not to clap their hands, but instead to set the alarms on their cellphones for 8 p.m.

The “alarm clock action,” as some have dubbed it, sought to minimize arrests, and in that sense, it worked. But at 8 p.m. the cellphone alarms were barely audible over the noise of passing traffic, and by the time they went silent — about a minute later — it hardly felt as if anything had taken place.

Olga Tatarinova, a 23-year-old journalist, was disappointed. She had come to the square prepared to risk arrest. She said she clapped with her feet, but no one heard her.

“Everyone is afraid,” said a 27-year-old man who said his name was Maksim Pulsov, and who occasionally pulled a checked scarf over his face. “We need some training in not being afraid.”

On the edges of the square, people were coming and going, some on their way home from work. Belarus is in the grip of a financial crisis, partly because of the Soviet-style economic policies of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. In power since 1994, Mr. Lukashenko has tried to shore up his popularity by raising wages and providing low-interest loans. This led to a steep devaluation of the Belarussian ruble; people then began hoarding food staples and lining up to convert their assets into hard currency.

But summer is a sleepy season, when much of the population disappears to cabins in the woods. The clapping protests have not attracted much support from the general public or, critically, from the factory workers who make up a crucial political constituency. This is in part because the young organizers are not offering remedies to mounting social problems, said Anatoly V. Lebedko, an opposition leader who spent four months in prison for participating in demonstrations after last December’s presidential election.

“These young people, they want more freedom, but that’s not going to convince people in the tractor factories,” Mr. Lebedko said. “We have to come up with some answers to the question: What is to be done?”