A public campaign by Australia’s government to try to shame Iran into freeing Kylie Moore-Gilbert would not have worked.
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has cast doubt on the Australian government’s strategy in securing her release from Iran last November.
In her first post-release public interview on 9 March, Moore-Gilbert said she believed the government’s “quiet diplomacy” approach – dealing behind the scenes with the Iranian regime rather than highlighting her situation with a public campaign – had prolonged her ordeal.
Would criticising the regime in public have achieved quicker results?
Firstly, one must acknowledge that Moore-Gilbert has been through a hideously traumatic experience that would have destroyed a person less mentally strong than her. It is only right and natural – and presumably helpful to her healing process – that she examine what happened and seek to draw lessons from it. What follows is no criticism of her.
The background issue to Moore-Gilbert’s claim is simple. What can governments do when a foreign government imprisons their nationals on spurious grounds?
Take two examples involving UK nationals.
In 2018 Matthew Hedges, a British academic, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates on charges of spying. He was given a life sentence. In that case, his family started a media campaign for his release, which the British government supported. The campaign shocked the UAE leadership into pardoning Hedges and freeing him.
Now take the situation of a British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested during a visit to Iran in 2016 on charges of spying. She received a five-year prison sentence. The UK government, supported by the UK media, has gone public in its criticism of Iran over holding her. To no avail. Though she has now completed her sentence, she is reported to be facing another charge that could see her time in Iran extended.
Read the article by Ian Parmeter in The Interpreter.