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Using the Gratitude theory of obligation to evaluate the criticisms of the Nazanin Zaghari-
Ratcliffe case
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Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe is a double Iranian and British citizen. She was born in Tehran,
Iran, and pursued English literature before becoming a literature instructor. The big earth
tremor in Iran in 2003 motivated her to switch to humanitarian work. She became a relief
worker with the Japanese Global Association Agency. She later served as a public relations
officer for the International Association of Red Cross and Red Crescent Civilizations and the
World Health Association.
She relocated to the UK in 2007 on a bursary to train in communications management at
London Metropolitan Educational institution. In 2009, she got joined to Richard Ratcliffe. She
started operating at the Thomson Reuters Basis in 2011, initially as a planned worker and then
as
a project manager, campaigning for individual’s values and freedom of utterance and
demonstration. She had worked for BBC Media Activity, a worldwide modification foundation,
before joining THF (Dara,2020).
Mrs. Ratcliffe flew to Iran with her child Gabriella, who was about two at the time, to get
together the Iranian New Year with her social unit in March 2016. When she arrived at Imam
Khomeini Airport in April to travel to the UK, associate of the Iranian Revolutionary Defender
detained her, accusing her of being part of a "foreign-connected aggressive system." She
was
interrogated for two months and convicted to five old age in prison by the Iran Rotatory Court in
September 2016, which convicted her of attempting to topple the Iranian regime.
The formal assertion and indication against her, on the other hand, were never created
public. She has consistently disputed the allegations leveled at her. Gabriella, staying with
her
grandparents in Tehran following Ms. Ratcliffe's incarceration, got back to her parent in the
United Kingdom in 2019. The humanitarian worker served four years of her sentence in Tehran's
Evin jail. As per The Guardian, the first nine period were spent in lonely arrest. Her family
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claimed that she was tortured mentally and physically in prison. Due to the Coronavirus
outbreak, convicts were released on parole, and she spent the past year of her term on
house confinement in her parents' home in Iran.
After her term finished in 2021, she was accused of distributing Information contrary to
the Iranian regime and convicted to another period in prison and a one-year movement ban by
the court in April of that year. Ms. Ratcliffe was prosecuted, according to her lawyer, Hojjat
Kermani, for taking part in a protest outside the Iranian legation in London twelve years ago and
giving dialogue to the BBC Persian facility.
Amnesty International, a British individual rights organization, branded her legal
proceeding "Overally unjust" and her detention "Unfair and discretionary." Mrs. Radcliffe went
on two hunger demonstrations in 2019 while in prison. She began a three-day hunger strike after
being denied necessary medical treatment, followed by a 15-day hunger strike demanding her
unrestricted freedom. Two British governments create negotiation endeavors to bring her back to
the nation during their different tenure. Because Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, the
British Commission could not defend her in court (Card,1988). Following a gathering with his
Iranian opposite number Javad Zarif in 2018, former UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stated
that "it is unacceptable to jail innocent individuals unjustly at the cost of immense human
agony." In 2018, UK Prime Minister Theresa May encountered Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani at the United Nations, expressing "deep issues" about Mrs. Zaghari-detention Ratcliffe
and demanding her freedom.
The arrest of Ms. Ratcliffe had also become an international insurance policy content for
the current Boris Johnson management, which was chastised for obstructing the release
process.
When Mr. Johnson was the British Foreign Chief before he became Prime Minister, he claimed
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in a 2017 message criticizing Ms. Ratcliffe's arrest that she was "just mentoring individuals news
media" in Iran. Although his later retractions, this statement was presented as evidence in an
Iranian court that she was involved in propaganda operations.
During her imprisonment, Mrs. Ratcliffe's relatives, particularly her husband, claimed
that she was being kept in Tehran as a "propaganda tool," arguing that the British
administration had not settled an old £400 million military obligation to the Iranian regime.
Before the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, the Shah of Iran, a British supporter, bought
1,500 Chieftain tanks and over 200 military cars, paying the UK in advance. Nevertheless, only a
small portion of the military hardware was supplied to Iran before the Shah was deposed, and
the
British did not repay the outstanding principle (Klosko,2011).
Political responsibility refers to citizens' moral commitment to follow their State's laws.
When a rule act or forbearance is ethically justifiable on its own, political obligation adds
another motivation for citizens to conform. On the other hand, the law tends to go beyond
ethics,
typically forbidding ethically blameless activities and forcing ethically voluntary acts and
omissions. In such cases, one's moral responsibility to uphold the law is solely based on
political
support. This theory has three main parts, which include transactional accounts.
According to this perspective, citizens owe the government duty of appreciation for the
assistance it offers. This obligation is due irrespective of whether or not these advantages
are
obtained, and it is repaid through legal compliance. This account has a lot of evident flaws. To
begin with, only those who make a significant effort or sacrifice are entitled to Gratitude.
However, taxpayers fund public benefits, and government workers are well compensated
f
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an old one, and after centuries of debate and refining of the dominant perspectives, the
stakes may be no longer evident.
On the one hand, those who contend that we do have compliance obligations are
frequently eligible for their claims (Klosko,2011). They may argue that we have no obligation to
observe extremely unfair laws and that even when we do, our duties are sometimes
outweighed
by other factors. On the other hand, skeptics who disagree that we have responsibilities
of
obedience are generally quick to point out that we have various reasons for obeying specific
rules.
As a result, the apparent disparity between the opposing viewpoints may fade as the
positions grow more authorized. Some may think that, in practice, it makes no natural variance
which of the suitably eligible ranks one occupies. My personal opinion is unlikely to dispel these
fears. I want to argue that there are legal obligations, but I will do so with the
standard
qualifications. Mrs. Rectaffile may have no responsibility to follow a substantially unfair law or
the rules of a repressive state. Even when the State and its laws are fairly just,
compliance
obligations may be outweighed by other factors. Some people may be exempt from
such
obligations. Nevertheless, it implies that, to the extent that such a duty exists, it is
neither
influential nor presupposes the reality of any objective ethical motivation to do what the rule
mandates.
Our equivalent citizens generally create detriments from which we profit, but they cannot
be owed a debt of appreciation if they are forced to do so. Any obligation of this nature requires
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According to proponents of appreciation theory, genuine injury is not required to satisfy
the specificity requirement or that, despite appearances, these problematic activities do
cause harm. The argument that actual damage is not required is based on a contrast
between harming the State and a larger concept, such as endangering its interests. In the
case of Mrs. Ratcliffe, she does not need to show Gratitude to the government since the
reason she was imprisoned does not have any verdict that the crime she committed affects
the country's interest.
If we establish this difference, an act of disobedience of the law is ruled out if it could
hurt the State and if it is not in the State's best interests. This strategy appears to get around
the
problem instances at first glance. There is representative of the experience of people of color
in
the United Kingdom. As a Muslim woman of color, I have seen institutional racism, ranging
from stigmatization at work too lengthy security screening at airports (Ferstman & Sharpe,2021).
However, again, the concept of the State's interests is too broad. An intervention
requiring
compliance in issue instances would restrict a wide range of behaviors that are also
arguments
against the country's best interests. One could claim, for example, that condemning features
of
one's own country or speaking disparagingly about the President and other government leaders
is
detrimental to the State's objectives because a healthy level of respect is necessary for
their
ability to manage. Criticizing individual laws that have been approved, as well as the President's
budgetary or foreign policy objectives, can be equally destructiveAdmittedly, Walker points out
th t hil h littl illi g t g i b t f i d d ll g d h
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An incomplete understanding of the nature of appreciation has impeded Gratitude. If we
start with an obligation of requital, it is unclear what kind of gratitude obligation we are talking
about. When we define the commitment as compensation or payback, it no longer appears to
be a gratitude requirement (Goei & Boster,2022). The version of the argument makes a strong
case for the responsibility to express or show appreciation to a benefactor. The obvious
conclusion is that only theories of obligation with concrete consequences can prevail. An
argument based on fairness looks immediately superior to one based on Gratitude. In a
fairness argument, the moral principle at stake is the need to articulate and conduct following
a set of proper attitudes, but not the obligation to profit from others' collaborative agreements
without doing one's fair share.
There was a conflicting moral requirement in the case of Mrs. Rectafille when the
government accused her of spreading propaganda about the Iran government, yet she was only
a
teacher. According to the stringency argument that even if political responsibilities based
on
appreciation could be demonstrated, they would not be tough enough to help as
radical
responsibilities in the traditional sense (Simmons,2005). Political responsibilities are
often
regarded as prima facie rather than absolute, implying that they provide compelling moral
causes
to perform certain habits. Still, they can be overturned by competing for ethical commitments.
Nevertheless, prima facie responsibilities should be presumed to hold in all but rare
instances and should be sufficiently strict about obliging persons to endure such onerous costs
of
citizenship as paying any taxes and doing military service, even if they are not enforceable by
law Even if the specificity requirement could be met and appreciation of responsibilities to obey
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In conclusion, Gratitude necessitates appreciation for the advantages we receive, as well as
kindness and respect for our donors. An effective form of gratitude disagreement could be
based on the need for recognition or reverence. However, I believe our best opportunity for
achievement lies with a dispute based on the wants of friendliness and a dispute that tries
to appeal to our responsibility not to act in a manner that betrays a benefactor's lack of
goodwill(Woozley,2006).
Suppose one values one subscription to the democratic regime to which one originally belonged
for non-instrumental purposes. In that case, one has prima facie commitments to follow the laws
of that society as a whole, at least to the extent that those laws are among the society's norms of
personal actions and are neither seriously unjust nor self irrational. We may have political
obligations that come from the value we place on our membership in political groups, just as our
participation in lasting relationships is a basis of the correlative obligations that pervade our
private lives.
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References
Card, C. (1988). Gratitude and obligation. American Philosophical Quarterly, 25(2), 115-127.
Dara, L. (2020). Double Trouble: Claiming Complex British-Iranian Womanhood Through
Cultural Production (Master's thesis).
Ferstman, C., & Sharpe, M. (2022). Iran’s Arbitrary Detention of Foreign and Dual Nationals as
Hostage-taking and Crimes Against Humanity. Journal of International Criminal Justice.
Goei, R., & Boster, F. J. (2005). The roles of obligation and Gratitude in explaining the effect of
favors on compliance. Communication Monographs, 72(3), 284-300.
Klosko, G. (2011). Four Arguments against Political Obligations from Gratitude. Public Affairs
Quarterly, 5(1), 33–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40435768
Simmons, A.J., Moral Principles and Political Obligations, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2005).
Woozley, A.D., Law, and Obedience: The Arguments of Plato's Crito, (London: Duckworth,
2006).
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