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Fintan
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 Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 9:32 am Post subject: |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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No rapes in custody
say Iranian authorities.
Really?
| Quote: | "You're 18 years old. Three months ago "you loved Iran and the freedom of its people" and you were ready to give your life so that your country could be "Green."
You were unawares that after several weeks of imprisonment and torture, you would become embarrassed of yourself, embarrassed of the people, and even embarrassed of God. You are disgusted! You crawl around in the corner of the house because you are unable even to sit.
Your interrogator said to you: "I'll take care of you so that you wont be able to walk for a long time, let alone go to a protest, you fancy-pants kid! You won't even be able to sit. I'll fix you so that you'll have to crawl like a crab." This man wanted to make you a member of the "organization of the apathetic!"
Their goal was to make you, you who are young and full of rage, isolated and so abused that you will no longer care about or for anything.
You crawl on the floor, since rectal stitches take a long while to heal. You can still hear the moans of the young boys, begging for mercy. Because of these lamentations you can no longer sleep. Three months ago how happy you were, how well you felt. With intelligence and joy you cast your vote. But the scandalous election fraud made you, like so many others, extremely angry. Your vote and the vote of many others were Green votes, but you saw that this fraud put Black votes in their places.
The next project was one created of red blood and yellow hopelessness. They killed Neda, Sohrab, and hundreds of others until the streets were crimson. You became incensed but you listened to the words of your elders and during the "silent marches" you sang no slogans and held back your cries. Still, the Supreme Leader's supporters attacked the crowds, with batons and tear gas. They arrested you for the crime of having a green ribbon around your wrist and for being young and full of hope and energy.
They took you to the metal boxes of Kahrizak prison and put you in one cell with hundreds of others like you. Every day you received multiple beatings and verbal abuses. After a while, they took you and several of the younger, more lively prisoners to the "The Victors of the New Way" cell. There, several interrogators, veteran prisoners, prison wardens and members of the Basij raped you and the other young detainees, wanting "to humble you."
They did this to you several times, so that you would be completely "destroyed." So that you would be broken and spiritless. You can still hear the screams of your abuser: "You came to get back your vote? Here's your vote!" He burned even the marrow of your bones.
On condition that you "would keep your mouth shout," they released you to your family, deeply emotionally traumatized and physically scarred. You cannot speak of your suffering to your father, mother, or any of your family members. You are lonely, dejected, and wretched. You dislike yourself. You say to yourself, "To hell with everyone. To hell with me."
Then you hear on the news that Mr Larijani has issued a "warning," saying that the investigations have shown that there is "no evidence of sexual assault" against the prisoners. Now your heart burns. When was Larijani able to speak with all the prisoners? They tell anyone who has a complaint to step forward and investigate. But you know that with those threats that they leveled against you before your release and the letter they forced you to sign, testifying to the "good behavior of the prison wardens," your hands have been tied.
You imagine that it is the work of one moment, "I did not want this life! Lucky for you that you did not experience a ruptured rectum at the age of 18 and you have no sense of my lamentations. You sit and threaten Karoubi, while at night you eat pepperoni pizzas with your young children and take pride in the handsome figure of your son in new his bootcut, six-pocket jeans. You do not know that they have drowned in blood the pants of many young people, like me, in Kahrizak and other prisons, simply because we refused to live our lives under the banner of fraud and injustice. Thank God you still have your child! Thank God that his virtue is still safe. You ask yourself why I chose to take part in the demonstrations? Because they taught me that I was deserving of my rights. All I wanted were my rights, nothing more."
You bring the knife close to your veins, the pain cannot be more than what you experienced in the "Victors of the New Way" cell. Your first interrogator in the "Victors of the New Way " said to you: "I'll ... you so that none of you will ever go after your votes again, you fancy pants kids. So that all you hope for is death. And I'll bring your mother and your sister so that you can see how I **** them."
After you were released, you discovered that you could not recount your pain to anyone. You remember that for the Green Movement you went onto the streets - now wounded and at the height of youth, you have become "yellow." The tyrants are happy that they have made another "Green" withered, dejected, sick, and spiritless. They have made you detest yourself and the people's destiny no longer matters to you. You have become the part of a generation whose name is the "generation of the burned." A generation without spirit, dejected, but still intolerably angry.
What do you want from the people? What should they do to compensate you for the pain you endured in the "Victors of the New Way?" Whatever you want, please tell us, so that what we can help mend the wounds you have suffered in order to "get your vote back;" if you do not tell us, we will not be able to help you. Tell us, otherwise I fear that the sadness and apathy that burn in your chest will engulf the the ignorant and unprepared people as well. I do not doubt that your sadness will soon destroy the the Leaders of the "Victors," meaning Khamanei and Ahmadinejad and Larijani and Shahroudi - even if they view themselves as the representatives of Imam Mahdi and, in order to repress the Opposition, command that boys and girls be raped and sexually assaulted.
Speak to the people! If they know they must make amends for these crimes, that they must rise up and take back the "lost innocence" of their children, perhaps the people will fear the wrath of God, leave their work, and take the revenge owed to you and tens of boys and girls like you, before you and your wounded friends are destroyed by your sadness and the wrath of God is unleashed on this country.
In order to get back our votes, you rose up. Now we must rise up to take back your innocence. Stay with us and when you hear the sound of our rising up, even if you must crawl like that crab of which your interrogator spoke, drag yourself across the floor and join the torrent of people. Let your interrogator and his superiors and their polluted Leader see that they could not kill the drive to defend the people's rights that lives inside the innocent youngsters of Iran."
http://keepingthechange.blogspot.com/2009/08/babak-dad-on-rapes-inside-irans-prisons.html |
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bri
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | President forced off air as new
wave of protests sweeps Iran
By Martin Fletcher in Tehran
Saturday September 19 2009
THE Islamic Republic has seldom seen such scenes. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to cut short an interview on state-controlled television because chants of "Ahmadi! Ahmadi! Resign! Resign!" could clearly be heard in the background.
After two quiescent summer months, huge new protests erupted across Iran yesterday, with popular anger at the alleged theft of June's presidential election inflamed by the subsequent killing, torture, rape and show trials of opponents of the regime. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister and de facto opposition leader, had to abandon plans to join the huge anti-government demonstrations in Tehran when hardliners attacked him and his car.
Ayatollah Khatami (65), a popular former president who supports the opposition, was knocked to the ground, had his robe ripped and lost his cleric's turban. In Tehran and other cities, tens of thousands of demonstrators hijacked Iran's annual al-Quds Day rallies in support of the Palestinian cause and turned them into protests against the oppression of Iranians. The security forces hit back with teargas and baton charges. There were violent confrontations between government and opposition supporters in the squares and avenues of central Tehran and numerous reports of arrests and injuries.
In an address to the Friday prayers gathering in Tehran, Mr Ahmadinejad caused international outrage by again dismissing the Holocaust as a myth and claiming that the regime in Israel was collapsing. Yesterday's turmoil, however, suggested that his regime was the one in trouble.
There had been no major demonstrations since July 17 but the Government could hardly cancel al-Quds Day, an event initiated by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic; and the opposition seized its chance. Its supporters turned out in huge numbers and paralysed the centre of Tehran; estimates of the turnout ranged from 100,000 to 500,000.
Car drivers stuck in the gridlock sounded their horns and turned on their headlights to show support. Protests were also reported in Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Qum, Rasht and other cities. Within hours the internet was flooded with video clips showing jubilant crowds applauding, singing, and holding their arms aloft to form a sea of V-for-victory signs.
They chanted: "I will fight, I will die, but I will take back my country." Mocking the regime's concern for the Palestinians, they chanted: "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon -- I sacrifice my life for Iran."
Collapse
"The security forces also cordoned off Tehran University, where Mr Ahmadinejad addressed thousands of government supporters bussed in for Friday prayers.
Mr Ahmadinejad used the occasion to deliver another verbal onslaught on Israel, saying that the Holocaust was "a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim".
He said that confronting Israel was a "national and religious duty" and warned Israel's supporters: "This regime's days are numbered. It is on its way to collapse. It is dying."
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| Quote: | Eyewitness at Tehran Protest
Yesterday I had difficulty with my Internet and could not get into my account, but I was a witness of the demonstration, which was beyond my expectations.
This was a long weekend, with Saturday announced as a holiday as well as Sunday, and as it is the last week of summer holidays, usually people get leave of absence to travel before school opens. The city was quite empty; 80 percent of my friends had left the town earlier.
Anyway I headed to the streets, and from the middle of Modarres highway suddenly traffic started. Thousands of cars had been parked in the highway. Then I drove towards Haft-e-tir [7 Tir Square], around noon the crow was getting bigger and bigger, I thought there were millions….It was amazing.
I saw photojournalist colleagues who were not photographing. Journalists had been told not to be at the scene to cover events or they lose their press cards. My photo-journalist friends were just watching and said they had no intention of taking photos for fears of losing their press cards. No wonder there was a poor coverage, especially from agencies who rush to write something before anything happens. The anti-riot police attacked the demonstrators at some point, but there was a funny scene where people were bravely chasing them and they ran away. I could film these moments.
I also saw many buses coming from out of town taking people to Friday prayers. These were governmental buses to organize their event. I am not sure if the opposition demonstration was smaller. I thought it was bigger! The cars were also participating by honking and there was a traffic standstill and people inside cars chanting slogans, “Bullet, tank, rape has no effect” or “Not for Gaza, Not for Lebanon, my life is sacrificed for Iran”, “death to you”, “death to dictator” etc.
There were demonstrations in other parts of town, northern Tehran’s Vanak square, Youssef Abad area, Hafte-tir towards Vali-e Asr and Enghelab Square. Azadi Square and the area between Azadi and Enghelab were locked by security forces.
At some point after riot police increased their forces, we were chased by anti-riot police. I ran inside a building and 20 others joined too. Some of them were beaten, the owner of one of the apartments in the building locked the door but the riot police came, tried to smash the door open, and broke window glasses. We ran upstairs inside the apartment which was a art studio of the owner (an artist and sculptor, it was a beautiful place made of woods and full of abstract arts, which was relaxing a bit  ) . He locked the door and put tables and chairs behind it and we could watch the security forces, intelligence officers from a closed-circuit camera. They were ringing and we were not answering. It was terrifying and we stayed there for couple of hours; we made friends and exchanged phone numbers. All of these people incidentally were involved in arts, students majoring in theater, music, literature, graphics, industrial design, etc. We started playing a game to keep it cool.
At some point one of the security offiicers in front of building stuck a chewing gum to our camera so we could not check in what was going on and when we can leave. We were scared turned off our cell phones. In the end when the streets were empty we asked friends to check around the area and let us know when we can leave. Anyways I avoid more detail on how we left for safety reasons.
We all got home safely and made new friends!
I was impressed by people’s participation and bravery, it was far beyond my expectations.
http://enduringamerica.com/2009/09/19/iran-another-qods-day-participant-writes/ |
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Continuity
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
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Location: Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North
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| Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:07 am Post subject: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9lyge/help_us_re |
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It is reported that Gmail and Yahoo mail at least have been blocked in Iran, along with many English-language sites. While news of demonstrations seems to be getting out of the country, the government appears to be trying to prevent people within Iran from communicating and from learning what's happening.
It remains to be seen whether TOR and Freenets can be effective to combat this sort of effort to block communications, and whether the general circulation of information about the protests around the world will help.
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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The following article, translated from the
original in the German newspaper, Die Zeit
sketches the state of opposition in Iran.
| Quote: | The Green Is Not Fading Out
How the Iranian opposition organizes and continues to fight.
BY CHARLOTTE WIEDEMANN
In a live broadcast on Iranian state television a mullah gives spiritual advice. An in-caller is talking about her marital problems, then she suddenly says: "Coincidentally, my husband has the same name as our newly elected president, Mir Hussein Mousavi," The moderator silences, the program is interrupted.
On money you will nowadays often find a green victory sign or the words "Down with the dictatorship”. Or a thumbnail portrait of Neda, the best known dead from the unrest in the days after the election in June. The print works give a professional impression, instructions circulate on the internet.
A football match in Isfahan, many spectators wearing green. The television cameras are trying to avoid these images. However, Green is the colour of the football club in Isfahan; now the club is requested to find a different colour.
The movement for democracy is visible in Iran, despite of all repression, torture and show trials. It is not strong enough to stop the Ahmadinejad government. But it is strong enough to keep the country in tension. Because meetings are banned, official occasions are subverted, eg. last Friday: During the anti‐Israel Quds rallies tens of thousands held their fingers up forming the V‐sign, demanded the release of imprisoned reformers. On this day, an experience from June repeated and changed the psychology of society: It is possible to take to the streets and defy prohibitions. It is dangerous but possible.
Another hidden source of energy is feeding the green movement; it has conciliated generations in families, bridging the gap between the old, who revolted 30 years ago, and the young, suffering from the outcomes today. Thus, sons started talking with their fathers again.
Every Saturday afternoon, the mothers of the killed protestors gather silently in Tehran's Laleh Park, all dressed in black . Other women surround them in silent solidarity. On a list of 72 dead, who are known by name, there are also workers, shoe salesmen, small employees. How the battle lines harden can be observed by the violation of previously existing taboos. Muhammad Khatami, the ex‐president, was pushed to the ground last Friday, his black turban torn down. The usually moderate Khatami had accused the regime of "fascist" methods.
There is almost no way back after such actions and words. The events in Iran roll forward with a tenacious implacability. But where to? And can anyone control this process?
The young look forward to the great turning point, the elders are afraid of the chaos.
The young, the students whose creativity influenced the aesthetics of the movement, still burn for the hope of something great to happen, a radical change ‐ in the system as in their lives. More prudent Iranians fear the power vacuum of a regime falling apart rapidly.
The 68‐year‐old Mir Hussein Mousavi, a candidate in June, remains the figurehead for all sides; but it is the width of the movement which makes him virtually incapable of acting.
Coming from the system himself, the former prime minister wants to win as many of Ahmadinejad's conservative opponents as possible. For the moderates within the nomenklatura, Mousavi offers a great advantage, an insider explaines: "You know, he might take away their power, but not their lives.” But at the same time Mousavi has to appear unyielding, if he doesn’t want to lose the support of the young, and of the modern middle classes.
On the street outside his home, the regime has installed surveillance cameras. When Mousavi leaves home, a double cordon accompanies him: his own people and a troop of the Revolutionary Guard. The danger of being arrested is become greater for the leading group, so earlier plans for founding a party or a mass organization were discarded. The movement for democracy is to expand as a "network" which can’t be banned.
“Everyone appreciating the Iranian and Islamic identity of the country as a value and the constitution as the fundament for action is welcome "said Alireza Beheshti, a close adviser Mousavi. “The framework of the Islamic Republic should remain, but with corrections”. Especially the civil rights under the constitution should show to advantage, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
In his statements "to the people of Iran”, which Mousavi only can send out on the internet, he calls for: a reform of the electoral law, press freedom, the licensing of private radio and television stations, a law prohibiting the military to intervene in economics and politics, the release of political prisoners and the penalisation of atrocities in the prisons. In Tehran, it is said that along with this minimum catalogue, subject-specific sections have begun "with the preparations for a new government". Members of the current administration as well as Iranians living abroad are said to be involved in these groups.
Replacing the powerful revolutionary leader, a group of five to eight clerics should directly be elected by the people for a limited period of time. They should represent a religious pluralism equivalent to the freedom of choice in Shiite everyday life, where believers are free to choose the teachings of a scholar they want to follow. In future, nobody should be allowed to rely on divine authority. Mousavi: "Nobody has the right to say: How I look at the Islam is the one and only valid way."
This will be no quick go. Sustained pressure and a progressive wearing down of Ahmadinejad’s regime could force him to resign over the medium term, that is the hope. Mousavi does not insist in replacing him.
To gain time for the elucidation of the population, an intermediate solution might be necessary. This could look like this: Ahmadinejad resigns in favour of the Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. The moderate, popular conservative had recognized the width of the People's Movement in June, when he estimated the demonstrators to be in the three millions.
Mousavi seems to be aware of being severly influenced by three decades of Islamic Republic, so not to be able to represent Iran's future. As a strict Muslim, he constantly would struggle inwardly to meet the youth’s demand of a liberalized lifestyle. Iranians drinking alcohol should have a place in the movement ‐ but Mousavi does not want to sit down at a table where the wine is drunk.
Mehdi Karubi, the second reform candidate, is acting much more aggressively. In recent weeks, the fine-boned clergyman was the real challenger of the regime.
He published that men and women were raped in detention ‐ which has deeply shaken many Iranians, even the more simple, religious people in Ahmadinejad's clientele. Karubi wouldn’t make a leader who is appealing the masses, but he has made the cracks in the system visible.
Mousavi is resembling the figure of the king in chess: small moves, in case of danger retreat, always covered by his men. It is not cowardice. His fellow campaigners assume the movement to slide into the underground, to radicalize and to narrow dangerously, if Mussawi is detained. He sees himself as someone who can open an unbloody way to change. But then the people have to decide which system they want to live in.
For the first time since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian opposition abroad has found a common language with the forces of change within the country. This opens up options that were unthinkable only recently.
In the case Mousavi and Karubi are arrested, the leadership of the Green movement would automatically be taken over abroad. Soon a statement will be released in Tehran, saying a five‐member committee in the diaspora ‐ the names are not disclosed ‐ is authorized to replace the leadership in case needed.
The symbolic gesture says a lot in a country where the fear of foreign agents is almost obsessive. And Mousavi signals the regime: Look out! If you arrest me, you obstruct the peaceful path to change.
In the diaspora, former bitter enemies have reconciled. The monarchists are relegated to irrelevance, while the advocates of a secular republic criticize Mousavi only mutedly as for the time being. Several prominent heads of the reformers are currently in the West, among them the former Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani in London, the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf in Paris, and reform theologian Mohsen Kadivar in the US.
Kadivar, currently teaching at Duke University, appealed to "the Iranian bourgeoisie" to provide funds for a new, independent national television. "The cost of a green medium have to be borne by Iranian investors." The Iranian women are requested to donate their jewels as a patriotic gesture.
Free, uncensored and genuine Iranian Radio and satellite television: That's what currently is worked for in four countries. In Amsterdam, Mehdi Jami as a former head of the farsi speaking Radio Zamaneh has a lot of experience with bloggers in Iran. Now he wants to establish citizen journalism as a new generation of broadcasting, giving the young Iranians a national platform, who constantly provide their clandestine videos on YouTube.
Thus, networking, making various voices audible and being virtual, is the strength of the green movement ‐ and its weakness.
It lacks a clearly audible voice, which comments on the resuming nuclear negotiations between Iran and the international community, beginning 1 Oct. Suspicion about Ahmadinejad buying legitimacy abroad which he is denied at home is rampant even among those who want the dialogue.
In Mousavi’s circle they say that "what ever is agreed now has no validity until it has been reviewed by a legitimate, new government of Iran." Mousavi does not want to seek confrontation in this highly sensitive issue.
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-current-events/49696-die-zeit-article-translated.html |
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GaryGo
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| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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Iran’s nuclear threat is a lie
John Pilger
Published 01 October 2009
Obama's "showdown" with Iran has another agenda. The media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war
In 2001, the Observer published a series of reports that claimed an "Iraqi connection" to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.
Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media "revelations", the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. "Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant", declared the Guardian on 26 September. "Showdown" is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has "put paid to the Bush years". An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq". Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian "plan" to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year - a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.
The official jargon for this kind of propaganda is "psy-ops", the military term for psychological operations. In the Pentagon and Whitehall, it has become a critical component of a diplomatic and military campaign to blockade, isolate and weaken Iran by hyping its “nuclear threat": a phrase now used incessantly by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, and parroted by the BBC and other broadcasters as objective news. And it is fake.
The threat is one-way
On 16 September, Newsweek disclosed that the major US intelligence agencies had reported to the White House that Iran's "nuclear status" had not changed since the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which stated with "high confidence" that Iran had halted in 2003 the programme it was alleged to have developed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has backed this, time and again.
The current propaganda derives from Obama's announcement that the US is scrapping missiles stationed on Russia's border. This serves to cover the fact that the number of US missile sites is actually expanding in Europe and the "redundant" missiles are being redeployed on ships. The game is to mollify Russia into joining, or not obstructing, the US campaign against Iran. "President Bush was right," said Obama, "that Iran's ballistic missile programme poses a significant threat [to Europe and the US]." That Iran would contemplate a suicidal attack on the US is preposterous. The threat, as ever, is one-way, with the world's superpower virtually ensconced on Iran's borders.
Iran's crime is its independence. Having thrown out America's favourite tyrant, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran remains the only resource-rich Muslim state beyond US control. As only Israel has a "right to exist" in the Middle East, the US goal is to cripple the Islamic Republic. This will allow Israel to divide and dominate the Middle East on Washington's behalf, undeterred by a confident neighbour. If any country in the world has been handed urgent cause to develop a nuclear "deterrence", it is Iran.
As one of the original signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has been a consistent advocate of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. In contrast, Israel has never agreed to an IAEA inspection, and its nuclear weapons plant at Dimona remains an open secret. Armed with as many as 200 active nuclear warheads, Israel "deplores" UN resolutions calling on it to sign the NPT, just as it deplored the recent UN report charging it with crimes against humanity in Gaza, just as it maintains a world record for violations of international law. It gets away with this because great power grants it immunity.
Preparing for endless war
Obama's "showdown" with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war. The US/Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, according to America's NBC. The goal is control of the "strategic prize" of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran - in other words, Eurasia. But the war is opposed by 69 per cent of the British public, 57 per cent of the US public and almost every other human being. Convincing "us" that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal's spurious claim that Iran "is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups" is as desperate as Brown's pathetic echo of "a line in the sand".
During the Bush years, according to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of American foreign policy. A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a "first-strike" doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons, together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.
All this mocks Obama's media rhetoric about "a world without nuclear weapons". In fact, he is the Pentagon's most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush's secretary of "defence" and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history. He has proved his worth with stepped-up wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush's America, Obama's America is run by some very dangerous people. We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?
Next week: Mehdi Hasan |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:52 am Post subject: |
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A winter of discontent lies ahead in Iran
according to financial analyst Jerry Guo:
| Quote: | Letter From Tehran:
Iran's New Hard-Liners
Who Is in Control of the Islamic Republic?
Jerry Guo - September 30, 2009
Summary -- Iran's disputed election marked the rise
of a new power elite. Now, with more protests looming and a nuclear
program facing international pressure, can the Revolutionary Guard
and its allies sustain their tightening grip on the Islamic Republic?
The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.
So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)
The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.
In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.
But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.
This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.
Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.
It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran's Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that "the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it."
Yazdi's influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president's first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country's educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed "true Islam." Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be "un-Islamic." Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. "I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner," he said. "But now I am just a simple pedestrian."
But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.
The biggest prize is a number of state petrochemical contracts worth billions of dollars. During his presidency in the early 1990s, Rafsanjani steered oil development projects to family and friends. In 2005, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani and promised to take on the "oil mafia" -- but then loaded two-thirds of his cabinet with IRGC veterans, signed off on hundreds of no-bid construction and petrochemical contracts for IGRC-backed companies, and condoned the IRGC's proliferating smuggling networks, which net $12 billion a year, according to one Iranian lawmaker. A local market analyst told me that the IRGC functions like "a mafia." It uses free and low-cost labor, as well as an extensive intelligence apparatus, to undercut competing bids.
The resulting opacity and confusion have left many business and financial leaders in Iran unclear of how to navigate the new environment. "We don't know what they will do," one financial analyst told me recently. "Maybe they will stage a military coup and then open our doors like China, or maybe Pakistan," he speculated, referring to the Islamization of the Pakistani state under General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq's military rule from 1978 to 1988.
To his second-term cabinet, Ahmadinejad has appointed IRGC hard-liners to some of the most influential posts in government, such as the ministers of defense, intelligence, interior, and oil, which together not only control the country's energy industry but also domestic security.
Until recently, the IRGC was split between pragmatists and hard-liners. In 2001, three-quarters of the IRGC's 130,000 foot soldiers voted to reelect Khatami. At least one internal government poll before this summer's election showed that a "high percentage" of the IRGC's rank and file planned to vote for Mousavi. Four days before the election, the organization's weekly newspaper, the Sobhe Sadeq, warned of a "Velvet Green revolution" and promised that the IRGC would not allow the opposition to triumph. Then, immediately following the polls, IRGC commanders purged leaders who were sympathetic to the reformists, leaving a united bloc of hard-liners whose views lie at the extreme right.
These new players are wasting little time in attempting to consolidate power. In early August, Yadollah Javani, the head of the IGRC's political bureau, called for the arrest of the opposition leaders. "What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi in this coup?" he asked. "If they are the main agents, which is the case, judiciary and security officials should go after them, arrest them, try them, and punish them." Such a move may not be far off: in early September, security forces raided offices connected to Mousavi and Karroubi and arrested three of their top aides. The same week, Khamenei warned during a Friday sermon that further attacks by the reformist leadership would be met with a "harsh response." (According to Rafsanjani, Khamenei already issued an arrest warrant for Karroubi in late August.)
If the neo-fundamentalist bloc is able to further concentrate its power, it will not only bode ill for the beleaguered domestic opposition but also dash any hope of an international resolution to Iran's nuclear weapons program. "The nuclear question is finished," Ahmadinejad said earlier this month. "We will not negotiate over Iran's undeniable rights." Eroded legitimacy at home means the ruling hard-liners have little room to budge on a compromise over halting fuel production, for fear of alienating a power base that depends on continued pariah status to feed its clandestine business interests. As such, U.S. administration officials indicated that they have extremely low expectations going into the October 1 meeting with their Iranian counterparts.
For now, the neo-fundamentalists seem to have settled on the tactic of intimidate and escalate. Last month, the regime put French and British diplomatic staff on trial in Tehran, in addition to bringing charges against a Canadian-Iranian Newsweek journalist and an Iranian-American academic. Ahmadinejad has defiantly declared, "We welcome sanctions" -- a signal to reconciliatory elements within the conservative camp that he and the hard-liners will not back down in the face of opposition. In any case, the neo-fundamentalists do not seem eager to jeopardize their near monopoly of the black market by reconciling with the West, particularly when China and Russia continue to extend an open hand in business.
Many of my colleagues in Tehran are preparing for a winter of confrontation. "Iranians have been living through these conditions since the Iran-Iraq war, when everything -- food, oil, clothes -- were rationed," one coworker told me. But this time, the regime must contend with an embattled opposition that is backed by mass popular support. As the last few months have proven, it is a movement that cannot be easily bullied into submission.
JERRY GUO was an analyst in an Iranian investment bank in Tehran.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/letters-from/letter-from-tehran-irans-new-hard-liners |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:58 am Post subject: |
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Expect more to be sentenced to hang:
| Quote: | Iran Sentences 3 to Death in Post-Election Unrest Trial
Saturday, October 10, 2009
TEHRAN, Iran — Three defendants in Iran's mass trial of opposition figures accused of fueling the country's postelection unrest have been sentenced to death, an Iranian news agency reported Saturday.
Two of them were convicted of membership in a monarchist group seeking to topple Iran's Islamic Republic and restore a monarchy, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported, quoting judiciary official Zahed Bashiri Rad.
The third defendant was convicted of having ties to a terrorist group for his alleged links to the People's Mujahedeen, an armed opposition group, ISNA quoted Rad as saying.
The three are the first defendants to be sentenced to death since the trial began in August.
http://bit.ly/gwVqr |
Here's a slice of life inside Iran:
| Quote: | Don’t forget that most of Iran is very poor. Even in Tehran, everywhere many are so poor they don’t have proper houses, sleep with a whole family in a room and I remember kids that had to share a pair of shoes – one day they get to wear shoes the next their sibling – all year round including the snowy cold winter. They didn’t have proper winter clothes. They would sell gum at street corners to buy rice for the family (a bit like people that wash your car windows at the lights – except they would get about 1c per gum.. imagine how much you have to sell for some bread!! & if they didn’t sell enough they wouldn’t eat)
I remember their mum telling me, sometimes when the kids complained that they were hungry for dinner & she didn’t have anything for them, she would tell them that she was making soup, and put water on the stove to boil, so when they ask again she would say it was still cooking.. until they fell asleep. But these people are so nice and moral, if you dropped $10 next to them they would pick it up and chase you down the street to give it back.
They have a different kind of thinking, stigma was probably the wrong word, but its just not something they would do- leave a job. Unless they are fired. They manage however they can, rely on family and friends, barter or do other work for food. They don’t know its an option to quit and find a new job and in most cases it isn’t an option as there are no other jobs. Also don’t forget that this is a country that you tend to have the 1 job your whole life! There aren’t any ads in the paper for employment( I am serious- no ads for employment anywhere!), your father(family) is meant to get you a job.
Your right companies do not have any incentives to pay someone regularly (except perhaps the law – but we all know how well thats followed in the IRI). From what I know they usually do get at least some of their back pay eventually but often without overtime etc. but I’m sure thats different from company to company.
I know it can be hard to get your head around because it is so different from anything anyone in the west has experience. I am Iranian by marriage and even though I have seen it for myself, it can be hard for me to understand too. I hope this helps you understand a little more why someone would work for nothing.
http://enduringamerica.com/2009/10/11/the-latest-from-iran-11-october-media-operations/#comment-10881 |
A winter of discontent lies ahead in Iran
according to financial analyst Jerry Guo:
| Quote: | Letter From Tehran:
Iran's New Hard-Liners
Who Is in Control of the Islamic Republic?
Jerry Guo - September 30, 2009
Summary -- Iran's disputed election marked the rise
of a new power elite. Now, with more protests looming and a nuclear
program facing international pressure, can the Revolutionary Guard
and its allies sustain their tightening grip on the Islamic Republic?
The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.
So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)
The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.
In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.
But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.
This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.
Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.
It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran's Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that "the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it."
Yazdi's influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president's first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country's educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed "true Islam." Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be "un-Islamic." Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. "I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner," he said. "But now I am just a simple pedestrian."
But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.
The biggest prize is a number of state petrochemical contracts worth billions of dollars. During his presidency in the early 1990s, Rafsanjani steered oil development projects to family and friends. In 2005, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani and promised to take on the "oil mafia" -- but then loaded two-thirds of his cabinet with IRGC veterans, signed off on hundreds of no-bid construction and petrochemical contracts for IGRC-backed companies, and condoned the IRGC's proliferating smuggling networks, which net $12 billion a year, according to one Iranian lawmaker. A local market analyst told me that the IRGC functions like "a mafia." It uses free and low-cost labor, as well as an extensive intelligence apparatus, to undercut competing bids.
The resulting opacity and confusion have left many business and financial leaders in Iran unclear of how to navigate the new environment. "We don't know what they will do," one financial analyst told me recently. "Maybe they will stage a military coup and then open our doors like China, or maybe Pakistan," he speculated, referring to the Islamization of the Pakistani state under General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq's military rule from 1978 to 1988.
To his second-term cabinet, Ahmadinejad has appointed IRGC hard-liners to some of the most influential posts in government, such as the ministers of defense, intelligence, interior, and oil, which together not only control the country's energy industry but also domestic security.
Until recently, the IRGC was split between pragmatists and hard-liners. In 2001, three-quarters of the IRGC's 130,000 foot soldiers voted to reelect Khatami. At least one internal government poll before this summer's election showed that a "high percentage" of the IRGC's rank and file planned to vote for Mousavi. Four days before the election, the organization's weekly newspaper, the Sobhe Sadeq, warned of a "Velvet Green revolution" and promised that the IRGC would not allow the opposition to triumph. Then, immediately following the polls, IRGC commanders purged leaders who were sympathetic to the reformists, leaving a united bloc of hard-liners whose views lie at the extreme right.
These new players are wasting little time in attempting to consolidate power. In early August, Yadollah Javani, the head of the IGRC's political bureau, called for the arrest of the opposition leaders. "What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi in this coup?" he asked. "If they are the main agents, which is the case, judiciary and security officials should go after them, arrest them, try them, and punish them." Such a move may not be far off: in early September, security forces raided offices connected to Mousavi and Karroubi and arrested three of their top aides. The same week, Khamenei warned during a Friday sermon that further attacks by the reformist leadership would be met with a "harsh response." (According to Rafsanjani, Khamenei already issued an arrest warrant for Karroubi in late August.)
If the neo-fundamentalist bloc is able to further concentrate its power, it will not only bode ill for the beleaguered domestic opposition but also dash any hope of an international resolution to Iran's nuclear weapons program. "The nuclear question is finished," Ahmadinejad said earlier this month. "We will not negotiate over Iran's undeniable rights." Eroded legitimacy at home means the ruling hard-liners have little room to budge on a compromise over halting fuel production, for fear of alienating a power base that depends on continued pariah status to feed its clandestine business interests. As such, U.S. administration officials indicated that they have extremely low expectations going into the October 1 meeting with their Iranian counterparts.
For now, the neo-fundamentalists seem to have settled on the tactic of intimidate and escalate. Last month, the regime put French and British diplomatic staff on trial in Tehran, in addition to bringing charges against a Canadian-Iranian Newsweek journalist and an Iranian-American academic. Ahmadinejad has defiantly declared, "We welcome sanctions" -- a signal to reconciliatory elements within the conservative camp that he and the hard-liners will not back down in the face of opposition. In any case, the neo-fundamentalists do not seem eager to jeopardize their near monopoly of the black market by reconciling with the West, particularly when China and Russia continue to extend an open hand in business.
Many of my colleagues in Tehran are preparing for a winter of confrontation. "Iranians have been living through these conditions since the Iran-Iraq war, when everything -- food, oil, clothes -- were rationed," one coworker told me. But this time, the regime must contend with an embattled opposition that is backed by mass popular support. As the last few months have proven, it is a movement that cannot be easily bullied into submission.
JERRY GUO was an analyst in an Iranian investment bank in Tehran.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/letters-from/letter-from-tehran-irans-new-hard-liners |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in Iran bomb
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP) – 38 minutes ago
TEHRAN, Iran — A suicide bomber in southeastern Iran killed at least 20 people Sunday, including five senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard, the country's official news agency reported.
The IRNA news agency said the dead included the deputy commander of the Guard's ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as a chief provincial Guard commander for the area, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The other dead were Guard members or local tribal leaders. Dozens of others were wounded, the report said.
The commanders were inside a car on their way to a meeting in the Pishin region near Iran's border with Pakistan when an attacker with explosives blew himself up, IRNA said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the region in Iran's southeast has been at the center of violent attacks by a Sunni militant group called Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, that has waged a low-level insurgency in recent years.
The group accuses Iran's mostly Shiite government of persecution and has carried out attacks against the Revolutionary Guard and Shiite targets in southeastern Iran.....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gpWpReHv8iWIFgWQQms1aWxfRYmgD9BDD7PG0 |
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Fintan
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| Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:53 am Post subject: |
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Hombre
Joined: 07 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 8:42 am Post subject: |
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Such a sad waste: This was one very very beautiful Woman and apparently not only on the outside, but INSIDE as well. Not that Looks ever make someone beautiful, it's just that it always seems more likely than not that those most gifted always touch so many with their deaths. Untimely as this was it stands to reason that she does indeed live on in death as she obviously did in Life.
| Quote: | | More than four months after Neda's death, her mother, Hajar Rostami, described the pain her family has endured and how grateful they are to millions across the world who have hailed Neda as a martyr -- a symbol of freedom for Iran. She spoke with CNN by phone in her native Farsi from her home in Tehran a few days ago. |
| Quote: | Neda, accompanied by her music teacher, called home with frequent updates. "Mom, there are just too many clashes going on. There are a lot of police and forces around."
Tear gas was lobbed at the crowd. Neda headed to a medical clinic to get her eyes washed. "My eyes are really burning hard," she said.
Twenty minutes later, Neda's mom reached her again. "She said she was on her way back home -- that I need not worry."
Neda told the same thing to her aunt and uncle, who also called to check up on her.
Wearing blue jeans, a black shirt and white sneakers, Neda walked toward her car, parked on a side street not far from the heated protests. "It didn't occur to her that anything was going to be different," her mother said.
Then, Neda was killed. A single bullet struck her chest. |
| Quote: | The family, Neda's mother said, was barred from holding a memorial service.
"I did see Neda when her body was being washed before burial," she said. "When her body was covered in the white shroud for burial, when they uncovered her face, I saw her. She was absolutely beautiful -- with a smile, a beautiful smile. Like an angel." |
I suppose the Iranian leaders thought that a memorial service would have given a great deal of support to the resistance, probably by the hundreds of thousands if not millions.
I would hope that the people of Iran do not let this death be in vain and can somehow use it as a tool working through Neda to bring about necessary change and human rights in Iran.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/05/neda.mom.speaks/
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Fintan
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GaryGo
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:27 am Post subject: |
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In the Former DDR the "Monday Marches" just went on and on and on...
thus creating a feeling of inevitability even within the Stasi....
gg
Police clash with protesters at Iran university
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP) – 1 hour ago
TEHRAN, Iran — Witnesses say security forces and pro-government militiamen with batons and tear gas are clashing with thousands of opposition protesters outside Tehran University on a day of planned student demonstrations.
The witnesses say Basiji militiamen waded into the crowds of protesters, beating men and women on the heads and shoulders with batons, while security forces fired tear gas.
Thousands of security forces surrounded universities ahead of protests that pro-reform students called for Monday. It is not immediately known if demonstrations broke out inside campuses because authorities have taken dramatic steps to seal them off, shutting down cell phones in the area and covering fences with banners and signs to hide anything going on inside.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of riot police and Revolutionary Guard members armed with tear gas, batons and firearms were deployed Monday outside Tehran University to prevent student demonstrations backed by the opposition.
The large security operation suggested that authorities planned to make good on their promise to deal harshly with protesters marking the day in 1953 when three students were killed in an anti-U.S. protest. The occasion has in recent years been used by students to stage pro-reform demonstrations.
There was no word immediately available on whether demonstrations have begun inside the campus, but the witnesses said police were conducting ID checks on anyone entering the campus to prevent opposition activists from joining the students.
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GaryGo
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:39 pm Post subject: |
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The spirit of protest lives on in Iran
Iranian forces may crush these protests, but the strength of feeling and sense of political crisis will continue
Henry Newman
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 December 2009 18.30 GMT
Article history
This morning a fresh round of opposition demonstrations erupted across Iran and there have been widespread clashes reported between protesters and various state security forces, the police and the paramilitary Basij militia. The troubles are seemingly focused in the main on Tehran's universities, as well as those in the provincial cities of Isfahan, Kermanshah, Shiraz, Mashhad, Tabriz and Karaj. Troubles have also been reported elsewhere in Tehran.
The protests are testimony both to the extent of grievances still widely held among a large section of the Iranian population and to the bravery of the Iranian people even in the face of state violence and repression.
Today – the 16th of the Iranian month of Azar – is Student Day in Iran, an anniversary commemorating the shooting dead of three students protesting at the 1953 visit of Richard Nixon, then US vice-president. Earlier in 1953 a coup had ousted elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and restored the hegemony of Muhammad Reza Shah. More than a half a century later, many feel that a potent historical parallel renders Student Day this year especially poignant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/protest-iran
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