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Today, Iranian opposition supporters defied an enormous security presence on the streets of Tehran to gather, by some estimates, in the thousands. In an attempt to bypass the security forces, they first gathered in smaller groups at several locations and then converged outside Tehran University and on Vali Asr Square, the site of several recent demonstrations. Many shouted ‘death to the dictator’. Others carried copies of the Koran, daring security forces to attack them while carrying the Muslim holy book.
With cell-phone networks shut down, witnesses shared accounts via email and websites such as Twitter and Facebook. One witness said police fired tear gas into buses. Another said she had seen paramilitary basij fighters tossing protesters from pedestrian bridges onto the road below. There were several accounts of beatings.
This morning, witnesses described one of the biggest deployments of security forces since the start of the demonstrations after Iran’s disputed June 12 election. One protester said there were ‘ten times’ as many basiji on the streets as this person had ever seen. ‘The tension was so high,’ said another, ‘you could cut it with a knife.’
Opposition supporters had made ambitious plans for protests today to mark the 10th anniversary of a student uprising on July 9, 1999. Known as ‘18th of Tyr’ on the Persian calendar, the anniversary is often marked by student demonstrations. Leading up to today, opposition groups had encouraged supporters to protest, spreading the word with fliers, internet notices and friends calling friends.
Thanks for keeping the news flowing. God be with you and angels of protection.
Iranian state television is reporting today that the government is still investigating whether the three Americans captured along the Iran-Iraq border – Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Joshua Fattal –are tourists or something more.
That judgment will be up to an Iranian regime which is currently facing widespread anti-governments protests, which Iranian leaders blame on the west, particularly the US.
One pro-government news service has portrayed the Americans as possible CIA spies.
“It would be normal to take 24 -48 hours,” said Elliot Abrams, a former National Security Advisor. “If it goes beyond that as we start getting into a week, it's going to look like the Iranians are trying to make trouble here.”
Back home in the US, friends and colleagues say the Americans simply took a break from part-time reporting to go hiking along the Iran-Iraq border.
Shane Bauer sent an email to his editors at New America Media just before he left.
“I’m heading out the door and traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan,” he wrote. “I want to feel out the situation there and get some ideas for deeper stories.”
His editors say he had no intention of going into Iran.
“My fear of course is that he will be mistaken or used as some sort of innocent abroad figure,” said Sandy Close, the executive director of New America Media. “It has happened in other regions. [They] become a sort of bargaining chip.”
If there was doubt that Neda Agha-Soltan’s story still has power in Iran, it faded today. Forty days since her videotaped shooting stunned Iran and the world, thousands marched to her grave to mourn her and other victims of the crackdown.
They chanted ‘death to the dictator’ and something new, “Neda is not dead. It is the regime that’s dead.”
Some policemen mocked the protesters with chants of their own - “Go home and make love to your wives. Don't be out there making trouble" - before charging the protesters. Riot police chased mourners through the gravestones. Police forced opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi back into his car. His wife managed to deliver flowers to Neda's grave.
Neda’s own mother was pressured to stay at home. She spoke to BBC Persian by telephone.
“Emotionally we are all broken, she said. “What can we say to each other? Our loved ones were too young to die.”
An opposition movement sparked by the disputed June presidential election has been given new force by the brutality that followed it. Dissidents say more than 200 protesters have been killed in detention.
Sohrab Arabi died in prison just after his 19th birthday. His mother, overcome with grief, jumped on top of his coffin during the funeral.
Many other victims were college students like Amir Javadifar, an acting major. A friend told US-funded Radio Farda that Amir’s family wasn’t notified of his death until 12 days after the fact.
“His body was so broken we couldn’t even recognize him,” he said, “his nails were removed, his teeth broken. “
His family had to pay a fee to take his body home.
The regime drew the ire even of hard-liners, when one of the detainees killed, an engineering student named Mohsen Roohulamini, turned out to be the son of a prominent conservative politician.
London-based Iranian blogger Potkin Azarmehr said the killings have backfired against the regime, reenergizing the opposition movement.
“The conception by some people was, the more brutal they crack down, people are going to cower." he said. "It’s had the reverse effect. They’re more passionate, they don’t want this blood to be wasted.”
Several Iranian politicians, including conservatives, are now calling for an investigation of prisoner abuse.
But the protesters are demanding far more. Today, they modified a chant dating from the 1979 revolution, replacing ‘Islamic republic” with “Iranian republic” – a repudiation of Iran’s 30-year-old political system.
Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to say the US believes the answer is yes. In Thailand for a meeting of leaders from Southeast Asian nations, she said such a technology exchange “is a threat to other of our allies and it’s a threat to further destabilization of the region.” She added, “North Korea has been a notorious proliferator of nuclear technology.”
Suspicions of nuclear ties grew earlier this month when a North Korean ship known to have transported weapons in the past appeared to be sailing for Myanmar. After being tracked by the US military, the ship turned around.
New video images also show the construction of a vast network of tunnels outside Myanmar’s jungle capital, Naypyidaw, built with help from North Korean engineers. http://twitblo.gs/Hy7Yu0
“I can’t confirm they will have nuclear weapons in a few years,” said Khin Maung Win, deputy executive director of the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma, which obtained some of the images. “But it is the hope of the military regime.”
Mr. Khun and other dissidents cite as further evidence reports that a Burmese military team traveled to Russia for training in nuclear technology. The junta also entered into a contract with Russia for a small nuclear reactor, though the deal fell through when the junta failed to come up with the money.
Mark Farmoner of the Burma Campaign UK notes that there are billions of dollars in government revenues that stay off the books, including proceeds from a hugely lucrative natural gas project with the French company Total.
However, Farmoner believes it’s equally plausible that the tunnels were built as a bunker to protect the country’s senior military leadership in the event of military attack. Like North Korea’s leaders, Myanmar’s military junta lives in constant fear of attack by a western power.
As for the North Korean ship, Farmoner said, “If the US was so concerned, it could have stopped and searched the North Korean ship under UN Security Council resolutions, but in the end, the US just followed it.”
Mr. Khin of the Democratic Voice of Burma disagreed. “I don’t think these are allegations. It may be the early stages but it is a true story.”
Good article & quite concerning.
Incredible scenes this morning at Friday prayers in Tehran. Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani used strong language in his sermon, saying debate over the election should be re-opened. Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi was sitting in the front row, his first public appearance in weeks.
Eyewitnesses tells ABC News thousands of Moussavi supporters are rallying near Tehran University and that police are responding with violence. One eyewitness told me she and her mother were beaten, and not just by the paramilitary basiji but also by regular police who had been less aggressive in recent demonstrations.
This is significant. Iranians had been on pins and needles to see what Rafsanjani would say. Some right-wing newspapers indicated – and some opposition supporters worried – that Rafsanjani would capitulate but he didn’t. This is the clearest sign recently that the conflict is far from over inside the Iranian leadership. Other hard-liners, such as former candidate Mohsen Rezaei, have also refused to pronounce the dispute over. (Rezaei is known as an opportunist who likes to bend with the political winds so the fact that he’s hedging his bets is another sign the opposition isn’t a spent force.) And to see thousands of supporters in the streets – even bigger than the crowds on July 9 anniversary of the 1999 student uprising – shows the street protests are far from over either.
I’ve spent a lot of time in police states in the last couple of years – a few trips each to Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iran, and some more. It strikes me that each place is dramatically different in terms of culture, language, geography, religion, economy, you name it, but the governments deal with dissent very similarly. They seem to be carrying around well-worn copies of the exact same playbook.
The rules are pretty straightforward.
1- Blame it on foreigners: Exporting the crisis is a good way to drum up nationalistic feelings and cover up real divisions at home. America is always a prime target. ‘The West’ in general will do too. The foreign media often shares the blame.
2- Lie: Joseph Goebbels said it best, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Iran took this to a new level by accusing the BBC of being behind the death of the Iranian protester, Neda Agha-Soltan – hiring thugs, said some officials, to carry out the killing.
3- Kill a few to scare the rest: One thing Iran and Myanmar had in common is that the government avoided a Tiananmen-style massacre. Rather than gunning down hundreds in a day, security forces killed a handful of protesters over a number of days, hoping that fear would drive the rest into their homes.
4- Arrest, arrest, arrest: Myanmar and Iran arrested hundreds of opposition supporters, or people it believed were opposition supporters. Each has a feared prison – in Tehran, it’s Evin; in Yangon it’s the aptly named Insein (pronounced ‘insane’) prison. Just a few days or weeks there is enough, leaders hope, to erode demonstrators’ commitment.
5- Wait: Governments have patience. They make a real effort to clamp down on protests early – and wait for the interest of foreign media and governments to fade. Once Myanmar was out of the spotlight, calls for economic sanctions against the military junta were much quieter – and much easier for Myanmar’s trading partners to ignore.
The rules aren’t fool-proof. In the information age, ‘Big Lies’ are easier to debunk. I doubt many Iranians bought the BBC as murderers story. Prison can often galvanize opposition leaders. See Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Morgan Tsvangirai (and Nelson Mandela for that matter). And while Iran may attempt to wait out the current protests, the divisions go to the highest levels of the leadership. Those divisions can’t be damped down with police on motorcycles. And the opposition can wait to. It was years after the first Solidarity strikes before Poland’s military dictatorship fell. Some of the world’s most powerful, feared governments have been toppled by ‘people power’.
Today, Iranian opposition supporters defied an enormous security presence on the streets of Tehran to gather, by some estimates, in the thousands. In an attempt to bypass the security forces, they first gathered in smaller groups at several locations and then converged outside Tehran University and on Vali Asr Square, the site of several recent demonstrations. Many shouted ‘death to the dictator’. Others carried copies of the Koran, daring security forces to attack them while carrying the Muslim holy book.
With cell-phone networks shut down, witnesses shared accounts via email and websites such as Twitter and Facebook. One witness said police fired tear gas into buses. Another said she had seen paramilitary basij fighters tossing protesters from pedestrian bridges onto the road below. There were several accounts of beatings.
This morning, witnesses described one of the biggest deployments of security forces since the start of the demonstrations after Iran’s disputed June 12 election. One protester said there were ‘ten times’ as many basiji on the streets as this person had ever seen. ‘The tension was so high,’ said another, ‘you could cut it with a knife.’
Opposition supporters had made ambitious plans for protests today to mark the 10th anniversary of a student uprising on July 9, 1999. Known as ‘18th of Tyr’ on the Persian calendar, the anniversary is often marked by student demonstrations. Leading up to today, opposition groups had encouraged supporters to protest, spreading the word with fliers, internet notices and friends calling friends.
Please keep reporting, people need to know what is happening over there before the world forgets! Freedom For My People.
Thanks for keeping the news flowing. God be with you and angels of protection.
Speaking to dissidents on the ground in Tehran, there are ambitious plans for protests tomorrow to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1999 student uprising. The demo’s are just ambitions for now – recent planned demo’s have fizzled – but tomorrow’s appear to be more organized. Protesters plan to make a showing in a number of Iranian cities. They’ll gather in several locations to confuse police – nine locations in Tehran, nine locations in Shiraz, similar numbers in Isfahan and other cities – and then march toward a common gathering place. Word is spreading organically: fliers, internet notices and friends calling friends. Protesters are emboldened in part by Mousavi’s refusal to back down, but more so by their own continued anger and frustration. They, like several prominent Iranian leaders from Mirhossein Mousavi to Ali Larijani to clerics in Qom, believe they’re fighting not just for the presidential election but to rescue the last vestiges of democracy - to keep the ‘republic’ in the ‘Islamic Republic’. Many protesters are speaking in bold terms. One told me. “We’re ready for anything, to be killed, beaten up, arrested. When we go out there, it’s real war.” Government security forces are certainly aware of the plans – which have been advertized widely on Facebook, Twitter, etc. – and will be waiting for them. It’s an open question as to whether protesters can somehow regain the upper hand but their intention is to show they can still generate numbers.
a twitblog seems like a good idea for these kinds of posts. Certainly able to get a bit more in-depth info. And it'll be interesting to see if the pics/vids/info from the protests will make it to the web. The net censors have done well shutting down much of it.
%u0641%u0631%u062F%u0627 %u0647%u0645%u0647 %u0634%u0631%u0643%u062A %u062E%u0648%u0627%u0647%u064A%u0645 %u0643%u0631%u062F.tomorrow we are going to take part in the protest.I invite everyone to participate.
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Please keep reporting, people need to know what is happening over there before the world forgets! Freedom For My People.