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Iran's Guards to 'Crush' Protests
on June 21, 2009 (Flickr photo by .faramarz) Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard military unit has threatened to crush further protests over the country's disputed June 12 presidential election.
A statement published on the Guard's website on Monday said the paramilitary force would not hesitate to confront "illegal" rallies organised by supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated reformist presidential candidate.
"At the current sensitive situation ... the Guards will firmly confront, in a revolutionary way, rioters and those who violate the law," the statement said.
Tehran, the Iranian capital, has seen unrest and street protests since results of the presidential poll were announced on July 13.
Mousavi had renewed calls to his supporters to continue protests on Sunday.
The government is blaming the crisis on what it calls "terrorists" influenced by the West, and has said it will clamp down on any violent action.
The Revolutionary Guard - an armed force parallel to Iran's army and designed to protect the revolution against a possible coup - also warned Western countries against supporting the "rioters".
Over the weekend, clashes between police and anti-government protesters left at least 12 people dead and more than 100 wounded - raising the death toll to 19 since the unrest began.
Gunfire was heard in Tehran overnight, although state television reported the city calm on Monday.
Iranian state radio reported that more than 450 people had been arrested during Saturday's rallies, mostly around Tehran's Azadi square.
Forty police officers were also wounded, and 34 government buildings damaged, the Fars news agency reported.
'Constant insecurity'
Despite the deaths, arrests, and an earlier warning from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, the demonstrators have appeared to be undeterred.
Alireza Zaker-Esfahani, an adviser to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, criticised Mousavi for not trying to calm his supporters"The weakness is in Mir Hossein Mousavi's political behaviour... He is currently issuing statements inviting his supporters to take to the streets. That will not solve any problem," he told Al Jazeera on Monday.
"Rallies will ultimately contribute to abuse, setting buses on fire, bloodshed and constant insecurity for the people."
He also said that once the security situation in the country has escalated, the president and other politicians have to step back and let security forces handle the situation.
"The security forces are the ones who should lay down plans and execute them, whereas Ahmadinejad, his interior ministry and all other political forces can only enter the scene if and when the security situation becomes one of political interactions. Ahmadinejad cannot do anything now," Zaker-Esfahani said.
Voting irregularities
Iran's Guardian Council, the country's highest legislative body, meanwhile, has admitted some irregularities occurred during the election.
Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the council, told state-funded broadcaster IRIB on Monday that up to three million votes were under scrutiny, after it was found that the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters in 50 cities.
However, he said it was a normal discrepancy because people are allowed to travel to other areas to vote, and that it was "yet to be determined whether the amount is decisive in the election results".
Ahmadinejad won the election by a wide margin, with 63 per cent of the vote, according to figures from Iran's interior ministry.
Mousavi received only 34 per cent of the vote, although he and his supporters allege voter fraud and have called for an annulment of the result.
Protest calls
In a statement published on the website of Mousavi's Kalameh newspaper on Sunday, the opposition leader said that Iranians had the right to protest against "lies and fraud", but also urged them to show restraint as they take to the streets.
"The revolution is your legacy. To protest against lies and fraud is your right. Be hopeful that you will get your right and do not allow others who want to provoke your anger ... to prevail," he said.
The Iranian government, meanwhile, has also cracked down on independent media reporting on the protests, and imposed severe restrictions on foreign journalists.
At least 23 journalists have so far been detained by authorities, according to the Reporters without Borders organisation, and a BBC correspondent has been expelled from the country.
21 Comments so far
Show AllMay the blood of the victims be on the hands of the instigaters, and may it be revenge by ALMIGHTY GOD!
Oh good... war between the gods. Whoa! Advertising will cost a mint... can't wait to see Budweiser's new ads for the event! Americans: get out your pretzels!!! Start your office pools!
Commondreams decides to attach a photograph not originally linked to the original Al Jazeera article. interesting editorial decision.
Response to CDs use of a flickr photo of male lying on pavement bloodied., originally uploaded on June 21, 2009 .Flickr photo by .faramarz
This Mousavi fellow is pushing up people for execution onto the spikes and bullets of the conservative regime. His allegations of systemic "lies and fraud" are possibly something that would not survive a legal challange. The regime should be brave enough to face a legal challange.
There is no doubt that emotions and actions need to cool down a lot to prevent futher needless killing of protesters. This first responsibility goes to Mousavi and his backers, whoever they may be. Mousavi seems to be a bad loser, and bears responsibility for the style and results of the protests, and has not stated what is the long term goals of continuing the protests. What his he after, if not continued forment of destabilisation? It seems like a good way for the regime to get rid of all the lefties. Stir them up, then lock them up, or shoot them down.
The regime should consider setting up an impartial forum for the review of the election, and find ways to curb overreactive reprisals and killing by Iran Guards and such like. "Crush" is the language that may just incite further protests. Smother, restrain and cool down with care and love would be much more effective. A whole lot of anger management and dialog is required from both sides, to achieve the acquisition of insight and a more peaceful way forwards.
Protests for the sake of protesting will go nowhere.
Are you kidding me? There are some very clear signs of fraud in this election. There are some glaring irregularities. Protest for the sake of protest, hmmmm... I wish we had done the same in the US some eight years ago. We took it, and what was the cost? There are some serious problems with the legitimacy of the current regime, and the people aren't taking their rights for granted but fighting for them. This is amazing, and wonderful, and people are dying for their self determination, Mousavi isn't pushing people onto a spike, he is risking himself as well.
It isn't that he is so different than the regime, it is that there was fraud. That is important, and accepting fraud, and hiding when a regime is willing to murder to repress the will of the people, is how all rights are lost.
Never would I say that the united states should interfere in this process, outside of sanctions, however Ahmadinejad and the current regime are wrong, and what THEY are doing is wrong. There is no way around this, there is no way to legitimize their actions, and their actions are their fault, and not the fault of the protesters.
Ahmadinejad, is no different from our former president, a loud mouth meddling in the affairs of foreign nations. He is not heroic, he is not a "social justice candidate," he is a man guilty of killing his own people for protesting an election with sketchy results.
Seriously.
RELIGIOUS LEADER TURNS HELL'S ANGELS LOOSE ON HIS PEOPLE.
While it is right to be outraged by the goings-on in Iran at the hands of its megalomaniac theocrats and right to try to find ways to support the demonstrators there, it is sobering to think that on the other side of the planet similar protests against a government that represents the interests of western resource-driven multinationals have been put down as bloodily and as cruelly. In Peru the massacre of indigenous peoples who wish to maintain some amount control over their homelands was as cruel, as anti-democratic and every bit as devastating as what is unfolding in Iran, but that story has slipped from the headlines of even progressive news services. How convenient.
As was pointed out on another site, Twitter doesn't accept input in Farsi, that the U.S. State Department requested that Twitter not shut down for maintenance, and that those Iranian-Americans involved with "National Endowment for Democracy" are the direct beneficiaries of the Twitter access.
There is no interest in the massacre in Peru for the same reason for the feverish enthusiasm in the corporate media that resolutely refused to look at two stolen elections in the United States.
Twitter does allow a person to write in farsi:
میرحسین موسوی/به احقاق حقوق خود امیدوار باشید/همچنان به پرهیز ازخشونت پایبند بمانید http://ghalamnews.ir/news-2... #IranElection
This comment contains Persian text, written from right to left with some letters joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined Perso-Arabic letters written left-to-right, instead of right-to-left or other symbols instead of Perso-Arabic script. Depending on whether Commondreams.org (and/or your personal computer depending on the system you run and what country you're in) has the language script installed, the above message will either be in the proper or near-proper script, or a bunch of question marks.
The above message is from Twitter, at http://twitter.com/mousavi1388. My spouse and I have been subscribing to numerous twitter feeds in both farsi and english. Twitter does accept input in Farsi. She has written in Twitter in farsi.
While the U.S. media is likely to tire of this story some day, it is also important to point out that, yes, it does ignore a lot of other things going on such as what's happening in Peru. I think a lot of us here can find common ground in suggesting people find their information from a much wider pool than U.S. sources. Living abroad, I find this comes more naturally than while in the U.S. However, non-U.S. news is accessable in the U.S. which does not have the firewalls adopted by China, Iran, Burma, etc. You just have to seek it out.
Please share sites you know of that followed through about the massacres in Peru and have dedicated as much time and emphasis as what has been dedicated to the goings-on in Iran. Thanks in advance
Do you know Spanish? It might help. You seen pretty concerned about what's goig on in PEru. Why not share with the rest of people here where you get your information? I have family in Iran and so, yes, I guess I pay a little more attention to it. It's really not my responsibility or fault that the rest of the world has decided to pay attention to it right exactly now. I note that the most recent coverage runs up through about June 19th. If you want to see more on it out there, get to it. Write about it. If you want to promote news about what's going on in Peru, do that. Why flog it off on other people?
"Why flog it off on other people?"
Hmmm... for some reason I thought that's the way internet information sharing worked. With the emphasis on "share" as opposed to "flog off": One asks for information when others have made it appear that they have access to it. I suppose I should not assume anything about others' generosity, especially when they are convinced that suffering at the hands of one kind of Imperialism is somehow more important, more worth attention, than another.
At any rate, I seem to have touched a nerve.... and it's your nerve not mine. It sounded like you had direct knowledge of information sources that have done a better job following through on coverage of the massacres in Peru. Why would you with hold it? No one blamed you for what the world pays attention to or does not.
My point was to equalize the kinds of suffering that is perpetrated in the world and at the same time to equalize the acts of the perpetrators as very similarly grotesque and primitive, narcissistic and greed driven, regardless of the philosophies that they are inspired by, and then to point out that the attention span of many people is dictated by the interests of who ever controls the flow of information.
Progressive sites get sucked into the morass of corporate dictated prioritization and are helped by reminders that some stories that seem to fade away do so because of the influence of the perpetrators. There is certainly more than one way to withhold or prevent information from being disseminated. In Iran they are perhaps more direct in their repressions, the multinational corporate media here can be equally restrictive, however more clever in implementation and less obvious in their intent.
State-ruling officials who unquestioningly believe they have the approval of a primitively ego-imagined 'One True God' -- as the only justification they need for their worldly political policies and actions (i.e., provably mentally ill folks, such as we see ruling Iran, Israel, and all-too-often-however-quasi-officially, the USA) --- are always the worst nutcases which secular-Reason-guided humanity has to deal with.
Just how our specie's rote, fear-driven tendency toward inter-human strife, so easily exploitable in the name of Absolutist Religions' bogus solutions, is to be politically accommodated and dealt with by Reason-seeking people, has never been satisfactorily clear to me.
I try to maintain the following position:
Reason, as a model for knowing and bettering our creaturely-shared condition, doesn't need to be ultimately clear as some Finally Revealed explanation-for or guide-to universally humane values and actions.
As a way of seeing and organizing ourselves, Reason, in competitions with Religion, only needs to be more durably functional and more instinctively-experienced-as-decent than Religions' claims and actions, in order to supervene our epistemological loyalties.
So it would seem.
Unfortunately, such a position doesn't work to pacify the world: Western Enlightenment Reason is simply Darkness-inspired nonsense to those humans who are hypnotized by deeply-magical religious thinking; its Way of Knowing can only throw perceived insults at the hard-wired Friends of God.
I think that, if western Enlightenment values are to save the world, we who hold them still have no idea as to How.
Western Enlightenment values may be a step in the right direction, but they are also largely responsible for the kinds of outrages that inform the massacre and mass dislocation of indigenous people and the rape and plundering of resources to the no-return-point that we approach now.
Enlightenment values as they have been implemented and practiced in the political realm are also largely responsible for this situation in Iran that stems directly from the colonialist and racist-inspired coup that put the Shah in power to serve the interests of western values, largely those shared by multinationals hungry for profit, ways to adhere to the religion of growth over sustenance, and Newtonian inspired tunnel vision in the search to fulfill a belief in a mythological bottomless well of wealth and power that the perpetual growth paradigm embraces as a central fulcrum to its now obviously primitive balance of reasoning, or lack of it.
The current regime in Iran is a continuation of the Iranian reaction against enlightenment-reasoned ‘real politick’. That the Iranians chose a kind of regressive reactionary response to the Enlightenment values as represented by the incursion of the colonial forces that subjugated the people and stole the resources of the region makes sense. The tools to proceed to a politic beyond the one prevalent in Enlightenment-inspired political values were withheld from them or not yet present in the discourse of the region… probably for the very reasons, in that stream of historical stresses, pressures, leaps, calms and stagnancies, Iranian self-determination and autonomy was stolen in the first place, stolen by those same “superior” Enlightenment inspired powers.
Once we cross into and begin the organic process of inventing and implementing a new politic, a systems approach inspired by the mutable and transformative, non-Cartesian, values of the laws of coexistence, to equalize access to meaningfully balanced livelihood for all systems and recognize the essential and undeniable inter-relationships that work and are omnipresent in the spin of time and space, then we might be getting to a saner way of living on earth that moves toward nurturing, through enhancing interdependence, all systems at all levels...
…and none too soon.
how do we know that this picture is from Iran?
I thought the photo was from the Republican National Convention. Oops, my bad. That sort of public dissent is not tolerated in the US, or even covered by the mainstream media. Storm troopers in black riot gear, faces covered, weapons drawn on civilians, homes raided, massive arrests. Iran or US?
Let's not forget that it was US polices that set the stage for the rise of the clergy in Iran. The Shah's secret police were much more brutal in their repression of the people than the present day leaders. Having said that however,the sooner the Iranians get rid of the theocracy the better it will be for them and the rest of the world.
The pendulum always swings wildly side to side before it settles in the middle.
What a horrible government. Those kids were out in the street protesting, trying to exercise the same rights we sometimes take for granted. The mullahs are murdering them. Death to theocracy!
Death to theocracy and any country based on religion and bigotry such as Israel.
bobv - I agree with your additional observations RE Enlightenment values.
thanks!