Why does it always have to be “Death to so-and-so”? Is there no middle ground between “Long live Imam Khomeini” and “Death to the dictator”? Why not something a little more constructive, like “Stop beating and killing unarmed protestors for no damn reason”?
With temperatures dipping to a nippy 3°C on National Students’ Day, tens of thousands of Iranians showed that they haven’t forgotten about the June election stolen by incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad — even if the world has.
The Times of London reports:
They waved Iranian flags shorn of the Islamic Republic’s emblem, burnt posters of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and chanted “Khamenei is a murderer; his rule is illegitimate” — unthinkable before the Ayatollah backed President Ahmadinejad’s dubious election victory in June.
They demanded the release of detained students and taunted members of the Basij volunteer militia who are supposed to monitor their activities. They waved banknotes at them and chanted: “Mercenary agents, get lost!”
Elsewhere in Tehran security forces used teargas, plastic bullets and baton charges to disperse demonstrators and prevent them from reaching the University of Tehran, the epicentre of the unrest. They fired warnings shots in the air, beat anyone caught filming with mobile phones and made numerous arrests. The film clips showed demonstrators clad in facemasks throwing stones, setting fire to rubbish skips and shouting: “Death to the dictator,” and “Don’t be scared, we’re all together.” Some were bloody from beatings.
After six months of brutal repression by soldiers and pro-government gangs, the confiscation of a human rights activist’s Nobel Prize, and likely far more arrests than the Iranian government is admitting to, the protest against the June election results is still going strong.
But the unrest has become about much more than a stolen election, and protestors are now attacking the Ayatollah, Iranian theocracy, and the country’s whole system of government. And there’s more than the future of Iran at stake: if the pro-democracy momentum dies down and Iranians become unwilling to endanger their families and careers by fighting an unjust regime, repressed peoples around the world will get the same strong and dangerous message: that citizens’ movements, no matter how strongly supported by the masses, simply can’t topple well-armed governments that are willing to beat, torture and kill to keep power. For that reason, despots the world over are rooting for the Ayatollah and his allies, and hoping that a crushed rebellion in Iran will make it that much easier to steal an election in Zimbabwe, or keep a Burmese human rights activist under house arrest for another 14 years.
But if Iran’s “Green Revolution” succeeds, and if a dictatorship finally manages to depose its dictators through demonstrations, protests and generally peaceful means, the shock wave will be felt throughout the region and far beyond. Already there have been anti-Ayatollah demonstrations in the authoritarian United Arab Emirates and tightly controlled Malaysia — countries that don’t generally tolerate public protests. If the Ayatollah actually falls, who knows who’ll be next…
1 response so far ↓
1 renee // Feb 28, 2010 at 5:40 pm
it would rock if the extremists would be subdued by the people who want nothing more than peace, freedom, safety, and economic stability.
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