Protesten Iran gaan door

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Reporting from Tehran and Beirut - Large-scale protests spread in central Iranian cities Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the country's pious heartland.

Demonstrations took place in Esfahan, a provincial capital and Iran's cultural center, and nearby Najafabad, the birthplace and hometown of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose death Saturday triggered the latest round of confrontations between the opposition movement and the government.

The central region is considered by some as the conservative power base of the hard-liners in power.

Iranian authorities are clearly alarmed by the spread of the protests. Mojtaba Zolnour, a mid-ranking cleric serving as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the elite and powerful Revolutionary Guard, acknowledged widespread unrest around the country.

"There were many [acts of] sedition after the Islamic Revolution," he said, according to the website of the right-wing newspaper Resala. "But none of them spread the seeds of doubt and hesitation among various social layers as much as the recent one."

A reformist website, Rahesabz, or Green Path, reported that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security issued an order banning governors across the country from granting permits for further memorial services for Montazeri.

There were also reports Wednesday of protests breaking out on university campuses in Tehran and the eastern city of Mashhad, Iran's second largest, and a violent clash broke out in the southern city of Sirjan over the execution of two men accused of criminal activity.

Tehran's mass postelection protests, which were crushed by authorities, drew Iranians from all walks of life.

As protests after the death of Montazeri, Iran's leading dissident cleric, broke out in the shrine city of Qom, Esfahan and Najafabad this week, Tehran has remained relatively quiet. But authorities are bracing for widely anticipated demonstrations linked to Ashura, a major religious holy day this weekend on which Shiite Muslims commemorate the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

"The demise of Ayatollah Montazeri agitated the traditional and middle-aged walks of life," said Hamid-Reza Jalaipour, an opposition supporter and Tehran social scientist. "Despite all the restrictions, his death triggered a wider social movement in which traditional-minded and religious people get more involved in the protests."

In Qom, the scene Monday of a massive mourning ceremony with explicit anti-government themes, supporters of supreme leader Khamenei gathered in front of the home of Ayatollah Hossein Nouri- Hamedani, who condemned the protests.

"We believe that they [anti-government protesters] cannot do a thing and will achieve nothing," Nouri-Hamedani told supporters. "But this was the last time, and if anyone attempts to take another wrong step, he will be rejected by the revolution, the system and Iran."

The latest protests broke out late Tuesday, on the religiously significant third day after Montazeri's death.

Video posted on the Internet showed dozens of demonstrators marching through Esfahan as drivers halted their cars to block approaching security forces. The amateur video showed plainclothes security officers struggling with protesters on the streets.

Reformist websites said security forces fired tear gas and pepper spray during an event near a mosque organized by reformist cleric Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, an ally of Montazeri and onetime Friday prayer leader in Esfahan who resigned his post in 2002 in protest of Iran's authoritarian drift.

"From the early morning the anti-riot police cordoned off the area and the mosque, but some people braved the hassle and insisted on going inside the mosque," said a witness in Esfahan, reached by telephone.

According to reformist websites, security forces arrested dozens, including four journalists. A local official in the office of former presidential candidate and opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi in Esfahan was attacked, injured and arrested by security forces, a reformist website said.

Unrest also broke out Tuesday night in Najafabad and continued Wednesday, the Rahesabz website reported.

The "situation in the city is tense and sporadic clashes are taking place between people and the law enforcement force and people are chanting slogans against senior officials of the system," the website said.

A merchant reached by phone said the city's central bazaar remained shuttered, while life in the rest of the city of 350,000 appeared to be returning to normal.

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A U.S. State Department official says "Iran is increasingly showing itself to be a police state" in its harsh treatment of opposition protesters.

State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday that Iran is using its security forces to try to "stamp out" the "aspirations of the Iranian people."

On Wednesday, Iranian opposition groups say security forces armed with tear gas and batons clashed with supporters of the late dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, as they rallied in central Iran.

Iranian police official Esmail Ahmedi-Moghadam told journalists the opposition must "stop its illegal activities" or police would stop them.

When asked about the clashes, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Britain's Channel 4 News that "the law prevails" and must be observed and respected during protests in Iran.

In the interview broadcast Wednesday, President Ahmadinejad also said the people of Iran are united and determined to protect their rights, interests and independence.

Opposition Web sites say Wednesday's clashes took place at gatherings in memory of Ayatollah Montazeri in Isfahan and his birthplace of Najafabad.

The opposition reports say security forces in Isfahan arrested more than 50 demonstrators and injured many others. Amateur video appears to confirm the accounts of violence.

Iran has banned foreign media from covering protests directly.

Ayatollah Montazeri died Sunday in Qom at the age of 87.

He was considered a spiritual patron of Iran's reformist movement and a strong critic of the nation's conservative clerical establishment.

Opposition groups said hundreds of thousands of mourners joined a funeral procession for the ayatollah in Qom Monday that evolved into a major anti-government protest.

Government supporters in Qom staged a smaller counter-demonstration on Tuesday.

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De Iraanse politie is in de hoofdstad Teheran opnieuw slaags geraakt met aanhangers van de oppositie. Volgens een hervormingsgezinde website greep de politie in toen een grote groep demonstranten was begonnen aan een mars.

Hoeveel betogers er precies zijn is niet duidelijk: journalisten worden in het gebied niet toegelaten. In Iran zijn de spanningen opgelopen nadat vorige week zondag grootayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri overleed.

Montazeri was kritisch over het Iraanse regime en werd gezien als een steunpilaar van de oppositie.
bron: NOS

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 10:32 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Vrij lang, volgens mij. Er zijn wat demonstraties, en de regering grijpt in. Ahmedinajad zit er nog, en Mousavi is zijn baan kwijt. Ik hoop dat de Iraniërs in een mooi vredig land kunnen wonen, maar vooralsnog lijkt de regering vrij solide aan de macht te blijven.

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 11:47 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:
Laten we gewoon ontopic blijven.

Morgen wordt het overigens een gekkenhuis in Iran.

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 11:49 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:

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Ashura.

De oppositie heeft aangekondigd massaal te gaan protesteren. De regering vreest de dag van morgen dan ook.

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 12:08 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:
Ja, ik ben benieuwd wat er morgen allemaal gaat gebeuren.

Overigens zijn veel politieke analytici het er al over eens dat het slechts een kwestie van tijd is voordat de Iraanse regering valt. De mensen zijn niet meer bang!

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 12:26 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:

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Ik denk dat de regering binnen vijf jaar is verdwenen.

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In Iran, holiday and protest set stage for high drama

Celebrations of Ashura, always a dramatic street ritual among Shiite Muslims, are expected to include an element of political theater this weekend, fueled by Iran's postelection unrest.

Reporting from Tehran - The haze from burning esfand, a Persian weed, and the scents of thick-brewed tea and rose water fill the black funeral tents that have bloomed across Tehran. Sweeping black banners of mourning and small green lights hang outside mosques.

In the Grand Bazaar, thousands of new customers have descended on the stands selling paraphernalia for the upcoming holiday. On the streets, at bus stops and on the subway, young Iranians ask one another: What mosque are you going to for the holiday? Are you planning to wear opposition green, or bring a green ribbon to flash when it's safe?

Ashura, the most emotionally charged religious holiday on the Iranian calendar, is almost here.

Wearing green and black, the Shiite faithful will beat themselves in ritual self-flagellation Sunday and perform elaborate passion plays reenacting the doomed 7th century battle of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, to retain the throne of Islam.

"Ya Hussein!" the faithful will chant.

And this year, the chant will have an echo: "Ya Hossein! Mir-Hossein!"

Year after year, the Islamic Republic has appropriated the themes behind the centuries-old reenactments of martyrdom for its own ends, a grand political theater.

But a new force has appeared on Iran's political stage. Supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi are determined to graft the green-themed movement born out of Iran's disputed presidential election onto Ashura, the culmination of the first 10 days of the Islamic month Muharram that marks Hussein's martyrdom.

"I've always gone to Muharram," said a 33-year-old Tehran actor and opposition supporter who asked that his name not be published.

"But this year is very special for me. What Hussein did, the pursuit of justice, the goal was the same.

"This year, you will see unexpected things on the street."

Theatrical history

Iran's political culture has long been interlaced with the theater of the streets, pavement morality plays pulling at heartstrings and loyalties, high-drama attempts to seize control of the political narrative.

Rowdy street battles accompanied the unrest surrounding the 1953 U.S.-backed coup that ousted Iran's democratically elected government. Rolling street protests swept away the shah's rule in the months leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Street theater has also defined Iran's year of domestic political turmoil.

It was on the streets near Azadi Square that hundreds of thousands of Iranians showed up in February to mark the 30th anniversary of the revolution, a defiant demonstration of strength and unity to the world.

On those same streets in the spring, supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mousavi faced off to demonstrate their magnitude in the days before the election. At one point, supporters of Mousavi formed a human chain along Vali Asr Street -- the longest street in the Middle East -- all of them wearing the green that symbolizes the campaign.

It was on the streets again that hundreds of thousands, some say millions, poured out in protest in the days after the disputed election in June.

Realizing the power of Iran's theater of the streets, a black-turbaned supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to the podium amid the protests, put on his sternest demeanor and demanded that the protesters leave the scene, or suffer the consequences.

For good measure, he began weeping at the end of the speech -- the aggrieved, aging patriarch, a theatrical signal. The Basiji militiamen picked up their batons, threw on their war colors and took to the streets against demonstrators.

Stage fright struck as she emerged from the subway station onto the street and into a crowd of bearded, helmeted militiamen. They eyed her menacingly, she said, and for a moment she considered heading back home to her parents, who had no idea she was here, alone, with a little green ribbon stuffed into her pocket.

But Mariam, a 25-year-old clerk at a shipping company who spoke on condition that her last name not be used, had rehearsed this role a hundred times in her mind as well as in previous encounters along Tehran's streets. So, on this September day, she waded nervously into the crowd of hundreds, not knowing who was friend or foe.

Suddenly, a single cry went up. "Marg bar dictator!" -- Death to the dictator. She looked around before hearing another voice: "Allahu akbar!" -- God is great.

Then two more voices. "Marg bar dictator!" A dozen more chimed in. She looked around again, noticing that hands were holding green ribbons, and pulled out her own, wrapping it around her fingers. The fear dissipated. She joined in the chanting, now a roar. The police officers and militiamen stepped back from the huge crowd arrayed against them.

"Our generation had a lot of fear instilled in us," she said later. "You went to a party, you're afraid. You have a boyfriend, you're afraid. You don't dare speak out.

"These prohibitions are broken. All the complexes and resentments of the last years are pouring out into the street. It's a joy. It's the feeling of being free."

Tensions building

Jittery security forces have lined most of Iran's main squares in preparation for this year's Ashura. Authorities are clearly nervous. Even in calm years, security forces have struggled to prevent the faithful from expressing their love for Hussein by striking their skulls with swords until they draw blood. Khamenei abhors the practice.

The death a week ago of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, the high-ranking cleric who had become the opposition's spiritual guide, only added to the sense of a coming storm, placing the religiously significant seventh day of mourning exactly at the peak of Ashura, which will begin this morning with ceremonies marking the ninth day of Muharram and continue into Sunday.

Authorities have warned protesters in the direst terms of the consequences of using Ashura to promote their agenda.

"Both sides appear to be pushing for some kind of climax on Ashura," said one Tehran journalist and analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The parallels between the opposition narrative and that of Imam Hussein are uncanny.

Just as Iranian opposition supporters believe Mousavi was robbed of his rightful leadership role in the presidential election, Shiites believe that Hussein was unjustly denied his rightful role as the leader of the Islamic world after the murder of his father, Ali, who was Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth caliph.

Just as Mousavi refused to acknowledge Ahmadinejad as the winner, Hussein refused to swear allegiance to the Caliph Yazid.

Mousavi left the political establishment with his supporters. Hussein took to the desert with his band of followers. Just as the opposition employs the color green, Hussein tried to raise an army to fight Yazid under the green flag of Islam.

That's where the parallels end, at least for now. Mousavi has hundreds of thousands of supporters, who lead him as much as he leads them. Hussein managed to persuade only 72 men, women and children to stand with him when he confronted Yazid's army of 30,000 in Mesopotamia in the year 680. Despite a valiant fight, he and his followers were slaughtered, and he was beheaded.

But Mousavi's loyalists continue to turn out in the streets, holding their green ribbons in peaceful shows of force.

And they climb to their rooftops night after night, sending haunting cries of defiance into the darkness.

Few were surprised that Iran's authorities cracked down on an opposition movement they view largely as a foreign-backed tool to pressure the country in its fight against the West. Iranian authorities employed similar tactics to quell domestic troubles in the early 1980s and late '90s, when street violence and televised confessions were used to subdue and discredit the opposition.

But what even the most die-hard supporters of the opposition didn't predict was that a movement lacking a clear leadership, organization or agenda would survive and grow.

Over the last six months, the opposition has become adept at turning the theater of the streets to their advantage, challenging the Islamic Republic at its own game.

Largely through the dramatic sway of its peaceful mass protests, the movement has expanded from its base of middle-class urbanites to include many walks of life. Ethnic Kurds and Azeris, both historically key, restive minorities, have begun to identify with the movement.

"There's a strange unity among the people, something that hasn't been seen in decades," said a Tehran social scientist and opposition supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ali, an Iranian graphic designer in his late 20s, said he was on a business trip to a desert village near the city of Kashan, where he hitched a ride with a man in his 40s, who immediately asked him about the situation in the capital.

"He turned toward me while he was driving and said, 'Bless you! We are all here watching you. We are frightened because they are monitoring us closely. But we are waiting for the right time,' " Ali recounted. "He looked like your typical religious kind of guy."

Last week, homemakers, taxi drivers, bazaar merchants, mechanics and repairmen voiced sympathy for the green movement, if not outright admitting that they took part in protests.

"We are planning to protest on Ashura," a twenty-something blacksmith said, his hands and face covered with soot outside his shop in Narmak, the east Tehran neighborhood were Ahmadinejad grew up.

"They will try to stop us and arrest us," he said. "But we're not just one or two people they can pull out. We're many."

Lessons from stage

Amid these months of sporadic mass protests, Ramin Mostaghim, The Times' correspondent in Tehran, often referred to the play "The Memoir of the Supporting Actor." Written amid the fallout of the Islamic Revolution in the early 1980s, it tells the story of a group of jobless men recruited to play the role of demonstrators marching in favor of the government.

But they get carried away by their roles, and a couple of them die in clashes.

"We are the workers of the theater," the men announce during a Brechtian chorus at the tragedy's end. "A miniaturized picture of the world, even if humiliated and broken, we are the reflected picture of the circumstances."

Today's protesters don't want to die like Imam Hussein or the characters in the play, at least not in the early acts. They see the struggle as a long one, and even as they plan for the protests, they continue to go to work and classes. A veneer of normality hides the political unrest. They've mastered the concept of the living martyr.

By making it home after the protests, perhaps bruised and battered, they combine the emotional potency of victimhood with the practicality of not getting killed.

Though he makes it to most political rallies, the 33-year-old actor also attends rehearsals almost daily. He's getting ready for an anticipated staging of Brecht's "Galileo," about the Italian astronomer who is forced by narrow-minded religious leaders to publicly recant his scientific conclusion that Earth circles the sun and not the other way around.

At the end of the play, Galileo is a broken man. But he hands one of his most important manuscripts to Andrea, the prodigal son of his housekeeper, who takes his master's treasured learning to the rest of Europe, salvaging it from the pyres of intolerance.

"One cannot fly through the air on a broomstick," Andrea admonishes a pair of boys. "It must at least have a machine on it, and as yet there is no such machine. Perhaps there never will be, for man is too heavy. But, of course, one cannot tell. We don't know nearly enough. . . . We are really only at the beginning."

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Op zaterdag 26 december 2009 14:29 schreef Salvad0R het volgende:

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Een heel ander topic voor zo'n klein detail? Niet nodig.

In blijde afwachting verblijf ik.

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 12:45 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Dat is overigens heftig, hoor, als burgers Basij-gebouwen bestormen en de Basij eruit sleuren. Het is op zich een mooi gegeven, en het is een absoluut duidelijk gegeven dat heel veel mensen het heel erg zat zijn, maar ik zie in dat soort gevallen niet alleen een regime dat op vallen staat, maar ook een regime dat zich steeds harder zal opstellen om middels eenvoudige terreur de rust weer terug te laten keren. Heftige beelden desalniettemin.

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 12:56 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:

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Ja. Bedoel je in een bepaald video?

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 12:56 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Nou, dan is dat duidelijk verkeerd begrepen. Ik zeg niet dat het geen effect zal hebben, ik zeg dat de effectiviteit niet duidelijk is: een regime is met geweld tot veel in staat. Tijd om even wat minder koffie te drinken en een rondje te lopen als je denkt dat dat ook maar iets met respect te maken heeft. Ik kan niet de realiteit -of wat ik ervan vind- aanpassen aan de gevoelige tenen en gevoelige wensen van andere mensen.

AryaMeyer blijft zeggen dat dit het einde van het regime is, grootschalige dissidentie. Nou, ik hoop het, maar zo eenvoudig lijkt het allemaal niet. Als tegenspraak niet gewenst is, dan moet er niet op dit forum worden gereageerd of desnoods anders in een of ander religieus topic.

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 13:02 schreef AryaMehr het volgende:

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Ja, ik versta alles, maar in het laatste filmpje die ik heb gepost schreeuwt iedereen door elkaar. Ze willen niet naar binnen dringen, maar ze hebben een basiji-lid of een politieagent gevangen die door sommige burgers beschermd wordt in een portiek.

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 13:04 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Uiteraard. Ik moet zo'n beetje elk topic incasseren dat ik etcetera en dit en dat en zus en zo, terwijl het enige wat ik doe is het op mijn wijze duiden van zaken in Iran. Af en toe lijkt het dat elk gebrek aan halleluja wordt bestraft met een preek van morele armoede.

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Op zondag 27 december 2009 13:08 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Ik vind het niet zo gek. Deze burgers moeten dag in dag uit de terreur van de wat je gerust fascistische hooligans mag noemen incasseren. Ze worden opgepakt en weggestopt in martelgevangenissen, wat dat betreft is het een wonder dat er niet meer geweld is tegen de basij. Het toont volgens mij de wanhoop enerzijds -je moet niets meer te verliezen hebben- en anderzijds de hoop -je moet iets om voor te vechten hebben-.