Crackdown in Iran: Up to 12 Dead, Hundreds Arrested in Opposition Protests
Democracy Now: December 28, 2009
"This is a very critical time. We have to realize that Iran's political
system is falling apart. And political solutions are becoming less
and less obvious. There is very much the danger of a full-scale
military coup by the Revolutionary Guard. And the US and other
foreign actors involved with issues on Iran bear a big responsibility.
Anything that they would provoke in bringing any kind of military action
against Iran—particularly during the past few weeks we have seen again the
reemergence of discourse that Iran has to be attacked, that Israel should be
given a green light to launch aerial attacks against Iran. These would all
be extremely dangerous. That is pretty much what the Revolutionary Guards
are looking for. They're looking for any kind of confrontation that can
rescue them from the domestic crisis they're facing and, that way, just shut
down the whole country and put it on a war footing. "
In Iran, police opened fire into crowds of protesters Sunday, killing as
many as twelve people, including the nephew of defeated presidential
candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Security forces have also arrested hundreds
of people, including a number of prominent opposition figures. We speak with
Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human
Rights in Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with Iran, where police opened fire into crowds
of protesters Sunday, killing a number of people, including the nephew of
the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. The Iranian
government confirmed five deaths, but opposition websites say as many as
twelve protesters have been killed in cities across Iran. Security forces
have also arrested a number of prominent opposition figures.
The protests took place on Ashura, one of the holiest days in the Shiite
Muslim calendar. They were the bloodiest and among the largest
anti-government protests since the uprisings that followed the disputed
presidential election in June. Hundreds of people were reported wounded, and
300 were arrested in Tehran.
The protests also marked one week since the death of the dissident cleric
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had become a fierce critic of
Iran's leaders in recent months. Amateur videos uploaded on the internet
show bloody scenes of police and Basij militias brutally attacking crowds of
protesters. There are also scenes of protesters pushing back police forces
with rocks and setting police cars and motorcycles on fire.
For more, I'm joined on the phone by Hadi Ghaemi. He is the director of the
New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. He's closely
tracking developments in Iran.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us what you know. And why the latest round of
protests and attacks on the protesters?
HADI GHAEMI: Good morning, Amy, and thanks for having me.
As you mentioned, yesterday Iran was the scene of a major unrest. And we see
that the political crisis in that country six months after the election, not
only not coming to an end, but it's expanding, and the government and the
Supreme Leader are facing major issues of legitimacy. And basically, the
political elites who have been in charge of the country for the past thirty
years have come to head-on war with each other. And yesterday showed that
the level of violence is escalating.
And it was very, very disturbing to see that on the holiest day of the
Shiite calendar the government felt free to use violence, and as many as ten
people throughout the country are reported killed. That has been a shocking
development for many people, because even thirty years ago when protests
were taking place against the Shah, the Shah's military did not open fire on
that day. And now we see a government that has claims to religious authority
basically overlooking all that and killing its own people on that day.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance more of Ashura and also the death
of the nephew of the presidential candidate.
HADI GHAEMI: Ashura is the holiest day for the Shiites, because it marks the
martyrdom of their third Imam, who is really their hero, the man who stood
up against tyranny. And even though he did not have an army, only with
seventy-two people, he took out on a much larger army to fight for his
ideals and what he believed was a fight against tyrannical, so that imagery
has been very potent in Shiite version of Islam. And yesterday was a day
where every day in Iran people congregate to mark that day. And to see it
turned violent was very shocking for many people.
Now, the death of—the death of the nephew of the opposition leader, Mousavi,
is being reported as an assassination. It looks like it was very targeted.
An SUV pulled out in front of him, and someone jumped out and shot him point
blank. And then his body was taken to a hospital, where Mousavi visited it.
And at the same time, Basiji forces surrounded the hospital. And by
midnight, it's reported that the body disappeared. So it's becoming quite an
intrigue. But one analysis is that he was assassinated as a warning to
Mousavi himself. And it also shows that the political infighting is becoming
very personal within the regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, for people who are listening right now on the radio, you
can go to our website at democracynow.org, and you can see all of the video.
But talk about the significance of what we're seeing, from people's cell
phones, video that they're taking and that they're uploading. What kind of
crackdown is going on, Hadi Ghaemi?
HADI GHAEMI: Yeah, we're really seeing a modern phenomenon in terms of
social networking and impact of technology on empowering people. The
government has done its best to shut down any channels of communication and
information coming out of the country or being circulated within the
country. We've had the foreign journalists banned from going on this trip
and covering anything, including the wire services. The media within Iran is
highly censored.
And actually yesterday 'til afternoon, they would not even admit anything
unusual happening in the country. And the Revolutionary Guard who are in
power right now politically, they had been warning people not to congregate
and not to hold any kind of events on that day, and yet we see that hundreds
of thousands of people throughout the country came out. And they were very
creative in getting the information out as soon as possible through the
internet. So, by late afternoon, there were so many YouTube videos and
images flooding the internet that the government media could not deny
anymore that events were taking place. And by the end of the evening, the
police commander was coming out and admitting that five people have been
killed, 300 have been arrested, and signaling that the country is undergoing
a major crisis. But the role of the citizen journalists to bringing out
information, showing what is really happening in the country, has been very
significant, and it's quite a phenomenon.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of the arrest of Ebrahim Yazdi, who
served as foreign minister in the early months of the 1979 revolution, also
Emadeddin Baghi, the human rights campaigner and journalist.
HADI GHAEMI: Yes, these are two of the most well known personalities in the
country. Ebrahim Yazdi, let me just say, he's a seventy-eight-year-old man,
who remained in the country while much of his friends and other opposition
left the country during the past thirty years. He stayed within the country
and believed in struggling within the framework of the regime and was a
constant critic of the regime.
I don't think people like him and his generation are leading these protests.
They are simply just the older generation and don't have the capacity or
organization to be much of a factor on a daily event, but just their voice
and symbolic presence seems to be intolerable to the government, and they're
looking for a scapegoat. They've done this during the past six months, where
they take prominent people, opinion makers, basically anyone who can analyze
and put the situation in context for the larger population, into prison,
believing that way the larger popular movement will be decapitated and will
not have any directions and will fizzle away. The reality has been that it
has not. Young people seem—it just seems to be a very locally organized,
very horizontal at the grassroots, and people keep finding ways to connect,
inform each other, and plan events.
Emadeddin Baghi is a very significant case, because he is the most well
known human rights defender in the country. After Shirin Ebadi, he's the
most well known and most connected internationally. Just last year he won
the recognition of Martin Ennals Prize, which is a prize given by Amnesty
and all the—Amnesty International and all the major human rights
organizations, because he has been relentlessly campaigning for—against the
death penalty, for the abolition of the death penalty. And right now, again,
taking him in is a somewhat of a symbolic, I think, act by the government
out of frustration, just wanting to feel like they are putting down these
protests, one way or another. But he was certainly a very important figure
in propagating the importance of human rights, respect for human rights, and
those are the very topics that the government fears their discussion and
their discourse would be inflammatory in public. But taking him away, I don't
think is going to do anything in quieting down the protests.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Hadi, how do you think the US should respond?
HADI GHAEMI: This is a very critical time. We have to realize that Iran is
domestically—its political system is falling apart. And political solutions
are becoming less and less obvious.
There is very much the danger of a full-scale military coup by the
Revolutionary Guard. And the US and other foreign actors involved with
issues on Iran have a big responsibility here. Anything that they would
provoke in bringing any kind of military action against Iran—particularly
during the past few weeks we have seen again the reemergence of discourse
that Iran has to be attacked, that Israel should be given a green light to
launch aerial attacks against Iran. These would all be extremely dangerous.
That is pretty much what the Revolutionary Guards are looking for. They're
looking for any kind of confrontation that can rescue them from the domestic
crisis they're facing and, that way, just shut down the whole country and
put it on a war footing.
So the US policy, on one hand, should not be going on a full throttle in
normalizing relations with Iran. I think Obama's original idea of
negotiating with Iran has to be reevaluated. There has to be dialogue. There
has to be engagement. But it should not be to a point where a military
dictatorship is being legitimized throughout that process. And at the same
time, the pendulum should not swing in the other direction, where military
attack is seen as the only option, because that would not solve anything,
and it would also bring down this democracy movement that's underway in
Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: Hadi Ghaemi, I want to thank you very much for being with us,
director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, speaking to
us from New Hampshire.
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