Iran Girds for Anti-State Protests

Planned Demonstrations Cloud Official Fete for Islamic Revolution, Amid Executions and

 

 

By FARNAZ FASSIHI

The Iranian state commemorated the 32nd anniversary of its Islamic Revolution on Friday with victory parades, as it tried to squelch counter demonstrations planned across the country for Monday.
Iran's pro-democracy Green Movement has called people to the streets in solidarity with protestors in Egypt and Tunisia, as the call gained momentum on blogs and social networking sites, with over 30,000 people pledging to participate on one protest group's Facebook page.
Iranian youth activists got a nod from Wael Ghonim, the Google executive and Egyptian protest leader, who showed up on Tahrir Square wearing the signature green wrist band of Iran's opposition.
"I tell all Iranians that you should learn from Egyptians because we learned from you," Mr. Ghonim told an Iranian human rights group on Thursday. His comments and picture were widely posted on opposition websites and blogs.
In Tehran and other big Iranian cities this week residents scribbled on paper money, "End executions, stop dictatorship," and spray painted "Tahrir Square"—the central location of recent Egyptian protests—on traffic signs on Tehran's Azadi square, the site of Iran's anti-government protests in 2009.
Word of the Monday protests spread in buses and taxes, and one Tehran resident said neighbors buzzed each other's doorbells to tip them off.
"We called for a demonstration to show our movement is alive and to stop the Iranian government's propaganda abuse of pro-democracy movements in the region," said opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi through an intermediary.
Mr. Karoubi has been under house arrest in Tehran since Thursday with only his wife permitted to visit him and all communication to his home cut off, according to his website. At least six relatives and advisors to Mr. Karoubi and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been arrested in the past day, their offices said.
Iran's leadership has said in recent weeks that the 1979 Islamic Revolution has inspired the popular uprisings in the region. Several Egyptian and Tunisian opposition parties have publicly rejected that notion.
On Friday, Iranian state media broadcast scenes of pro-government protests in Tehran with people waving flags and chanting "Death to America." A split screen showed Egyptians gathering in Tahrir Square.As news broke of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, Iranian state television ran headlines of "between two revolutions, Egypt and Iran."
Iranian officials said in recent days that if people wanted to show support for the regional movements they should join the government-sanctioned rally rather than the opposition rallies, which it said aimed to sow divisions.
The government has already begun preemptive measures to stop Monday's planned demonstration by deploying larger-than-normal numbers of security forces around Tehran.
Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Hamedani said on Tuesday the opposition supporters were "nothing but dead corpses," according to the official news agency IRNA.
Since uprisings swept across the Middle East last month, Iran's government has taken extraordinary measures to suppress dissent. It has executed one person every nine hours since Jan. 1, breaking the per- capita world record, human rights groups say. In January alone, Iran executed 87 people, the state media reported. That one-month tally is higher than the total annual executions in 2005, the year President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.
Analysts say the judicial process has been hasty and at least three victims were political prisoners arrested during the 2009 anti-government protests.
"The executions are a political message to the population: 'don't even think about unrest, we are in control and this is your punishment,' " said Hadi Ghaemi, the director of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an independent organization based in New York.
Iranian officials defended the executions, all by hanging, by saying the victims were criminals charged with drug trafficking, adultery and other crimes.
Ramin Mehmanparast, spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, told reporters this week that Iran rejected the international outcry over the executions. "It is really deplorable that those countries which claim to defend human rights and pose as civilized support cases involving crime, adultery or drug trafficking," Mr. Mehmanparast said.
The executions have caused many ordinary middle class families to retreat from political activism because of the high potential costs to their families' safety.
Others, mostly student activists and youth, say the execution reports are making them more resolved to fight for more political freedom. "Yes we are all afraid of violence but we are no less than the Egyptians, if they can do it so can we," said a 32-year-old marketing consultant.
The spike in executions is bringing international repercussions for Iran. The Netherlands suspended diplomatic ties with Iran and recalled its ambassador. over the case of an Iranian-Dutch woman, Zahra Bahrami.
Ms. Bahrami, 45 years old, was arrested at a protest in 2009 and first charged with threatening national security by sending information to foreign media outlets. She was subsequently charged with drug trafficking and executed on Jan. 29. Ms. Bahrami's family said she was an innocent political prisoner and they weren't notified of the execution nor the location of her body, which they say was secretly buried.
Fatemeh Akhalghi's husband, Iranian-Canadian Saeed Malekpour, was given the death sentence in December on charges of helping opposition websites and creating pornographic websites, accusations the family denies.
"I live in panic every day I think they might hang him in secret," Ms. Akhlaghi says in a telephone interview from Canada. "It's all about teaching other dissidents a lesson."
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