The Latest from Iran (30 April): The Heaviness of the Atmosphere

2200 GMT: Political Prisoner (Death) Watch. Back from a media break for the British election to find confirmation that death sentences have been handed down to Mohammad Ali Haj-Aghayi and Jafar Kazemi for mohareb (war against God), ties to the "terrorist" Mujahedin-e-Khalq, and propagating against the regime.

Both men were arrested during the Qods Day demonstrations on 18 September.

NEW Iran Document: Mehdi Karroubi “The Green Movement is Growing in Society”
UPDATED Iran: Tehran, Defender of Rights (Don’t Mention Boobquake), Joins UN Commission on Status of Women
NEW Latest Iran Video: Shirin Ebadi on the Human Rights Situation (23 April)
Iran Video and Summary: The Mousavi Statement for May Day/Teachers Day (29 April)
Iran: The Establishment Frets Over the Supreme Leader
The Latest from Iran (29 April): Preparations

1825 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student Abolfazl Ghassemi has been sentenced to three years in prison.


1815 GMT: Karroubi's High Profile. Mehdi Karroubi continues the push of opposition initiatives with a declaration to student activists, which we have posted in a separate entry, that the Green Movement is on the rise in Iranian society.

Karroubi has also issued a statement, on the eve of May Day and National Teachers Day, congratulating Iran's workers and teachers.

1450 GMT: Cyber-News (or Lack of It). Khabar Online reports that filtering is now affecting the blogs of "hardliners" and popular writers.

1440 GMT: Your Friday Prayer Summary. Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani wowing the faithful in Tehran today and it's all USA, USA, USA.

Emami Kashani downplayed "the enemy's plots" and said it "will not succeed in its attempt to halt Iran's peaceful nuclear activities through deception and trickery".

The cleric reiterated the remarks of the Supreme Leader that nuclear weapons as "illegal and haram (forbidden)" under Islam. "Despite this," he added, "We are witnessing that the enemy is leveling countless accusations against the country and is threatening us with sanctions....[These] will be rendered useless in the face of the Iranian nation's vigilance."

Despite the firm words against Western immorality, Emami Kashani made no reported reference to women's breasts and earthquakes.


1435 GMT: Labour Watch. After workers of a Bandar Abbas shipbuilder were dismissed, 300 employees protested against assignment to temporary employment agencies.

1400 GMT: Taking Notice. Another sign that the recent Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi initiatives are reviving the interest of "Western" media in the opposition: The New York Times posts an article on yesterday's Mousavi video, "Iran Reformist Tries to Enlist Labor and Teachers".

1355 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Amnesty International publishes its report, "Iran: Journalists Under Siege". The study, which says more than 70 journalists are detained (see our separate entry for 101 who have been held during the post-election crisis), asserts: "Iranian journalists and bloggers are increasingly under siege in one of the biggest crackdowns on independent voices and dissent in Iran's modern history."

1345 GMT: Back from a lengthy academic break to find a flurry of news. Rah-e-Sabz has summarised Mehdi Karroubi's phone conversations with two prominent detainees, student leader Abdollah Momeni and reformist politician Feizollah Arabsorkhi.

0910 GMT: Teachers' Corner. Following our reports of a crackdown on teachers in advance of National Teachers Day, including the arrest of the head of the Teachers Organization, Alireza Hashemi, RAHANA has an overview of the attacks on the headquarters of the teachers' unions and the homes of the members and the hacking and hijacking of websites.

0905 GMT:Economy Watch. Rah-e-Sabz posts a summary of the position of women workers, claiming that they face discrimination, insults, and dismissals and have no social security under the Ahmadinejad Government.

0800 GMT: Get-Tough Alert. I am wondering if we need to launch a "Mesbah Yazdi Watch". The cleric, as Mr Verde noted yesterday, has been quite vocal in recent days, and it seems he is going moving to the front of the "hardliners": "If we had treated post-election protest mildly like earlier governments, no one knows which catastrophe would have come about the country."

0750 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Saeed Soudmelli, arrested 31 December as he filmed traffic on his cellphone in Tehran, has been sentenced to a year in prison for "acting against national security".

Soudmelli’s relatives said he was interrogated through multiple-choice questions such as, “Which of the following people do you hold responsible for the recent events and your own arrest: A – Mousavi, B – Ahmadinejad, C – Yourself, or D – The Government?”

0745 GMT. Beyond Satire. In the week of Boobquake and Tehran's campaign to ban tanning salons, we've got an update in a separate entry: Iran has been voted onto the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

0705 GMT: What's Mahmoud Doing? Well, yesterday President Ahmadinejad opened a cement factory in Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan.


0700 GMT: Economy Watch. Credit to Patrick Barry in Foreign Policy who, picking up on news and signals we've been following for weeks, assesses the fragile state of Iran's economy. He has a stinger of a conclusion:

Based on the regime's track record of incompetence and the consequences of that incompetence for the Iranian economy, the U.S. would be wise to take a step back, allowing Iran to continue on its present course....Congress is searching for the most effective means to weaken the Iranian economy; the best approach may be for it to do nothing at all.

0620 GMT: Influence and Time Magazine. Last December, Time took the controversial decision of striking "the Iranian people",  despite their overwhelming victory in a poll of readers, from their finalists for Person of the Year.

Not sure if this is sufficient consolation, but Mir Hossein Mousavi has been named the most influential person in the world for 2010 in Time's online ballot, with almost twice as many votes as the runner-up, Chinese novelist Han Han.

0615 GMT: The Isolation of Ahmadinejad. Muhammad Sahimi offers his analysis of internal tensions, offering detail on the corruption scandals that challenge the President and looking at Iran's international position and the manoeuvres over its nuclear programme to conclude:

If Ahmadinejad's isolation held no potential for a lasting effect on the nation as a whole, it would not be so important. But the fact is that his isolation -- the consequence of electoral theft, violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters, rampant corruption, and the pursuit of a foreign policy simultaneously aimless and aggressive -- directly threatens Iran's national security and territorial integrity.

0600 GMT: We begin this morning with two features looking at repression and the discussion (or lack of it) inside Iran. With the help of Dave Siavashi of Iran News Now, we have the videos of last week's talk by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on the human rights situation. And we post the reportage of Katherine Butler of The Independent of London, who was allowed into Iran to cover the Tehran conference on nuclear disarmament but seized the opportunity to do a few interviews with Iranians about the state of fear and tension.

Comments

[Catherine]

RE 07.00 Economy Watch

Unemployment rising in Iran's labour sector
Iranian labour activists say that since the start of the new Iranian year in March, worker lay offs have increased by 50 percent.
......

Islamic Labour Council has announced that they are receiving 70 percent more labour grievances and that workers in Tehran and other major cities and experiencing a 40 percent rise in unemployment.
More: http://www.zamaaneh.com/enzam/2010/04/unemployment-rising-in-ir.html

[Catherine]

Political prisoners on a hunger strike to express their solidarity with Iranian workers and teachers:

The signatories of the announcement write: “While the majority of the people are under the poverty line, the country's wealth is being spent on oppressive and war-seeking policies as well as international bribes to buy votes in the United Nations.”

They condemn the government’s systematic attempt to impoverish the lower classes and to alienate them from social movements through government handouts. “Under such conditions,” the prisoners write; “speaking of workers rights is just as ridiculous as talking about human rights in Iranian prisons.”
Full report: http://www.zamaaneh.com/enzam/2010/04/political-prisoners-expre.html

[Catherine]

RE my post 1, Rooz Online has even more detailed information.

Officials Engage in Trade Using Public Money
Khamenei Criticized What he Was Entrusted to Overlook
http://www.roozonline.com/english/news/newsitem/article/2010/april/29//officials-engage-in-trade-using-public-money.html

[Catherine]

The economics of post-election protest prisoners:

The 11-year-old sister of one of the prisoners arrested during the post-election protests has written a letter to the prosecutor general of Tehran asking him to release her brother who works as a clerk. The simple letter is yet another reminder of how the post-election unrest impacted ordinary Iranian citizens, especially those from poorer backgrounds who were only asking for their votes back. Many of the protesters imprisoned after the election were not affiliated with any group or faction and their names are still unknown to most people, as they spend their days in the dungeons of Iran because the bail money set for their temporary release is simply too high.
http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/apr/29/1775

[Catherine]

Neda’s Open Eyes Drove Me Mad

In a lengthy interview with Rooz Online, Hajar Rostami-Motlagh, Neda’s mother, describes how she felt when she watched the video of Neda's death for the first and only time 8 months after Neda died and goes on to talk about Neda's main concern - gender inequality, and the reason why Neda didn't vote in the 2009 election, and many other details and events surrounding Neda's death:
http://www.roozonline.com/english/news/newsitem/article/2010/april/30//nedas-open-eyes-drove-me-mad.html

[danial]

Why hasn't the govt. arrested Mousavi & Karroubi? I don't want hem to be arrested but if they are recognized as government officials, why aren't their demands being met. If they are outcasts, why does the government let them go on?

[Arshama]

@ 1355 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch

No releases of journalists unfortunately, but at least 2 members of the Participation Front (Mosharekat) were released on bail in Babol: professors Ahmad Miri and Ali Akbar Sorush. http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/apr/30/1777
http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/apr/30/1780

I do not remember, who asked for Eshratabad prison in Tehran, but here is a lengthy statement by Mohsen Sazegara on the SL's PIA (parallel intelligence apparatus), which transferred its prisoners to the IRGC's military base in E., located at the end of Shariati Ave. in the center of Tehran. He says this prison is not official or registered, and also referred to as Prison 59 (p. 4). http://www.iranhrdc.org/httpdocs/English/pdfs/WitnessStatements/MSWS.pdf

Interestingly one of the members of this PIA is Elias Mahmoudi, accused of participating in the Fatemi corruption network, led by AN's deputy Mohammad Reza Rahimi according to hardliner MP Elias Naderan (p. 2).
Torture and corruption -- it all stays in the family.

[Bill]

danial,

The simple and correct answer to your question of why Moussavi and Karroubi have not been arrested is because the regime knows they would create instant martyrs. Ironically if anyone paid attention to this they would realize this is a huge indicator the regime stole the election. If they had won the elections as they said with 62% of the vote then they would have no fear of the people rebelling. Yet they have not acted and as any casaul observer would note it is their lack of action is a tacit admission they did steal the election. The regime has rightly deduced arresting these two would inflame the people and they know the majority of the people do not support them.

Thx
Bill

[Justin Timberlake – Fash]

[...] The Latest from Iran (30 April): The Heaviness of the Atmosphere … [...]