Mr Verde reflects on the triumph of Tuesday’s Chahrshanbeh Suri celebrations over the Supreme Leader:
You get the feeling that some people (including a few journalists) who look into Iran from the outside seem to think they are watching a Hollywood movie: they are always looking for the next adrenaline rush of something “dramatic”. If no one is hurt or killed in the streets, then it is assumed that nothing of interest is happening in Iran. While the terrible footage of people being shot in the streets of Tehran or the sickening details of the torture and rape of detainees are important (very important) and relevant (very relevant), we have to understand that the struggle in Iran is not limited to being shot in the streets or raped in prisons. These sickening events are part of the regime’s mechanisms for trying to control and kill off the opposition (although it is obvious that it failed to do so), but they are surely not what we want to see happening in Iran on a daily basis.
On one level this year’s Chaharshanbeh Suri was what it should really be: despite the annual attempt of authorities to crack down on the occasion, people celebrated an ancient tradition and enjoyed themselves.
2100 GMT: Human Rights Front. The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center has issued a statement challenging Iran’s presentation on Monday at the UN Human Rights Commission: “United Nations human rights experts must immediately investigate Iran’s prisons, including allegations of rape, torture, and the detention of people for peacefully exercising their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly.”
1910 GMT: And A Prisoner Released. Javad Askarian, an aide to Mehdi Karroubi, was released yesterday after a week in detention.
According to Saham News The veteran of the Iran-Iraq war had been sent to Evin prison on 10 February after being summoned by the intelligence ministry for providing “some explanations.”
I guess it was inevitable that — to post a dramatic headline or to make artificial sense out of the complex and messy politics of events — the open-and-shut, Victory-or-Defeat results would already be declared. Britain’s Sky TV, known best for its across-the-wall sports coverage, puts the onus of loser on the opposition: “The danger for Iran’s anti-Government Green movement is that after yet again failing to mobilise huge numbers on a key day, it will lose momentum….The Government looks to have maintained its firm grip on the country.” The Times of London pronounces, “Iran crushes opposition protests with violence”. Others leer — The Herald Sun in Australia, “Iran regime strangles Green Movement on the streets” — while some don’t even see a contest (Time: “Where Was the Opposition?”)
The Tehran Bureau ran up the white flag, “A big anticlimax,” “defeat,” “An overwhelming presence from the other side. People were terrified.” Even Juan Cole, normally an expert offering nuanced, in-depth analysis, leaps to “Regime Victory on Revolution Anniversary; Opposition Fails to Mobilize”.
OK, if we have to resort to a sporting metaphor to summarise the twists and turns of 22 Bahman, let’s use one that offers some insight into what is to come as well as what has happened.
The Regime Won Ugly. And that’s not the same as winning.
Let me explain: when a team “wins ugly”, it doesn’t triumph through overwhelming superiority, a strength that is likely to see it chalk up victory after victory. Instead, it scrapes through — in a contest in which all sides makes mistakes and miscalculations — because its faults aren’t quite enough to take away its lead, because it hangs on with just enough of a territorial advantage, because it has a bit of luck to offset its weaknesses or enough tenacity to avoid exhaustion.
2205 GMT: The Tajik Show? BBC Persian follows up on the curious story of the “release” of former Vice President Mohammad Reza Tajik from detention. Tajik appeared on the 22:30 programme on IRIB 2 saying that there was no election “fraud” and that “foreign and Zionist media” are riding the wave of the protests.
2145 GMT: Lawyer Forough Mirzaei and Mahin Fahimi, a member of “Mothers for Peace”, have been released from detention.
2100 GMT: And Analysing Rumour of Day (Week? Month?). We’ve posted a snap analysis considering the reasons for and implications of a Rafsanjani “ultimatum” to the Supreme Leader.
2045 GMT: But There are Limits. One leading international media organisation is proclaiming that it has mobilised itself to cover Thursday’s events in Iran. It has even set up a dedicated Twitter account for Iran, announced throughout today in a series of tweets.
Only problem is that this broadcaster/website hasn’t quite got the hang of using Twitter for gathering latest news rather than for self-promotion. Total number of Twitter accounts it is following? 7, all of whom happen to be its own staff.
2020 GMT: 22 Bahman is Back! The “Western” media, which only 12 hours ago seemed to be oblivious to anything Iran-related unless it had the word “nuclear”, has re-discovered the internal events and tensions. Numerous services are carrying the report of the Associated Press on the Supreme Leader’s speech (1245, 1420, & 1940 GMT), while The New York Times picks up on Reuters’ summary of the statements of Mir Hossein Mousavi (1635 GMT) and Mohammad Khatami (separate entry). Even America’s ABC News has taken notice, catching up with Saturday’s interview of Mehdi Karroubi in a German magazine.
More than a month has passed since the detainment of Emadeddin Baghi, writer and researcher on human rights issues, but he is still being kept in solitary confinement in department 240 of Evin Prison without a visitor’s permit. He has no access even to the Holy Qu’ran.
Baghi was detained at home on the day after Ashura on behalf of a general precautionary warrant for alleged abuse of Ayatollah Montazeri’s death; and his crime was declared as “making an interview with Ayatollah Montazeri”, which was released by the BBC [Persian]. This interview had been made two years earlier, even before BBC [Persian] started, and was published by this media only after Montazeri’s death.
So far Emadeddin Baghi has spent four years in prison on several occasions, three years of which under the former government and one year under the government of the current President. In his first imprisonment, the accusations were related to media matters, and in the second imprisonment to his civil society activities in the “Society (Anjoman) To Defend Prisoner’s Rights”, which he founded.
In the second imprisonment from 2007, Baghi suffered from a malady due to adverse prison conditions, being finally transferred to hospital, and he spent the rest of his detention in the prison’s general ward. Doctors trusted by the Iranian Intelligence service had already noticed that keeping him in a closed and stressful room would be dangerous to him.
Today, however, he serves his penalty in solitary confinement without any possibilities [of a change in conditions]. He is also suffering from chronic disc damage. Baghi’s relatives have said that Tehran’s prosecutor met him last week in Evin prison, but even though they asked the prosecutor for information about him, this authority has not replied yet, pointing only to the fact that Baghi will have no visitor’s permit before a further message.
His relatives are convinced of the fact that even if Baghi is accused of making this interview, more than 35 days of interrogations in solitary confinement are not required, especially with regard to the condition of his health. Baghi, who has been summoned to court several times within the past years and always appeared in due time, could have better answered these questions in freedom and under more lawful conditions.
Baghi’s family is concerned about his health and demand a minimum of legal rights like contact by phone, visitor’s permit, leaving solitary confinement and access to books. They say that they informed Tehran’s prosecutor about these demands, but did not receive any answer.
2320 GMT: The Committee of Human Rights Reporters has issued a statement on recent allegations against its members, many of whom are detained:
The civil society’s endurance depends on acceptance and realization of modern norms and principles. When a ruling establishment with an outdated legal system tries to impose itself politically and ideologically on a modern society, the result will be widespread protests.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top aide said Friday Tehran is concerned about the direction of the US administration after President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address.
“We have concerns Obama will not be successful in bring change to US policies,” Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, the senior aide to President Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, said.
With respect, Esfandiar, I don’t think President Obama is your biggest concern right now.
2300 GMT: Yawn. Well, we started the day with a sanctions sideshow (see 0650 GMT), so I guess it is fitting to close with one. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in Paris:
China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the [Persian] Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their own supplies….We understand that right now it seems counterproductive to [China] to sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs….[But China] needs to think about the longer-term implications.
1. The White House is not even at the point of agreeing a sanctions package with the US Congress, let alone countries with far different agendas.
2. China is not going to agree tough sanctions in the UN Security Council. Really. Clinton is blowing smoke.
3. About the only outcome of this will be Press TV running a story on bad America threatening good Iran Government.
The civil unrest that swept Iranian cities in the aftermath of the contested June 12th 2009 election escalates despite the Government crackdown. Violence has been intensifying. On Ashura (27 December), armed plain-clothed forces associated with the Basij paramilitaries beat and killed demonstrators who were also mourning the 7th day of the passing of dissident cleric Ayatollah Montazeri. Hundreds of human rights activists, journalists, opposition clerics, and women’s rights activists were detained on Ashura and the following weeks.
The question is now whether the state can suppress a grass-roots movement, albeit one without a leader, that has blossomed into broad and heterogeneous movement well-known to Iranians and to the world?
Mr Verde reflects on the triumph of Tuesday’s Chahrshanbeh Suri celebrations over the Supreme Leader:
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