2200 GMT: To close the day, a video — courtesy of The Flying Carpet Institute — of a workers’ demonstration in Arak on Wednesday:
2155 GMT: The Amir Kabir student website, a valuable source of information throughout the post-election crisis, has been attacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.
2135 GMT: Brother, Where Art Thou (cont.)? Davoud Ahmadinejad, the brother of the President, has declared that he is ready to prove that the beliefs of Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, clash with Islam. Once again, the attack appears in Khabar Online, the publication close to Ali Larijani.
2125 GMT: Journalists and press managers have requested the freedom of Ali Ashraf Fathi, clergyman and writer of the Tourjaan weblog (named after the location where Fathi’s father was killed during the Iran-Iraq War), who was arrested last week during the “40th Day” memorial for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
2110 GMT: Crackdown and Blackout. So the regime’s strategy of breaking up any mass movement on 22 Bahman continues. Iranian activists and websites such as Reporters and Humanrights Activists in Iran continue to document arrests, and there is even a claim that three members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters — Mehrdad Rahimi, Saeed Haeri, and Shiva Nazar-Ahari — have been charged with “mohareb” (war against God).
Reports continue to circulate that Internet service has slowed significantly and even been halted in parts of Iran. Official explanations have included disruptions because of the loss of a major cable and “developments and expansions in the Tehran-Mashad corridor”.
For an observer 1000s of miles away, the movement of events was dream-like. Initially, as Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s body was moved from his house to the Imam Hassan Mosque, the report were “30,000 to 40,000″ on the streets. An hour later, as the procession moved from the mosque to the Massoumeh Shrine, where Montazeri would be buried, the news came of “more than 100,000″.
Then it was hundreds of thousands. Not just claims of hundreds of thousands but the first pictures, with an aerial shot of of Qom filled with mourners and demonstrators. Then the videos, first in a trickle, soon a torrent, from Montazeri’s house, from the mosque, from the shrine, throughout the city, in Najafabad (Montazeri’s birthplace), and in other cities.
Just put two images side-by-side. Three days before Montazeri’s burial, the regime struggled (and possibly manipulated) to fill Tehran’s Enghelab Square with supporters. Yesterday, there was no need for PhotoShop: this was the genuine expression of emotions from anguish to anger to hope, in numbers not seen since the first days after the Presidential election. Read the rest of this entry »
If a demonstration occurs in the square but no one really notices, does it make a sound?
It is less than 24 hours after the Iranian regime tried to build up a mass rally on the first day of the religious month of Moharram, not only for the pretext of protesting the burning of Ayatollah Khomeini’s photograph but for the wider goal of showing the Government’s political superiority over its opposition. Yet this morning, Iranian state medium Press TV, which was proclaiming that “millions” were on the streets of Iran, is not even bothering to mention the story, let alone update it. Fars News is now on the nuclear issue and promoting art about martyrs. The Islamic Republic News Agency is trying to boost President Ahmadinejad, after his appearance at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, with his rhetoric on how Iran — unlike European countries — supports freedom and democracy around the world. (IRNA, further down its page, has a short, rather limp story that a million people marched in support of Khomeini and the Supreme Leader.)
We tentatively suggested yesterday afternoon that the attempted demonstrations in Tehran, let alone in other parts of Iran where I have still not seen visual evidence, were a regime “flop”. No need to be tentative now: this was a clear picture, after six months, not of a regime asserting its political strength but of a Government and even Supreme Leader struggling to maintain even a 24-hour appearance of political legitimacy. The sensational cries of “Death to Mousavi”, whipped up by an Ayatollah Khamenei ally, made little more than fleeting headlines; indeed, I don’t think even the base charge of “insult to Khomeini” was successfully stuck upon the opposition.
Earlier today we posted an analysis by our Mr Smith of the significance of 16 Azar and the possibilities for the future. His points are complemented by those made by Masoud at The Newest Deal, who has kindly sent us a copy of the blog:
Though impossible to tell with the blanket censorship draped over Iran at present, it appears that the size of yesterday’s protests were smaller than what was seen on 13 Aban, and on Qods Day before it. No matter. The demonstrations of 16 Azar signaled a shift — if not response — on the part of the Green movement to the tyranny and brutality that the regime has come to represent. The message was clear: there is no turning back. In fact, the Islamic Republic’s future has never been more uncertain.
As things stand now, this movement is no longer about a stolen election. Truthfully, it hasn’t been for quite some time, but that conclusion only became crystalline today. Only four months ago, this was hardly the case. At that time, the Greens represented a peaceful, non-violent movement asking “Where is my vote?” and led by a Prime Minister [Mir Hossein Mousavi] who stressed — no, urged — the need to stay true to the Islamic Republic’s framework and constitutional structure, not to mention the wisdom and guidance of the late Ayatollah Khomeini.
No longer. Yesterday’s demonstrations were organized by a fractal grassroots whose structure is horizontal rather than hierarchical. That is to say, it has no leader. (Incidentally, neither Mousavi, Karoubi, or Khatami apparently took part in yesterday’s marches.) These were protests that saw Iranian flags whose white centers were bare, missing the iconic ‘Allah’ written in form of a red, martyr’s tulip. Gone was the silent marching of peaceful demonstrators holding up ‘V’s’ in the air. Instead, pockets of protesters confronted the Basij physically, and at times, overwhelmingly. And protests were not just limited to Tehran, either. Demonstrations have been verified in Mashhad, Shiraz, Rasht, Kermanshah, Hamedan, Arak, Kerman and Najafabad. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 1600 GMT: EA’s Chris Emery has now posted a response, adding to Mr Smith’s points that 13 Aban has been “a major blow to the Supreme Leader’s authority”.
—
Mr Smith, who was one of the EA correspondents following and updating on yesterday’s events, offers his analysis:
The Green Wave has bounced back. The strongly-worded threats by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps did not deter the supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who made it to the police-infested streets of Tehran in their tens of thousands for yet another day of demonstrations, countering the official ones organised by the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei regime.
Yesterday’s events are yet again proof of the fact that the opposition has not been defeated and is not going away. Nearly five months into the Iranian post-electoral crisis, the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei camp has not quite figured out a workable plan to fulfil its intent of silencing the critics. The litany of street violence unleashed by security forces, the background of the occasional killing and raping of reformist activists, and the current warnings by the IRGC and Ayatollah Khamenei that criticism of the “legitimate government” amounted to a crime did little to cow the Green Wave supporters. Instead, the Supreme Leader found himself at the receiving end of the street chants. Read the rest of this entry »
1930 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, have visited the family of detainee Feizollah Arabsorkhe and claimed “investigators have been challenged by their daily conversations and dialogues with the children of the Revolution”.
Feizollah Arabsorkhi is a leading member of the reformist Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution and has been in prison since June.
Mr. Mousavi insisted that political activists and youth in the post-election protests are not “sabotaging or destroying”: “If the media were free and people were allowed to have their say, we would not have fallen to this state.”
1915 GMT: Back from a break to find a couple of stories on a relatively quiet day, as various forces prepare for 13 Aban.
Journalist Fariba Pajooh has ended her hunger strike, begun on 26 October, because of serious health problems. Pajooh was arrested on 22 August and has been detained in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
Iranian authorities have barred Emaddedin Baghi from leaving the country to collect the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. Baghi is a prominent opponent of the death penalty in Iran and founder of the Society for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights.
1525 GMT: The Facebook site associated with Mir Hossein Mousavi has published an English translation of the account of Mehdi Karroubi’s meeting this weekend with the student organisation Daftar-Tahkim-Vahdat. Beyond his claim that votes were allocated in advance of the Presidential election on 12 June, Karroubi’s speech was a rallying call: Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday (Oct 10, 2009) Mir Hossein Mousavi visited Mehdi Karroubi in his home to talk about the post-election events. In this meeting both presidential candidates by pointing out the efforts of the IRIB (the state-run TV and radio channels) to diminish the reform movement, emphasised on their legal rights and demanded to appear on TV/radio to defend themselves and reply to the false accusations made against them on the “national” stage.
UPDATE 1900 GMT: Yahoo! has issued a further statement: “The allegations in the story are false. Neither Yahoo! nor any Yahoo! representative has met with or communicated with any Iranian officials, and Yahoo! has not disclosed user data to the Iranian government. Yahoo! was founded on the principle that access to information and communications tools can improve people’s lives, and Yahoo! is committed to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and privacy. To learn more about our human rights efforts, please visit: http://humanrights.yahoo.com.”
The original source of the claim, the Iranian Students Solidarity Organization is very active with a blog — the story is 3rd or 4th on the current page. It has about 30,000 members. In this case, the ISSO is claiming that it had a source inside the Iranian Government who was at the meeting between Yahoo! and the Iranian authorities.
UPDATE 1300 GMT: Yahoo! has posted this denial on Twitter: “The…allegations are false. No Yahoo! representative met w/ any Iranian officials or disclosed user data to Iranian government.”
– Normally we do not feature uncorroborated stories, but the allegations of the Iranian Students Solidarity movement are so serious that we think they merit attention. The post was translated and sent to lawyer Richard Koman:
On 27th of Shahrivar [Qods Day, 18 September], when Iranians demonstrated again on the streets, the Iranian authorities, in addition to blocking many Internet sites all over Iran, blocked or severely limited access to Yahoo and Google. Google did not react and its problem was resolved with 48 hours, but Yahoo sent a representative to Iran’s telecommunications ministry, to resolve the issue.
For an observer 1000s of miles away, the movement of events was dream-like. Initially, as Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s body was moved from his house to the Imam Hassan Mosque, the report were “30,000 to 40,000″ on the streets. An hour later, as the procession moved from the mosque to the Massoumeh Shrine, where Montazeri would be buried, the news came of “more than 100,000″.
If a demonstration occurs in the square but no one really notices, does it make a sound?
Earlier today we posted 
UPDATE 1600 GMT: EA’s Chris Emery 
2125 GMT: More University Protests. In addition to today’s demonstration and hunger strike at Sharif University (
UPDATE 1900 GMT: Yahoo! has issued 
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