Thousands of Iranians Demand Change

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Sounds as if the Iranian cauldron is beginning to boil.

Thousands of Iranians Demand Change
Wed June 11, 2003 09:50 AM ET
By Jon Hemming
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians demanding change staged their biggest protest in months Wednesday, chanting slogans against powerful Muslim clerics they accuse of limiting freedoms and the reformist government for failing to rein them in.
Some 3,000 protesters, many of them heeding a call from U.S.-based Iranian exile satellite television, gathered near the Tehran University in support of a smaller, student protest against proposed privatizations in higher education.
Residents said the chants at the demonstration damning the country’s clerical leaders were the most extreme yet heard.
Uniformed and plainclothes police with batons broke up the protest. “About 80 of the rioters were arrested last night. These people, instigated by local radicals and foreign agents, chanted illegal slogans,” the ISNA student news agency quoted Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi as saying.
Several motorcycles were torched and windows of some shops and a state bank were smashed as protesters dispersed.
** “I would not be surprised if we see more of such protests in the future because the ground is ready,” one parliamentarian who declined to be named told Reuters. “Our society now is like a room full of gas ready to ignite with a small spark.” **
The protest followed increasingly tough rhetoric aimed at Tehran from Washington which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism. U.S. hawks have called for actions aimed at destabilizing Tehran’s clerical rulers.
But diplomats cautioned that Iran’s student movement was fractured and disorganized and said the protests could quickly fizzle out. “The usual response from the authorities is to crack down hard and that’s normally enough to send all but the most die-hard protesters home,” an Asian diplomat said.
MESSAGE TO COLIN POWELL
** Many in Iran have lost faith in moderate President Mohammad Khatami and his lack of progress in reforming the 24-year-old Islamic Republic in the face of strong opposition from conservatives in powerful positions.
“The slogans people chanted showed they don’t believe in the system at all and they are challenging the whole system, including Khatami,” the parliamentary deputy said.
“I heard the students had gathered from television,” said 46-year-old housewife Parvin. “I came here to send a message to (Secretary of State) Colin Powell that we want change.”
Powell told CNN Sunday that Washington was working to persuade Iranians to force change from within to make Iran what he called a less troublesome member of the world community. **
Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rejected the remarks.
“Powell should know U.S. interference would boost resolve and solidarity among Iranians,” newspapers Wednesday quoted Kharrazi as saying.
The United States, which cut ties with Tehran after the 1979 revolution, has branded Iran part of an “axis of evil.”
High unemployment and frustration with Iran’s strict Islamic laws have fed discontent among the overwhelmingly youthful population, around 70 percent of which is under 30 and has little memory of life before the revolution.
Analysts say the reformers have been further weakened by a resurgent hard-line faction which is determined not to loosen its grip on power now that U.S. troops are now on both the eastern and western borders of Iran, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Despite the reformers’ overwhelming victories in presidential and parliamentary polls since Khatami came to office in 1997, most of their efforts to institute change have been blocked by conservatives appointed as political watchdogs.
Dozens of pro-reform intellectuals, journalists and student leaders have been jailed as part of a conservative crackdown that followed the 1999 student protests.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2912309

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You getter big turn outs at anti-government rallies in the US.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Thap: *
You getter big turn outs at anti-government rallies in the US.
[/QUOTE]

You a go getter?

Those anti-U.S. rallies are nothing more than shows to make the hardliners feel hard. Change is around the corner, hopefully a Tiananmen Square isn't.

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Change in the US or Iran you lost me in the similarity of it all.

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I posted this in the other thread on Iran.. I've explained this before so I'll just give the quickie...

"Some 3,000 protesters, many of them heeding a call from U.S.-based Iranian exile satellite television, gathered near the *Tehran University** in support of a smaller, student protest against proposed privatizations in higher education."*

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Hopefully these brave students can fight through this. The Price of freedom can be heavy, but worth it.
…

Iran May Crack Down on Reformists

Thursday June 12, 2003 3:49 PM

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI

Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran’s supreme leader raised the possibility of a harsh crackdown Thursday after two days of pro-reform demonstrations during which hundreds of increasingly bold young people have gone so far as to call for his death.

The last two days have seen the largest demonstrations against Iran’s political leadership in six months. Among the youth in particular, frustration with the regime has grown stronger than fear of arrest or of the hard-liners’ well-established reputation for brutality.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a speech broadcast on state television and radio Thursday, referred to violence in 1999, when vigilantes and security forces attacked students protesting media restrictions, killing at least one student and touching off the worst street battles since the 1979 revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah.

``If the Iranian nation decides to deal with the (current) rioters, it will do so in the way it dealt with it on July 14, 1999,‘’ Khamenei said.

On Wednesday, dozens of hard-line vigilantes on motorbikes chased about 300 mostly teenage protesters, beating them with sticks in the streets outside a Tehran University dormitory in the city’s Amirabad district. Several people were seen being carried away with head injuries.

Around 200 students in the dormitory compound threw stones and Molotov cocktails at anti-riot police after they joined the vigilantes attacking the protesters.

The protesters chanted ``Death to Khamenei’’ and threw stones at anti-riot police, who tossed them back.

In Iran, criticism of Khamenei is punished by jail and is rarely heard in public.

About 80 protesters had been arrested for chanting slogans against the leadership and for participating in unauthorized demonstrations after a small student gathering Tuesday night against privatizing universities grew into an anti-regime demonstration.

The clerical regime is nearing its end,'' demonstrators chanted. Vigilantes commit crimes, the leader supports them.‘’

Demonstrators also called for the resignation of President Mohammad Khatami, a popularly elected reformist, accusing him of not pushing hard enough for change. Khatami doesn’t have the power of unelected hard-liners who control the judiciary and the security forces. But the hard-liners don’t have popular support, leaving Iran at a stalemate.

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Protests have swelled into the thousands…

TEHRAN, Friday, June 13 — A third night of student protests outside Tehran University’s dormitories exploded into the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods early today, with large gangs of students fighting running street battles against vigilantes armed with sticks and chains. At one major intersection demonstrators hurled bricks at trucks of riot policemen who were rushing to lift barricades and douse fires protesters had ignited in the streets.The protesters chanted “Death to Khamenei,” a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned.

“I’ve been lashed, jailed for having a satellite dish,” said a student, underscoring the simmering social frustrations behind the riots. “It’s time to stand up for what we want.”

In a nationally televised speech on Thursday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States of trying to foment disorder here and warned protesters that the government would be merciless against those acting in the interests of foreign powers.

Referring to the United States, he said, “If it sees that disgruntled people and adventurers want to cause trouble, and if it can turn them into mercenaries, it will not hesitate in giving them its support.”

The protests are erupting as a nervous government is trying to forge a policy toward the United States in the face of renewed pressure from Washington. The fact that they are being fueled by calls to pour into the streets from opposition-run Persian-language television stations in the United States adds to the unease.

“Leaders do not have the right to have any pity whatsoever for the mercenaries of the enemy,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing a crowd in the southern city of Varamin.

The public ignored the admonishment, staging in the largest street demonstrations to erupt in this capital in four years. Joining the students were some older government workers and even women dressed in the sweeping black cloaks favored in poorer neighborhoods.

Given the difficulty of moving about the city, beset by traffic jams and violent clashes, it was impossible to get an accurate count. But with the demonstrations stretched at least three miles from the dormitories where the first quiet protests began on Tuesday, the demonstrators appeared to be in the thousands. It was a far wider protest than on two previous nights and one the government is likely to use force to prevent from erupting again.

Control of key intersections switched back and forth between protesters and the often black-clad vigilantes, paramilitary thugs believed to be linked to the government who swarmed into the intersections on motorbikes.

Often they would ditch their vehicles and attack private homes, smashing lights and exposed windows and screaming at cowering residents to stay indoors. Sometimes the students would get their revenge. At one point, they separated a sole vigilante, wrestled him off his bike, pummeled him and then set his bike afire.

Witnesses reported similar scenes of beatings up and down a major road leading to the dormitories. Civilians limped away after being beaten, although one woman extracted an apology from an assailant by screaming: “Hitting a woman! Aren’t you ashamed?”

People from heavily Westernized northern Tehran tried to drive downtown to the scene of the riots, creating enormous traffic jams. Sometimes middle-class families ducked to the floors of their cars as stones from the battles banged on their roofs.

Demonstrators tore down road signs and heavy green metal fences in the median strip, tossing them into the street as barriers, and ignited huge piles of trash. They chanted rythmically while banging on aluminum highway barriers, drowning out all other sounds.

“We want more freedom,” said one 34-year-old government worker, who gave his name as Mahmoud. “For 25 years we have lived without any freedom. We want social freedom, economic freedom and political freedom,” Nevertheless, he said he doubted the demonstrations would bring down the government because they were random and lacked organization.

The current protests started quietly on Tuesday and erupted into clashes, with some injuries reported, on Wednesday, which the government said led to 80 arrests.

The riots are aggravating a particularly nervous moment in Iran’s long record of tension with Washington.

The sudden appearance of thousands of protesters evidently contributed to a case of jitters among some circles in Iran’s jigsaw puzzle of a government.

Many students familiar with events in Iraq are quick to voice support for American intervention here, although they are widely skeptical of the motives of the Bush administration.

“Of course it would be better if Iranians could liberate their country themselves,” said Muhammad, 21, an engineering student. “But we have reached the point where we need a foreign force.”

Others are appalled by such attitudes, warning that Iranians’ generally positive attitude toward the United States would evaporate the moment the first Iranian was killed.

The first day of protests was unexpectedly set off by a government proposal to consider privatizing the universities. A few cellphone calls by protesters to a Los Angeles television station prompted the station to call on all Iranians to pour into the streets. Hundreds got into their cars and went down to see the demonstration, joining the students in their chants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/international/middleeast/13IRAN.html?pagewanted=2

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A few asking for a change for millions.

Maybe you should try to be a news anchor for CNN, FOX or NBC, federal jobs dont pay that well but have many benefits - catch my drift !

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I have never met an Iranian who is happy with his or her government. as far as thinking that millions dont want change..they suffer from the same issue as many others..fear, apathy etc, the term silent majority is very applicable. remember the fall of USSR

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see MV below

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Yeah. Here’s the story as reported by Reuters

Gunfire as Vigilantes Attack Iran Protesters
Fri June 13, 2003 04:12 PM ET
TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) - Automatic gunfire could be heard in the Iranian capital early Saturday as hundreds of Iranian pro-clergy militiamen, some armed with Kalashnikov rifles, attacked groups of people protesting against clerical rule.
“Most were armed with sticks and chains but a few had Kalashnikovs,” Reuters correspondent Jon Hemming said from the scene.

“I heard automatic gunfire but I couldn’t see where it was coming from or what it was aimed at.”

The militiamen jumped out of trucks and off motorbikes to attack a few dozen youngsters protesting around a bonfire in a side street not far from the Tehran University dormitory which has been the focal point of protests for the last four nights.

The youths had been throwing stones and chanting slogans including “Death to Khamenei” a reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has blamed Iran’s arch-foe the United States for stirring up unrest in the country.

Washington, which labels Iran an “axis of evil” member and accuses it of trying to build nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism, has welcomed the protests.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MK3GA4WUTDCESCRBAEKSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=2927376

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Sounds like the beginings of "operation irani freedom."

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Operation Irani freedom already started by the French.

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<>

DejaVu :smokin:

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Re: Thousands of Iranians Demand Change

The hardliners trying to stop any further reform from happening by banning over 1000 from running for office. How long do they think they can suppress the voices of the people?

…
Most Iran Reformists Disqualified From Presidential Election; Hard-Liners OK 6 Out of 1,010

TEHRAN, Iran May 22, 2005 — Iran’s hard-line constitutional watchdog has rejected all reformists who registered to run in next month’s presidential elections, approving only six out of the 1,010 hopefuls, state-run television reported Sunday.

The announcement prompted a crisis meeting by reformers, who immediately threatened to boycott the election.

“We are warning the Guardian Council that we will not participate in the election if it doesn’t reverse its decision,” Rajabali Mazrouei, a top member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, told The Associated Press.

“Barring reform candidates means there will be no free or fair election,” he said.

There was similar outrage last year when the Council which supervises the elections disqualified more than 2,000 reformists from legislative elections, leading to a low turnout. Reformists denounced that vote as a “historical fiasco.”

The council’s announcement, however, appeared to be the final decision and effectively leaves reformers seeking democratic changes within the ruling Islamic establishment without a candidate.

Ruling clerics are seeking to consolidate their power following the departure of President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who is barred from seeking another term. Khatami came to power in a popular landslide in 1997, but hard-line clerics led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have succeeded in stifling his program for political and social reform.

The approved candidates for the June 17 presidential race included the powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who moves frequently between the hard-line and more moderate camps and was seen as a front-runner.

Other approved candidates were former police chief Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf; former radio and television chief Ali Larijani; Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; former parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi; and former head of the elite Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezaei.

Former Culture Minister Mostafa Moin, who was the sole candidate of Iran’s largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, was among those disqualified. Another top reformist hopeful was Vice President Mohsen Mehralizadeh, who heads Iran’s sports organization.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=780702

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Re: Thousands of Iranians Demand Change

If this had happened in the elections in Afghanistan or Iraq, the Muslim world would be screaming bloody murder. I bet we see a collective yawn. What do the Mullahs have to fear, the will of the people?