- 22 June 2009
- 22 Comments
- Events in Iran, Human Rights in Iran, Iran Election 2009
9:34 pm: We received this email from an Iranian now living in the US. She told us she escaped to the US following the 1999 student uprising:
dear sirs/ ba arze salam:
I came across your site recently while following up on the iranian events.
I cannot identify myself other than saying that I was one of those seriously injured previously in a iran protest and reside here now. I have read fairly thoughtfully regarding obama’s response to iran in your site. It is clear that taking the imperialist intervention card from the regime was obama’s intention which was effective. he has been consistent here by refering to the regime as the islamic republic of Iran as he did repeatedly in the norouz message and by speaking about the plight of the Palestinians in cairo. he explicitly has moved away from regime change. however I believe that it would not be taking sides or interfering in iran if ahmadinejad’s government and his envoys to all western countries be held to be without credentials when his term ends. this can be done within the context of respecting the constitution of the islamic republic which is in accordance to the US government’s acceptance of the plebecite in Iran in 1979. This simply raises iran above the level of a third world country that need not explain its legitimacy past its guns. For your information in the last protest and probably this time I witnessed iranians hoping the the americans would step in and got hurt in the process. As Iranians we know that if this protest is crushed it would have been a exercise to the benefit of the regime. the anti government forces would have been brought out imprisoned and hurt. the regime in fact attempts this today by having its agents cry allahuakbar in the streets. leila m.
9:25 pm: From a Tehran resident today:
I cannot sleep and not write this.
Today in Haft-e Tir, there were so many members of basij that they outnumbered the demonstrators 3 or 4 to 1. They were less focused on women. This must be related to the murder of poor Neda. And this was also why whenever they got hold of a man, women would surround them and shout don’t beat him, don’t beat and they would turn and anxiously say we didn’t beat him. It was astonishing. They explained; they talked.
But they didn’t allow us to congregate; they kept telling us to walk and the crowd walked quietly for 2 hours in the circle (meydaan) and spontaneously gathered in whichever area they were not present. About 2000 of us were walking around the circle and only shouting Allah-o Akbar until they were forced to disperse us with tear and pepper gases. I thought people’s patience and persistence was great, although there were also many bad scenes and I cried.
They arrested a whole bus load of people. There were many intelligence folks in the crowd too. They would point to a person and the basijis would arrest that person. There was no one from Sepah and the police was obviously sympathetic to the crowd. I swear some of the Basijis were only 14 or 15, or at least what they looked like to me. On the other hand, women are playing an amazing role in the streets; both in terms of numbers and effectiveness.