RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION IN IRAN
Iran’s women driving force behind Green Movement
By: Huffington Post, July 24, 2009
Even though official reporting of events has been very limited due to restrictions by the government, we were able to get a glimpse of what is going on in the streets via amateur videos and photos. What was evident in all those images is a very clear presence of women of all ages in the protests.
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Iran: Musavi says Green Movement charter in the works
By: Golnaz Esfandiari, RFE/RL, July 23, 2009
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi has said he is working on the charter of a new political front that would lay the groundwork for a large-scale social movement. The charter, which Musavi has said will be issued in the coming days, is seen as a potential means of building on the unity exhibited by those protesting the results of Iran’s presidential election.
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Iran: Mousavi brother-in-law arrested
By: Nasser Karimi and Lee Keath, Huffington Post, July 23, 2009
The wife of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said Thursday that her 62-year-old brother is among the hundreds arrested in Iran’s postelection crackdown. Mousavi implicitly accused the security forces of exceeding their powers under Iran’s constitution, suggesting that the “near-coup d’etat atmosphere” was a danger to Iran’s Islamic Republic.
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Iran’s power struggle: Two important Ayatollahs vs Ahmadinejad
By: Sabrina Schmitt, World Security Network, July 23, 2009
With the pressure of national democratic movements and the international community increasing, Ahmadinejad’s political legitimisation has been heavily relying on his religious leaders. In the past week, two major clerical figures have directly or indirectly challenged the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
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Protests in Iran continue, but whose news should we trust?
By: Judith Townend, Journalism.co.uk, July 22, 2009
In Iran, election protests continue. The news hasn’t gone away. So where should those of us outside Iran obtain our information, to flesh out the skeleton of agency copy and social media updates, and to balance the local media content, subject to government manipulation.
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Mousavi: More woes for Iran under Ahmadinejad
By: Middle East Online, July 22, 2009
Opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said on Wednesday the new government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could cause domestic and international problems for Iran. Mousavi said senior technocrats, managers and other professionals were not keen to work with the new government.
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Leader rejects Iran vice president appointment
By: Ali Akbar Dareini, Iran Focus, July 22, 2009
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stuck by his controversial appointment for a key top deputy on Wednesday in an unusual defiance of Iran’s supreme leader who reportedly ordered the man’s removal. His move deepens the dispute among the country’s hard-line leadership.
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British Prime Minister backs Iran protestors’ rights
By: Iran Focus, July 22, 2009
Prime Minister Gordon Brown voiced support for protestors’ rights in Iran on Wednesday, and reiterated the arrest of some of Britain’s embassy staff in Tehran was “not acceptable.”Speaking three days after Iran released on bail the last of nine arrested British embassy staff, he voiced concern at the clampdown by Iran after the hotly disputed June 12 presidential election.
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MPs told over 300 people killed in Iran protests
By: Iran Focus, July 22, 2009
More than 300 people have died in the Iranian riots which have swept the country since June, MPs were told yesterday. A report said thousands more had been injured and 10,000 arrested.
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Iran lawyer says concerned about detained reformers
By: Washington Post, July 22, 2009
An Iranian defense lawyer voiced concern on Wednesday about two leading reformers detained shortly after last month’s disputed election, saying he did not know where being held and who was holding them. Lawyer Saleh Nikbakht says he represents several pro-reform activists who were detained including Mostafa Tajzadeh and Behzad Nabavi, both allies of Mirhossein Mousavi.
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Is anyone listening to the Iranians?
By: Betwa Sharma, Huffington Post, July 22, 2009
She came all the way from Switzerland to join the three-day hunger strike a block away from the United Nations. “They’re my people and it is my cause,” says Monel, a 60-year old nurse who did jail-time under the Shah and then clashed with the Islamic regime.
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Iran: A Persian prison state
By: Nazanin Afshin-Jam, National Post, July 22, 2009
The explosion of protesters on the streets of Iran following last month’s fraudulent 2009 presidential election may not have been predicted by the world community. But to Iranian human rights activists, it came as no surprise. Embers of discontent, frustration and anger have been smouldering in Iran for decades.
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Iran police chief says opposition incites sedition
By: RFE/RL, July 21, 2009
Iran’s police chief has accused the opposition of “inciting sedition” after last month’s disputed presidential election and said his force would act firmly to uphold the law. “This group of individuals voices the slogan of law abidance but they themselves do not observe the law…they are sheer liars,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam.
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Iran internet law sparks suspicion
By: Al Jazeera, July 21, 2009
Iran has passed a new internet law that experts fear will make information on internet users more readily available to the authorities. Critics of the legislation say the stored data would enable the authorities to monitor internet users, including anonymous bloggers opposed to the regime in the Islamic republic.
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Iranian Americans hope for a greater voice in US
By: Alexandra Zavis, LA Times, July 21, 2009
The violent crackdown against Iranians who continue to protest the outcome of a disputed election has galvanized Iranian Americans, especially in Los Angeles, like never before. The challenge now, community leaders say, is whether they can capture the passion aroused in many Iranian Americans to establish a greater voice in U.S. politics.
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Prominent Iranian lawyer detained
By: Iran Human Rights Voice, July 21, 2009
On July 8, security agents entered the law office of Mohammad-Ali Dadkhah, a court lawyer and a member of Human Rights Defense Center, and arrested him along with his associates present in the office. People present in the area have witnessed that others were seized by security agents and that the doors to the law office were sealed shut.
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Iran: Ayatollah watch
By: Bendix Anderson, Tehran Bureau, July 21, 2009
Since protests erupted in Iran after its disputed Presidential election, a growing number of influential Shia clerics have made statements in favor of the protesters. Shia clerics earn the title of Grand Ayatollah through years of study, publishing papers and books on theological subjects, and gathering thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.
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Khomeini’s grandson flees Iran
By: Jill Marie Parillo, niacINsight, July 21, 2009
The 50 year old grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, Sayed Hassan Khomeini, has reportedly left Iran rather than bow to recent pressure that he attend Ahmadinejad’s upcoming inauguration ceremony. Sayed Hassan is a mid-level cleric who is also in charge of the beautiful and vast (5,000 acres) Mausoleum of his grandfather.
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Iran’s Supreme Leader warns opposition about ‘instability’
By: Golnaz Esfandiari, RFE/RL, July 20, 2009
Iran’s supreme leader has warned the country’s opposition against any actions that could destabilize the Islamic establishment, saying the country’s “elite” should be cautious about the positions they take on the postelection crisis. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the disruption of security as “the biggest sin.”
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Call to release journalist held in Iran
By: Human Rights Tribune, July 20, 2009
More than 100 prominent journalists from 47 countries sent a petition to the Iranian government today calling for the immediate release of Maziar Bahari, Newsweek’s Tehran correspondent, who has been held without charge in an Iranian jail since June 21. “Journalists the world over are standing behind their colleague Maziar Bahari,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon.
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Iran: What comes next?
By: Masour Shafaee, World Politics Review, July 20, 2009
Last week’s much-anticipated Friday sermon by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani confirmed that the protests and resistance in Iran are no longer about the much-disputed June 12 presidential election. Despite post-election speculation on the prospects for a second Iranian revolution, the current situation more closely resembles a civil rights movement.
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Iran’s tragic joke
By: Roger Cohen, NY Times, July 20, 2009
There’s been tragedy aplenty since June 12 – dozens of killings, thousands of arrests, countless beatings of the innocent – and I hope I belittle none of it when I say there’s also been something laughable. What self-respecting nation would attribute the appearance in the streets of three million protesters convinced their votes were stolen to Zionists, “evil” media and British agents?
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A conversation with Gene Sharp (with Farsi subtitles)
By: Bikhoshoonat, YouTube, July 20, 2009
Gene Sharp’s Message to Iranians.
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What rules? How Iran’s election was funded
By: Institute for War and Peace Reporting, July 15, 2009
In the final weeks before the June 12 vote, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his position as president to award the equivalent of 80 US dollars each to no fewer than five million poor people. He also increased pensions for many retired civil servants. While this expenditure is estimated to have cost around 400 million dollars, it probably earned him a good number of votes in return.
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Iranian consumers boycott Nokia for “collaboration”
By: Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Truthout, July 14, 2009
The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime. Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half.
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Iran: Released students give shocking details
By: Iran Human Rights Voice, July 13, 2009
Students who were detained during the events at Tehran University and were set free a few days later gave shocking details about their stay in “Negative Four” floor inside the Ministry of State. One of the released students during an interview with Amir Kabir Newsletter spoke about the grim details of treatments by plainclothes agents inside the Ministry of State.
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CRISIS IN HONDURAS
Zelaya heads to Honduras on anniversary of Bolívar’s birth
By: Al Giordano, The Field, July 23, 2009
Honduras’ legitimate President Manuel Zelaya yesterday told reporters that he will cross back to Honduras on Friday, July 24, via land, a date that also marks 215 years from the birth of the Great Liberator, Simon Bolívar. “All of Honduras will be in El Paraiso awaiting the President,” announced the newsman on Channel 20, the regional TV station.
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Honduras to consider Zelaya return
By: Al Jazeera, July 23, 2009
The military-backed interim government in Honduras has said it will send to congress and the courts a mediator’s proposal for the return of Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president. “We will transmit this draft agreement to our authorities so that dialogue can continue,” said Mauricio Villeda, the interim government’s delegate at negotiations in Costa Rica said.
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Honduras: Last-ditch crisis talks fall short
By: Jim Wyss, Miami Herald, July 23, 2009
A last-minute push to resolve Honduras’ three-week-old political crisis once again appeared to fail Wednesday, as neither of the warring parties signed a compromise cobbled together by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. The new proposal again called for the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, limited amnesty for all parties and moving up elections by a month.
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Our man in Honduras
By: Roberto Lovato, The American Prospect, July 22, 2009
“If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is,” says Robert White, president of the Center for International Policy, “you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis.” Davis, an ally of the Clinton family, was recently on Capitol Hill lobbying members of Congress and testifying against exiled President Manuel Zelaya before the House Foreign Relations Committee.
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Honduran democracy can only be asserted from below
By: Al Giordano, The Field, July 22, 2009
Today the clock counts down to zero on the 72-hour extension that official mediator and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias had announced for Honduran peace talks. There is nothing that indicates any breakthrough or agreement is possible.
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US increases pressure on Honduras’ de facto leaders
By: Paul Richter and Tracy Wilkinson, LA Times, July 20, 2009
The Obama administration has sharply increased pressure on the de facto government running Honduras following last month’s military coup, hoping to break a stalemate in negotiations with ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned Roberto Micheletti, named president of the country following the June 28 coup, to warn him against letting the talks falter.
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