New Figures on Deaths and Detentions in Iranian Protests

New figures released on protesters detained, killed « niacINsight

niacINsight reports new figures released on Iranian protesters detained, killed

From AFP:

An aide to Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has said in a report to parliament that 69 people died in post-election violence, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

“A list of 69 dead and about 220 detained after the election was submitted to a special parliamentary committee,” Alireza Beheshti was quoted as saying by the reformist Sarmayeh newspaper.

Iran’s judiciary also said today that 4,000 protesters were initially arrested in the brutal crackdown just after the vote.

“In the aftermath of the election, 4,000 people were arrested,” judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

He said 3,700 were released “very soon”, but that “those who were involved in the riots were detained.”

Technorati Tags: #iranelection, Iran, protestors, casualties, detention

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Persiankiwi: We Haven't Forgotten You; With Hope for Your Well-Being

persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter

For the first few weeks following the recent election in Iran, when the protests began and when Twitter was such an important information lifeline between the Iranian people and the world, a poster who called him- or herself "Persiankiwi" was one of the most prolific, accurate, important, and heroic conduits. "Persiankiwi"'s Twitter account went silent on June 24. As a matter of record, and as a tribute to Persiankiwi (wherever he or she may be), Conscience Continuum presents the last page from Persiankiwi's Twitter messages. It makes absorbing and moving reading.

1.
Allah - you are the creator of all and all must return to you - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection Sea of Green8:39 AM Jun 24th from web

2.
thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green - pls remember always our martyrs - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar - Allah Akbar #Iranelection8:36 AM Jun 24th from web

3.
we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast - #Iranelection8:34 AM Jun 24th from web

4.
Everybody is under arrest & cant move - Mousavi - Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guard - #Iranelection -8:28 AM Jun 24th from web

5.
they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us - #Iranelection8:23 AM Jun 24th from web

6.
Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere - #Iranelection8:19 AM Jun 24th from web

7.
they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of us - #Iranelection8:18 AM Jun 24th from web

8.
in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection RT RT RT8:16 AM Jun 24th from web

9.
reports of street fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now - #Iranelection - Sea of Green - Allah Akbar8:14 AM Jun 24th from web

10.
rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now - #Iranelection8:09 AM Jun 24th from web

11.
phone line was cut and we lost internet - #Iranelection - getting more difficult to log into net - #Iranelection8:05 AM Jun 24th from web

12.
all shops was closed - nowhere to go - they follow ppls with helicopters - smoke and fire is everywhere #Iranelection7:03 AM Jun 24th from web

13.
ppl run into alleys and militia standing there waiting - from 2 sides they attack ppl in middle of alleys #Iranelection7:01 AM Jun 24th from web

14.
so many ppl arrested - young & old - they take ppl away - #Iranelection - we lose our group6:59 AM Jun 24th from web

15.
saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground - she had no defense nothing - #Iranelection sure that she is dead6:55 AM Jun 24th from web

16.
they were waiting for us - they all have guns and riot uniforms - it was like a mouse trap - ppl being shot like animals #Iranelection6:53 AM Jun 24th from web

17.
I see many ppl with broken arms/legs/heads - blood everywhere - pepper gas like war - #Iranelection6:35 AM Jun 24th from web

18.
just in from Baharestan Sq - situation today is terrible - they beat the ppls like animals - #Iranelection RT RT RT6:34 AM Jun 24th from web

19.
Larijani pressing for Mousavi to be given airtime on IRIB to discuss elections #Iranelection RT RT RT - tahlilerooz.ir2:15 PM Jun 23rd from web

20.
MOUSAVi - on his wesite - Wed Sea of Green is 100% confirmed - no cancellation will be made #Iranelection RT RT RT2:12 PM Jun 23rd from web

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Detainees Abused, Iran Acknowledges

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Iran acknowledges prisoner abuses

Iranian officials have acknowledged that some protesters detained in the crackdown on Iran's post-election protests were abused in prison.

Iran's prosecutor general said there had been "violations and carelessness" at Kahrizak prison, while on Sunday, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, Iran's police chief, admitted prisoners had been beaten by their jailers.

But he insisted that any deaths were caused by illness, not torture.

Prisoners "died of viral illness and not as a result of beating", he said, according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency.

Growing public anger over the deaths of at least three people in custody have prompted Iran to jail the head of the Kahrizak detention centre.

"The head of the centre has been sacked and jailed. Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well," Ahmadi-Moghaddam was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying.

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Iran: Regime Confiscates Opposition Files

Iranian officials have seized documents and computers from a political party that had backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the June 12 presidential election, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said "officials inspected the office of Executives of Construction Party in Tehran and took away its documents and computers," without specifying when this took place.

link: AFP: Iran officials seize pro-Mousavi party documents

Iran Bans Fateh from Leaving Country

Parisa Hafezi writes:

Iran has banned an ally of the country's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi from leaving the Islamic state, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

Abolfazl Fateh, head of Mousavi's media office, said the ban would not change his political stance, adding he was banned from leaving Iran because of his role in post-election developments.

"Such pressures can not push people like me to change our political stances," he told IRNA. "The imposed ban will not change my political views."

link: Iran bans Mousavi ally from leaving the country | International | Reuters

Regimes Censor Protest News

Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.

link: China, Cuba, Other Authoritarian Regimes Censor News From Iran - washingtonpost.com

Iran: Fragile Calm

Rather than address the underlying issues that led to the most sustained, unexpected challenge to the leadership since the 1979 revolution, the government pressed its effort to recast the entire conflict not as an internal dispute that brought millions of Iranians into the streets, but as one between Iran and outside agents from Europe, the United States and even Saudi Arabia.

It was a narrative that spoke both to the leadership’s belief that it had beaten back the popular outburst, and to the fragility of the calm. “There has been too much violence to forget about it,” said an expatriate Iranian analyst who is not being identified because he has relatives in Iran and is afraid of reprisals against them.

link: Leaders Press End to Iranian Protest Over Election - NYTimes.com

Iran Regime: Demonstrators to be Punished "Ruthlessly and Savagely"

Despite new international criticism, the Iranian authorities showed no sign Friday of bending to domestic or foreign pressure, insisting that the disputed presidential vote on June 12 was the “healthiest” in three decades.

The uncompromising words emerged as the Group of Eight countries, including the United States, mounted a fresh broadside Friday saying they “deplored” the post-election violence and demanding that the “the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process.”

The authorities showed little inclination to heed chastisement by outsiders as a senior cleric called for demonstrators to be punished “ruthlessly and savagely.”

link: Authorities Rule Iran Election ‘Healthy’ - NYTimes.com

Mousavi Defiant

The defeated Iranian presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has said he will keep challenging the election result.

But the number of people on the streets has been considerably smaller than in past demonstrations, and a planned day of mourning was cancelled.

Restrictions have been placed on the BBC and other foreign news organisations in Iran. Reporters are not allowed to cover unauthorised gatherings or move around freely but there are no controls over what they can say.

link: BBC NEWS | Middle East | Mousavi urges crackdown defiance

Iran: "What Powers This New Militancy"?

What powers this new militancy? The Islamic Republic is not a dictatorship in the normal sense of the word. Its practitioners believe they are doing God's work on earth. Guiding the wayward by persuasion and coercion is among their chief tasks. Nearly every young person in Iran, particularly young women, can recount dozens of stories of humiliation and discrimination at the hands of government agents and supporters. For them, each rock thrown at the police, each hand-to-hand combat with the militiamen and vigilantes, each confrontation with the heavily armed Revolutionary Guards is not just an act of political defiance but a cathartic experience of personal liberation.

Unlike their wide-eyed parents with their utopias and romanticization of revolutionary violence, the new young revolutionaries are sophisticated and canny. They have few illusions about the magnitude of the problems facing their country or the complexities of living in a highly traditional and religious society. For example, despite the fact that they are overwhelmingly secular, their slogans mingle political and religious themes to avoid alienating the faithful. Their response to Obama's initially measured rhetoric is another sign of a new political sophistication at work: everyone understands that US meddling would be the proverbial kiss of death to the opposition's cause.

link: Iran's New Revolutionaries

Grim Twitter Bulletins from Iran

we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names - now we must move fast - #Iranelection about 11 hours ago from web

Everybody is under arrest & cant move - Mousavi - Karroubi even rumour Khatami is in house guard - #Iranelection - about 11 hours ago from web

they pull away the dead into trucks - like factory - no human can do this - we beg Allah for save us - #Iranelection about 11 hours ago from web

Lalezar Sq is same as Baharestan - unbelevable - ppls murdered everywhere - #Iranelection about 12 hours ago from web

they catch ppl with mobile - so many killed today - so many injured - Allah Akbar - they take one of us - #Iranelection about 12 hours ago from web

in Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher - Allah Akbar - #Iranelection RT RT RT about 12 hours ago from web

reports of street fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now - #Iranelection - Sea of Green - Allah Akbar about 12 hours ago from web

rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now - #Iranelection about 12 hours ago from web

phone line was cut and we lost internet - #Iranelection - getting more difficult to log into net - #Iranelection about 12 hours ago from web

link: persiankiwi (persiankiwi) on Twitter

Women at "The Root of the Current Unrest" in Iran

"Iranian women are very powerful and they want their freedom," said one woman in Tehran who said she's been taking part in the protests. Like all women in Iran interviewed for this story, she did not want to be named, fearing government retribution. "They're really, really repressed, and they need to talk about it."

The election seemed to open the floodgates for airing that sense of frustration.

Claims by Ahmadinejad's chief rival for the presidency, Mir Hossein Mousavi, that the election was riddled with fraud were the catalyst for days of protest following the vote. The government's harsh response — evidenced in hundreds of arrests, the deaths of over a dozen demonstrators, clampdowns on the media, the refusal of the country's theocratic leaders to entertain the possibility of a re-count — fueled popular discontent across wide swaths of the population.

But there is an extra layer of resentment and anger among many of Iran's 35 million women. Many fear that a second term for a man who was first elected in 2005 in part on a platform of restoring "Islamic values" will only prove to be worse than the first.

"The root of the current unrest is the people's dissatisfaction and frustration at their plight going back before the election," said Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. "Because women are the most dissatisfied people in society, that is why their presence is more prominent."

link: The Associated Press: Women in Iran's protests: head scarves and rocks

Khamenei Urges Tolerance, in his Own Charmingly Inflexible Way

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged parliamentarians Wednesday to tolerate the voices of the opposition, government-run Press TV reported.

Khamenei made the remarks to a group of lawmakers in Tehran, Press TV said.

The report came hours after witnesses said police had broken up a planned demonstration outside the parliament building in opposition to the outcome of the June 12 presidential elections.

But Khamenei added that the Islamic establishment and people "will never give in to coercive demands with regards to Iran's presidential elections," Press TV said. "Ayatollah Khamenei emphasized the significance of law and order and said violating the law would lead to dictatorship.

link: Khamenei urges tolerance, Iranian media report - CNN.com

Chinese Bloggers Watch Iran

There is an engaged, relatively mainstream population that is thinking seriously about what Iran’s experience says about China. Several bloggers, for instance, are using the unrest in Iran as a way to benchmark China’s movement toward democracy. Wu Jiaxiang, an intellectual and former researcher in the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee wrote the other day:

For over ten years, Iran’s presidential elections have had turnout exceeding seventy percent, so much so that the closing hours had to be delayed until midnight. What does that show? It means that indifference towards democracy comes from the lack of democracy. There is no excuse for non-democracy.

Mao Anlin, another blogger, goes one step further:

Even Iran, such a religious country, has had so many years of elections. Candidates can squabble, the results can be questioned, the legislature can talk, and Khamenei can keep right on working. We [in China] insist on appointing every single candidate in advance, even for the chief of Macau. This is more than a little lagging behind Iran.

link: China on Iran (Not the Party Line): Letter from China: Online Only: The New Yorker

Obama Q and A on Iran

OBAMA: Since we’re on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

OBAMA: Nico, I know that you and all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

QUESTION: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of — of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

OBAMA: Well, look, we didn’t have international observers on the ground. We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.

What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There are significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.

And that’s why I’ve been very clear, ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with the peaceful dissent, that — that spans cultures, spans borders.

And what we’ve been seeing over the Internet and what we’ve been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that — that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

link: Think Progress » Obama questions legitimacy of Iranian elections, says it is ‘up to the Iranian people to decide’ their leadership.

The Strength of Iranian Women

Anne Applebaum writes:

In the United States, the most America-centric commentators have somberly attributed the strength of recent demonstrations to the election of Barack Obama. Others want to give credit to the democracy rhetoric of the Bush administration. Still others want to call this a "Twitter revolution" or a "Facebook revolution," as if zippy new technology alone had inspired the protests. But the truth is that the high turnout has been the result of many years of organizational work, carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and above all women's groups, working largely unnoticed and without much outside help.

Since 2006, the One Million Signatures Campaign has been circulating a petition, online and in print, that calls for an end to laws that discriminate against women and the enactment of laws that provide equal rights for women in marriage, equal rights to divorce, equal inheritance rights and equal testimony rights for men and women in court. Though based outside the country, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, founded by a pair of sisters, translates and publishes online fundamental human rights documents; it maintains an online database of the names of thousands of victims of the Islamic Republic as well. In the past decade, Iranian women have participated in student strikes as well as teachers' strikes, and in organizations of Bahai, Christian and other religious groups whose members are deemed "heretics" by the regime.

Not Obama, not Bush and not Twitter, in other words, but years of work and effort lie behind the public display of defiance and, in particular, the number of women on the streets -- and their presence matters. Their presence could strike the deepest blow against the regime. For at the heart of the ideology of the Islamic Republic is its claim to divine inspiration: Its leadership is legitimate, as is its harsh repression of women, because God has decreed that it is so. The outright rejection of this creed by tens of thousands of women, not just over the past weekend but over the past decade, has to weaken the Islamic Republic's claim to invincibility, in Iran and across the Middle East. The regime's political elite knows this well: It is no accident that the two main challengers to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian presidential campaign promised to repeal some of the laws that discriminate against women, and it is no accident that the leading challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, used his wife, a political scientist and former university chancellor, in his campaign appearances and posters.

The Iranian clerics know that women pose a profound threat to their authority, too: As the activist Ladan Boroumand has written, the regime would not bother to brutally repress dissidents unless it feared them deeply. Nobody would have murdered a peaceful, unarmed young woman in blue jeans -- unless her mere presence on the street presented a dire threat.

link: Anne Applebaum - Women May Pose the Deepest Threat to Iran's Regime - washingtonpost.com

Twitter Tug Of War: Iran

Twitspam has published a list of “fake Iran election Tweeters,” whose fraudulent Twitter feeds spread disinformation, and try to incite violence. “Buyer beware,” The New York Times warns:

Nothing on Twitter has been verified. While users can learn from experience to trust a certain Twitter account, it is still a matter of trust. And just as Twitter has helped get out first-hand reports from Tehran, it has also spread inaccurate information, perhaps even disinformation.

Other Tweeters work for the “good guys,” calling for their on-line comrades to Tweet false reports of protesters’ locations, in order to send Iranian cops on wild-goose chases.

link: Perils of Iran’s Web-Driven Revolution | Danger Room | Wired.com

Iran: Syria Weighs In With A Predictable Opinion

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Monday criticised the street protests that have rocked Tehran over the disputed presidential election, saying the Iran regime will not fall.

"The Iranian people have exercised their right to vote," he said of the June 12 poll that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad power in what official results said was a landslide.

"Protecting Iranian lives cannot be expressed through the incitement to protest," Muallem told a news conference attended by visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen.

"Anyone betting on the fall of the Iranian regime will be a loser," Muallem said.

link: AFP: Iran regime will not fall: Syrian FM

Iran: Statistical Downfall?

Nate Silver writes:

I've generally tended to take the position that while the people running Iran are a bunch of reactionary thugs, they're at least a fairly intelligent bunch of reactionary thugs.

After this revelation on Iranian Press TV, however, I'm not so certain:

Iran's Guardian Council has admitted that the number of votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of those eligible to cast ballot in those areas.

The council's Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, who was speaking on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Channel 2 on Sunday, made the remarks in response to complaints filed by Mohsen Rezaei -- a defeated candidate in the June 12 Presidential election.

"Statistics provided by Mohsen Rezaei in which he claims more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 170 cities are not accurate -- the incident has happened in only 50 cities," Kadkhodaei said.

The spokesman, however, said that although the vote tally affected by such an irregularity is over 3 million, "it has yet to be determined whether the amount is decisive in the election results," reported Khabaronline.

For all the complex series of statistics that have been run on Iran's election, it's the simplest that might prove to be the regime's downfall.

link: FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Worst. Damage Control. Ever.

What Will The Regime Do With Mousavi?

Juan Cole writes:

Reformist presidential aspirant Mir Hosain Mousavi called Monday morning for another round of big street protests by his supporters against the attempt of the regime to steal the election for hard liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has replied by warning it will crush any further street protests with a "revolutionary confrontation."

FT points out that given Mousavi's continued challenge to Khamenei's decisions, the regime may well arrest him, feeling the step is necessary to remove his freedom of action. Of course, Iranian Shiites all know the pitfalls of creating martyrs, since the religion is all about resisting the tyrants in history who made the martyrs. An arrest of Mousavi would either push Iran over the brink or would indeed consolidate power for the time being in the hands of the hard liners.

link: Informed Comment: Mousavi, Defiant, Calls for More Rallies