You know, the place that seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth since Michael Jackson died? Well, there's still news coming out-some of it hopeful, and some of it truly sickening. More below.
The good news: the protests have not stopped-on July 9th, or 18 Tir in the Iranian calender, an opposition rally was held to mark the anniversery of a government crackdown on student protesters in 1999. Significantly, the rally, as noted by Professor Juan Cole on his blog (I haven't been able to find the link, he doesn't seem to have an orderly archiving system for his older posts), was not called by Mousavi but was coordinated by the opposition via email, took place in all of Iran's major cities, and the protestors marched along several different routes to make it harder for the basij to stop them. This gives hope that an organized, underground oppostion is emerging-a prerequisite to any successful toppling of the regime.
Also, another piece of what may turn out to be good news: Akbar-Hashemi Rafsanjani, the second most powerful cleric in Iran after Khamenei and a supporter of Mousavi, is officially going to lead Friday prayers at Tehran university. This will involve his giving a sermon, which will almost certainly be political in nature. Mousavi, along with reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, will be there and have urged their followers to attend. This could turn into the occasion for another anti-regeme protest. The content of Rafsanjani's speech will be interesting also.
And, now, the less uplifting news. It seems that the "Islamic" Republic is not content with shooting people on the street, or even imprisoning them, or even torturing them into appearing on TV for faked "confessions" to being US government agents. No, the Iranian government has taken to violating imprisoned protestors in the most brutal way possible. From Huffington Post.
On Friday July 19, a large group of mourners gathered at the Ghoba mosque in Tehran to await a speech about the martyrs of the post-election protests by presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. According to one Iranian blog, 28-year-old Taraneh Mousavi was one of a group of people that was arrested by plainclothesed security forces for attending the gathering.
Taraneh, whose first name is Persian for "song", disappeared into arrest.
Weeks later, according to the blog, her mother received an anonymous call from a government agent saying that her daughter has been hospitalized in Imam Khomeini Hospital in the city of Karaj, just north of Tehran -- hospitalized for "rupturing of her womb and anus in... an unfortunate accident".
When Taraneh's family went to the hospital to find her, they were told she was not there.
According to another Iranian blog which claims to have original information about Taraneh from her family, Iranian security forces contacted Taraneh's family after the hospital visit warning them not to publicize Taraneh's story and not to associate her disappearance with arrests made at post-election protests, claiming instead that she had tried to harm herself because of feeling guilty for having pre-marital sex.
Disgusting. Truly disgusting. It would be bad if this were the only story of its kind. But it isn't. There's also this account from the UK Guardian, about an 18 year old boy who was arrested at a protest and raped by security forces while imprisoned.
This is what it has come to. This government, that claims to rule in the name of Shia Islam has instead perverted that old and noble faith to justify acts of unimaginable cruelty, acts which it is hard to imagine could still take place in the civilized world. This regeme, despite its name, has shown itself over the past few weeks, first with blatant and insulting election fraud, then with beating people for protesting that, then escalating to massacre (20 people have been killed, officially, but who knows? Sources from Tehran hospitals have stated that at least 30-40 bodies were brought in, and due to restrictions on journalists no one with any actual objectivity has been able to make a count), and finally with the rape and violation of its own citizens, this government has shown itself dedicated not to Islam, or any other religion or real ideology, but to nothing but its own power and control.
It is now more important than ever for us to keep getting the word out, for us not to be distracted by our corporate media's coverage of the death of one pop singer and remember the people who are facing death and worse than death for the right every human being should have: the ability to have a fair election and make those voices heard. We should not let ourselves forget their struggle.