Iran Arrests British Nationals as Protests Return -Michael Slackman
Iran's government said that it had arrested nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy for playing a significant role in organizing protests.
Meanwhile, [i]n spite of all the threats, the overwhelming show of force and the nighttime raids on private homes, protesters still flowed into the streets by the thousands on Sunday to demonstrate in support of Mr. Moussavi. [P]olice in Tehran beat and fired tear gas at protesters.
Mr. Moussavi, who has had little room to act but has refused to fold under government pressure, had earlier received a permit to hold a ceremony at the Ghoba mosque to honor Mohammad Beheshti, one of the founders of the 1979 revolution.
Mr. Moussavi used the anniversary as a pretense to call a demonstration, and by midday the streets outside the elaborately tiled mosque were filled with protesters, their arms jabbing the air, their fingers making a “V” symbol, for victory.
"[T]he train has left the station, and I don’t think even the leaders of the country know exactly where it is heading,” said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
(New York Times)
Iran Has Arrested 2,000 in Violent Crackdown -Martin Fletcher
More than 2,000 Iranians have been arrested and hundreds more have disappeared since the regime decided to crush dissent, the International Federation for Human Rights reported.
Prominent Iranian actors, actresses, writers and singers are believed to have been seized at the weekend for supporting the demonstrators. Several opposition bloggers have fallen silent, probably because they have been detained.
(Times-UK)
West Should Listen to Dissidents in Iran -Natan Sharansky
Once again, the world is amazed. The massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators.
Every totalitarian society consists of three groups: true believers, double-thinkers and dissidents. In every totalitarian regime, the majority undergo a conversion over time from true belief in the revolutionary message into double-thinking. They no longer believe in the regime but are too scared to say so. Then there are the dissidents - pioneers who articulate and finally act on the innermost feelings of the nation. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism.
Western governments are fearful of imperiling actual or hoped-for relations with the world's ayatollahs - partners, so it is thought, in maintaining political stability. But this is a fallacy.
Democracy's allies are the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran who, with consummate bravery, have crossed the line between the world of double-think and the world of free men and women. Listen to them, and you will hear what you yourself know to be the true hope of every human being on Earth.
(Los Angeles Times)
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Iran's government said that it had arrested nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy for playing a significant role in organizing protests.
Meanwhile, [i]n spite of all the threats, the overwhelming show of force and the nighttime raids on private homes, protesters still flowed into the streets by the thousands on Sunday to demonstrate in support of Mr. Moussavi. [P]olice in Tehran beat and fired tear gas at protesters.
Mr. Moussavi, who has had little room to act but has refused to fold under government pressure, had earlier received a permit to hold a ceremony at the Ghoba mosque to honor Mohammad Beheshti, one of the founders of the 1979 revolution.
Mr. Moussavi used the anniversary as a pretense to call a demonstration, and by midday the streets outside the elaborately tiled mosque were filled with protesters, their arms jabbing the air, their fingers making a “V” symbol, for victory.
"[T]he train has left the station, and I don’t think even the leaders of the country know exactly where it is heading,” said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
(New York Times)
Iran Has Arrested 2,000 in Violent Crackdown -Martin Fletcher
More than 2,000 Iranians have been arrested and hundreds more have disappeared since the regime decided to crush dissent, the International Federation for Human Rights reported.
Prominent Iranian actors, actresses, writers and singers are believed to have been seized at the weekend for supporting the demonstrators. Several opposition bloggers have fallen silent, probably because they have been detained.
(Times-UK)
West Should Listen to Dissidents in Iran -Natan Sharansky
Once again, the world is amazed. The massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators.
Every totalitarian society consists of three groups: true believers, double-thinkers and dissidents. In every totalitarian regime, the majority undergo a conversion over time from true belief in the revolutionary message into double-thinking. They no longer believe in the regime but are too scared to say so. Then there are the dissidents - pioneers who articulate and finally act on the innermost feelings of the nation. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism.
Western governments are fearful of imperiling actual or hoped-for relations with the world's ayatollahs - partners, so it is thought, in maintaining political stability. But this is a fallacy.
Democracy's allies are the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran who, with consummate bravery, have crossed the line between the world of double-think and the world of free men and women. Listen to them, and you will hear what you yourself know to be the true hope of every human being on Earth.
(Los Angeles Times)
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