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  Iran protesters hijack 30th anniversary of US embassy seizure |
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 | Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Wednesday, 4 November 2009
(2 weeks ago) |
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Pro-Mousavi demonstrators are met with militia violence after taking to the streets against Ahmadinejad regimeIran's opposition has come out in force to mount some of the biggest street protests since June's disputed elections in a bid to overshadow official rallies marking the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran.Thousands of demonstrators poured into the centre of the capital to defy riot police, revolutionary guards and Basij militiamen wielding clubs and kicking, as well as firing teargas and - according to some unconfirmed reports - live bullets.Video footage posted on the internet showed supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the man who claims he won the presidential race, stamping angrily on images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's "supreme leader" and denouncing him as a "murderer".
Others attacked the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Many wore wearing green scarves, ribbons or wristbands.At the same time, government supporters burned US flags to commemorate the 1979 embassy takeover - a pivotal moment in the Iranian revolutionary calendar.
But shouts of "death to the dictator" were audible on state TV during live coverage of the official ceremony.In Washington, Barack Obama marked the anniversary by calling on Tehran to make concessions over its nuclear programme, "turn the page" on the past and forge a new relationship with the US.
"Iran must choose," Obama said.
"We have heard for 30 years what the Iranian government is against; the question now is what kind of future it is for."The last big demonstrations in Iran were in mid-September when the opposition tried the same trick of hijacking an official event - the annual al-Qods (Jerusalem) day celebrations expressing solidarity with the Palestinians - safe in the knowledge that the authorities would not want to cancel it for fear of trouble.It is difficult to estimate crowd numbers because of the severe restrictions imposed on independent media.
Most non-Iranian journalists were thrown out shortly after the election and those who remain are not free to report.Iran's state media virtually ignored the opposition protests: "Small groups of supporters of defeated presidential candidates held a rally in central Tehran on Wednesday," reported Press TV.
But there were credible reports of protests from Shiraz, Isfahan and Rasht.Witnesses said the security forces behaved more brutally than in September.
"I've never seen such violence," a woman in Haft-e-Tir Square told ePersian radio.
"We started chanting and they chased us down a dead end.
We were all crushed together and the riot police shot something like five tear gas canisters into the alley."The state crackdown included disrupting mobile phones, text messaging and internet access to frustrate protest organisers."We started our protest very peacefully but riot police attacked us with batons and teargas on our way in Vali-e-Asr street," said Zeynab, 22, a Tehran University architecture student.
"I saw people who were bleeding badly from the head."Film clips showed fires in the streets and demonstrators chanting "A green Iran doesn't need nuclear weapons."Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated reformist candidate for the presidency, had urged their supporters to take to the streets to protest against Ahmadinejad and maintain pressure on the regime.
Mousavi was barred from leaving his home.
Karroubi briefly joined protesters in Haft-e Tir Square, according to the Mowjcamp reformist website.Speaking before Obama's message, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a senior religious leader and critic of the government, called the seizure of the US embassy in 1979 a mistake.
"The occupation of the American embassy at the start had the support of Iranian revolutionaries and the late Imam Khomeini [Iran's former supreme leader] and I supported it too," said a statement posted on his website.
"But considering the negative repercussions and the high sensitivity which was created among the American people and which still exists, it was not the right thing to do."
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