Iran's Green Movement Will Not Be Stopped

Rooz Online

As the two leaders of Iran’s Green Movement that sprung up and grew in the aftermath of the 2009 fraudulent presidential elections in Iran spent their three hundredth day under house arrest where they are completely cut off from the outside world, the country’s supreme leader ayatollah Khamenei once again called the peaceful protests that demanded to know what had happened to their vote “seditionists.” But more importantly, he also acknowledged that the movement “could not be stopped through political and security measures.” He said that the participation of a massive number of people was needed to confront it, which he said took place. Khamenei’s reference to this massive number of people was his public call on December 30, 2009 for pro-regime voices to take to the streets. He also said that the protests were not limited to the presence of people in the streets, but were caused by an “illness.”

This is not the first time that Khamenei presents this view on the post-election events of 2009. He labeled the first round of protests that took place immediately after the elections as the results of “the enemy’s sedition,” and has subsequently said that those events had in fact “vaccinated the country against political and social germs.” Jaafar Shajooni, a leadership member of the conservative clerical association known as the Jame'e Rohaniyate Mobarez later explained that the leader’s term “political germs” referred to Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the leaders of the Green Movement who are now under house arrest.

These remarks resulted in complaints which forced the office of the supreme leader to contain the interpretation of the term.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad too belittled and insulted the demonstrators who protested the announced results of the 2009 election by calling them “dirt and dust.”

In his remarks two days ago, ayatollah Khamenei called the demonstration by his supporters in 2009 to be “massive and permanent” and said they resembled those of the 1979 revolution. In another speech, he used the word “caricature” to describe the election fraud protestors and compared them to the small pro-government demonstrations of 1978, prior to the collapse of the monarchy in early 1979.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s latest remarks over the 2009 elections comes at a time when the leaders of the largest protest movement in the country since the 1979 revolution remain under virtual house arrest without any formal charges filed against them. They have been allowed visits by their immediate family members on a few occasions. Karoubi met his family members last week un an unannounced and an unplanned visit in the presence of six security guards, as announced by his son. The last visit that Mousavi had was when he was allowed to visit his brothers and sisters on Ghadir Muslim fest on November 22, 2011 at Mousavi’s elder brothers’ home. This meeting too took place in the presence of a number of security officers. On a different occasion, Mousavi’s son had announced that government agents were more concerned about people hearing his parent’s messages than the Mousavis staying in touch with current news. In one meeting Mousavi had said that if anyone wanted to know the conditions under which they lived they should read a book titled, “A Report on a Kidnapping.” The leaking of this statement to the public resulted in the end of visitation arrangements by security agents for the Mousavis. Similarly, after Karoubi’s wife sent a letter to the head of Iran’s judiciary describing the conditions under which her husband lived, in which she went as far as saying that even the Shah’s secret police – the SAVAK – did not treat him as badly as he was being treated now, their visitation arrangements were suspended.

Amnesty International, among other Iranian and international human rights organizations, have called for the release of the arbitrarily arrested leaders of the Green Movement. A UN report has asked for an explanation on the ”forced disappearance” of Mehdi Karoubi, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard.