Wednesday, June 17, 2009

HOPE! The bright light of non-violence in Iran.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that armed forces in Iran, from the front line soldiers to the top ranks, are no longer willing to be associated with the Basij elements that are brutally repressive. There were rumours several days ago that some senior officers had been arrested and shipped to a prison camp because they were rebelling against the idea of such brutal violence. The most important point here is that there continue to be daytime rallies in the capital that are ~hundreds of thousands strong.
Of course, we shouldn't raise our hopes too high- there are undoubtably some military officers who feel threatened, and can only respond with beatings and murder, and there is always a source of disaffected young man willing to buy into ideology in return for employment and status.
However, these young men have families, have mothers who no doubt remember that the funerals in '79 served to do nothing but open Iranians heart to the revolution then. Some accounts:
From a Western journalists first-hand account, filed this PM:

"It was interesting that the special forces - who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad's Basij militia - were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi's men and women.

In fact at one point, Mousavi's supporters were shouting 'thank you, thank you' to the soldiers.

One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi's supporters, and said 'can you protect us from the Basij?' He said 'with God's help'.

It was quite extraordinary because it looked as if the military authorities in Tehran have either taken a decision not to go on supporting the very brutal militia - which is always associated with the presidency here - or individual soldiers have made up their own mind that they're tired of being associated with the kind of brutality that left seven dead yesterday - buried, by the way secretly by the police - and indeed the seven or eight students who were killed on the university campus 24 hours earlier.

Quite a lot of policeman are beginning to smile towards the demonstrators of Mr Mousavi, who are insisting there must be a new election because Mr Ahmadinejad wasn't really elected. Quite an extraordinary scene.

There were a lot of stones thrown and quite a lot of bitter fighting, hand-to-hand but at the end of the day the special forces did keep them apart.

I haven't ever seen the Iranian security authorities behaving fairly before and it's quite impressive."

By the way, the journalist is one of the brave souls who has defied the ban on Western Media reporting."


From an Iranian twitter feed:

"Saw police wear green scarves riot man was crying
Well I want to find email addresses of doctors and link them too the medic.
Doctors are trying to get to rural areas, as there is less support there
Far as eye can see people in every corner people everywhere...revolution is close to end... Ghandi would be proud
I cannot count the numbers too big
When all these troubles behind us I will get my camera back and go to the park with my daughter"

"Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong”-Mahatma Ghandi

1 Comments:

Blogger full_of_puppy_love said...

kyle bailey. i have to admit i feel sorry for your blog. i should read it more, but you should write in it more. *sigh*

11:29 a.m.  

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