Iran and the Demand-Centered

From A World to Win, this news sequence, which was sent via email as the events in Iran unfolded over the past few days, has definitely been as emotionally palpable as the videos and pictures on websites like the Huffington Post, but the literary efforts and the analytical approach, which is a mixture of objective and revolutionary prose, has trumped the others I’ve encountered.

Live from the streets of Tehran

15 June 2009. A World to Win News Service. Following are reports sent to Bazr, which describes itself as a Marxist Iranian student organisation. These reports have been selected, excerpted and edited slightly for clarity, but they are basically “raw footage“ from students and others active in the political turmoil preceding and especially following the 12 June elections. They are in reverse chronology.

Saturday 13 June

Fatima Square was tense starting this morning. People who were there then say that many were viciously arrested. The special police were controlling all the streets leading to the Interior Ministry. They were everywhere. Passers-by were not allowed to stop. Anyone who made the slightest objection was arrested or hit with electric batons. But not many people had gathered yet. Chants of “Death to the dictator” rang out from every street corner. Motorists responded by honking; the police responded to any gathering with batons, kicking and beatings. Shops had pulled their shutters halfway down, and the owners were allowing people to take shelter there. A police loudspeaker ordered all the merchants to close down completely, warning that everything was being filmed and that anyone who failed to comply with orders would be in trouble.

After office hours more people rushed to Fatima Square and Vali Asr Street. First on the sidewalks and then in the street people were chanting “Death to the dictator”. [There was some ambiguity as to whether the “dictator” was Ahmadinejad or both him and Khamenei – the plural of dictator doesn’t rhyme in Farsi.] When the police attacked, people ran, then stopped and went back to shouting slogans, but there still was no coordination among them and they were scattered. The support local residents gave demonstrators was amazing. The people in the area sheltered escaping protestors in their homes.

Amidst all this we heard that a contingent of a thousand demonstrators was walking from Vanak (northern Tehran) towards Fatima Square. This news encouraged the protesters around the Interior Ministry and many of those watching from the sidewalks joined them. People blocked Vali Asr Street waiting for the marchers to arrive. They sat on the street and didn’t let cars go north. After 20 minutes the marchers arrived and more people joined the protest. Then the police charged into the crowd, but the crowd counter-attacked. Several police were beaten and four police motorcycles and three police cars were burned. From this moment the crowd moved with more courage and determination. Teargas grenades were streaming toward the crowd but people kept chanting slogans and shouting. They broke bank windows, burned city garbage cans and pulled down fences along the street while marching towards theInterior Ministry. Two city buses were also set on fire. Gunshots were heard everywhere [although at that point the police were apparently firing into the air].

Later we heard many stories of arrests and vicious police attacks, including against young kids and elderly people in the crowd. The fighting continued until 8 pm when the fully-armed special forces were brought in. It was announced that they would have the right to shoot. At first they tried to scatter people and lure them into the side streets. They never attacked alone. Instead, groups of them, armed to the teeth, would all attack one person at a time. Soon they had scattered the crowd and were not afraid any more. They took back control of Vali Asr Street.

Many youth didn’t expect such brutality from the police. Some even refused to believe that they were really Iranian. Despite the many witnesses and cameras the police broke the neck of one young woman, beat up an elderly woman with an electric baton and committed many more crimes. But people helped each other. They didn’t let the police ambulances grab the injured and took them to local clinics and hospitals themselves. There were rumours that some soldiers were overheard speaking Arabic and turned out to be Lebanese [a total fantasy]. Some of the soldiers, in response to people protesting their viciousness, would say: “Your time is up, now it’s our turn.”

A young student: Everybody is flabbergasted. The text messaging system has been shut down since two days before the election and half an hour ago (about 18 GMT 13 June) the whole mobile phone system was cut off. The [state-run] TV is not saying anything about the protests, but the Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] said in a broadcast, “Our enemies want to rob the people of the sweetness of their victory. Be vigilant.” Nobody else is being shown on the telly. We are getting information through Facebook (filtered during the elections but clear for the last two days) and Web sites (most of which are filtered too). Where I live, many people are depressed, but in Vanak and Zartosht and Vali Asr (downtown Teheran) as well as in front of the Interior Ministry, things are moving…

Latest news: the police have attacked the hospitals in order to arrest the injured. And there have been altercations between the police and the nurses and doctors who resisted this.

“The Hope of the Hopeless” – A leaflet some worker activists distributed 13 June

The deceiving presidential elections ended with predetermined results: Ahmadinejad’s victory. The people who in the last few weeks marched in the streets with many hopes and small dreams and who thought “This time is different” are flabbergasted and disillusioned. The organized security and law and order forces and a part of Shiite clergy who have put their outrageous and lying peons in power as planned are in a state of readiness. Anyone looking with open eyes at what was going on behind the scenes in the campaign, anyone not resting content with the expressions of naïve enthusiasm of young women and men, could predict the enormous fraud. The Islamic Republic’s intelligence services were assured that Ahmadinejad would be the victor. Intelligence agency rumour-mongers and those organising the government’s opinion poles over the last two weeks were saying, “the Leader is with Ahmadinejad, so he’ll be the winner for sure.” The threats against unauthorized demonstrations issued by the commanders of the repressive forces – even before the election – were a powerful clue that a fraud was being organised.

Isn’t what is going on in front of people’s eyes yet more proof of the regime’s illegitimacy? Do the conciliatory forces and reactionaries turned “democrats” – who bombarded the people’s minds in the last two weeks and drew many people to the ballot box by giving them hope of change – have anything to say today? The reality is that, as usual, the ruling system was the winner of elections. The vast participation of the masses was taken as legitimising the system. And this was the main goal of the election game.

Convincing or pushing the discontented masses to vote in this reactionary game was the common point agreed upon by not only various factions of the IRI but also the imperialist powers. They tried to convince the masses who had not trusted the regime for a long time that they should chose between the lesser of two evils, and be happy that one of those evils would win. It’s enough to pay attention to the propaganda broadcasts of the Voice of America and the BBC Persian service to see how they helped heat up the oven of the elections and convinced undecided and distrustful people that by taking their hopes to the temples of Mousavi and Karoubi [the two reform candidates] things could change for the better. Now, after the results have been announced, we see the same imperialist media trying as hard as they can to persuade angry youth from expressing their dissatisfaction and revolt. Has the influence of reformist thinking and illusion-creating policies been so strong that it saps the strength of the system’s opponents and dampens the fire of struggle against these outrageous oppressors?

All these events should at least have the positive side of dealing a blow to illusions and pipe-dreaming among the people. The youth who were chanting slogans, singing and dancing night and day with the hope of breaking the wall of oppression and suppression – will they accept such injustice? Amidst all this, the question we struggling workers and activists related to the workers’ movement want to pose is this: Can one be the vanguard of change by staying aloof from events? The positions and scattered leaflets here and there of worker activists against the election farce are far from enough. There is danger in this. The situation must be understood and correct slogans and politics developed rapidly and taken to workplaces, neighbourhoods and streets. Once again this fundamental truth must loudly resound throughout society so that bewilderment and disillusionment does not lead to demoralization: Revolution is the hope of the hopeless!

Reports from the days leading up to elections

Ever since the campaign started, the debate was on among the people. Many youth wore [Islamic] green headbands or armbands to show allegiance to Mousavi. The colour of Karoubi was off-white and Ahmadinejad supporters wore black (but later started carrying the tricolour Iranian flag). Everywhere we go, in taxis, bus, the tube, even street corners, there is talk about the election. Almost everybody expresses an opinion. Even people wearing green ribbons are saying, “We know it’s a matter of choosing between two evils, that Mousavi is not our man, but we’ll vote to keep Ahmadinejad from being re-elected.”

I was on a bus. At one stop a young man came on and started distributing green ribbons. When he reached me, I didn’t take it. He said, “What’s wrong with you? You’re young, aren’t you?” I said, “I’m young but my brain does work. I don’t want to vote.” After he left debate raged. A middle-aged woman said, “Who the fuck is Mousavi? We haven’t forgotten that when he was prime minister the Sarollah [Islamic morality police] patrols cut young women’s faces and lips because they were wearing makeup, and cut women’s hands or legs for wearing short sleeves. Now he pretends to be our saviour?” A young woman said, “Mousavi is not my candidate but I’ll vote for him anyway since I don’t want Ahmadinejad.. The country should be fixed through reforms. See what happened when you made revolution once?!” It was a great bus trip.

The next day in the tube I heard a young man screaming, “I don’t want to vote, nobody should vote, they’re all the same. Nothing changes.” Somebody responded, “If you don’t want to vote, don’t, but why create a bad atmosphere?” Another young woman said, “We vote because we want freedom.” A woman asked, “What kind of freedom is Mousavi going to give you?” The other answered, “They say Iran will be like Turkey; the veil will be voluntary.” I was shocked. At one point Mousavi said that he would discontinue the morality police patrols, but he stopped even saying that. The same kind of discussion was repeated in taxis…

A week before the elections: from some worker activists

The night of the televised debate between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, a lot of people were watching their TV sets.. The candidates’ mutual insults and boasting had filled the newspapers for months. The day after the debate, the discussion among the people was hot. Even people not usually interested in politics took part in these passionate arguments. Ahmadinejad made some sharp exposures of Mousavi, Khatami [the ex-"reform" president], Rafsanjani [Iran's richest man, a pillar of the Islamic regime and a powerful backer of Mousavi, widely hated for his personal corruption], and many others in such a way that made many people change their mind about who they were going to vote for and even incited people who didn’t want to vote to go and vote anyway. The reality was that these exposures did not reveal even a thousandth what is really happening and yet Mousavi had nothing to say in response.

Night. Street. Constant honking and the voices of people shouting slogans. I went out. There were supporters of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, and some people watching. This was the result of last night’s TV debate. The slogans were ridiculous. People were out until 3 or 4 in the morning. The forces of order were only watching. They were trying to be polite, asking people to go home. I asked myself if they were thinking: “Wait until the election is over, we’ll show you, just wait.”

The streets are filled with women and youth. The colour most visible is green…. The Ahmadinejad-Mousavi TV debate produced contradictory results. Some people really liked the exposures Ahmadinejad did of Rafsanjani and Nateghnouri and they completely forget who was saying these things. It shows you how over the last 30 years these questions of “self-enrichment”, “theft” and “privileges” have created such complex hatred in the society that even Ahmadinejad can manoeuvre in it. Many people liked Mousavi’s poise… Ironically a backward sentiment about a man’s “honour” acted against Ahmadinejad – some people didn’t like his disparaging treatment of Mousavi’s wife….

Now a lot of people who were cursing and promised they wouldn’t be fooled into participating in the elections ever again have changed their mind and are saying that it’s different this time. They’re not just saying that we have this Ahmadinejad problem, they’re saying we can win this time. They’ve started having hope.

The situation is really different from previous elections. The last time the sentiment for boycotting them was strong. And you didn’t see this enthusiasm in the streets. But now a lot of people come out and argue against boycotting the elections. I can firmly say that the schools for these various arguments against the boycott are the satellite TV stations! People are mouthing the same arguments voiced over the BBC or VOA by the various reactionaries and vacillating forces these media invite… What’s interesting is that the forces of repression have been deliberately taken off the streets. The few officers you see here and there just observe.