Iran protests - and still they continue!

Three months after Stalinist relic George Galloway vouchsafed that the protestors were not representative of the people of Iran and that the protest would fizzle out, anti government protests are back with a vengeance.

Last week on tens of thousands of protestors used the annual Al Quds Day rally as a way to voice their opposition against Ahmadinejad’s illegitimate government,

While Ahmadinejad drivelled on repeating his vile Holocaust denial riot police beat protesters who were pelting them with stones in the central Haft-e Tir Square. They also fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators who chanted: "Torture and rape are not effective any more."

They also chanted "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon. We are ready to die for Iran."

Protests were not confined to Ahmadinejad’s foul speech and the idiotic anti-Israel demonstration. According to today’s Observer television coverage of an Iranian football match was blacked-out because sections of the crowd were chanting anti-government slogans and waving green emblems.

Coverage of a premier league match between Esteghlal and Steel Azin took place at Tehran's Azadi stadium just hours after the Al-Quds Day was disrupted apparently after bosses of the state broadcaster, Irib, learned of the presence of protesters inside the stadium.

According to Iranian websites, the match was initially broadcast for a few minutes in black-and-white without crowd noise to show that technical problems were being experienced. The transmission then cut back to a studio presenter who said that the problems had arisen because Irib had "sent only one camera to the stadium".

Eventually the match was shown nearly an hour late, again without sound and with close-up shots focusing solely on the pitch and editing out the 70,000 spectators.
The news website Mehr described the live broadcast failure as "unprecedented". Aziz Mohammadi, the head of Iran's premier league, blamed it on Esteghlal's refusal to agree to a 15-minute kick-off delay to give extra preparation time to cameramen who, he said, had been under added pressure because of the earlier coverage of Quds Day. However, that explanation was dismissed by club bosses who said Irib had cited "technical problems" throughout the match.

The Mizan Press website – linked to the opposition National Religious party – said the real reason was the presence of supporters Mir Hossein Moussavi who was cheated of victory in June. "Following the self-motivated presence of the green wave in Azadi stadium, Irib did not cover live the Esteghlal-Steel Azin match," it wrote. "Irib's lie about camera malfunction and receiving only black-and-white images from inside the stadium was uncovered an hour later by the colour transmission using close-up and specially edited frames. In these images the spectators were not shown at all."

Suspicions that the broadcast was delayed deliberately were bolstered by reports from listeners who said they heard chants in support of Mousavi during a live radio broadcast of the game. It was the second time on Friday that TV bosses had been blindsided by opposition protests. Hours earlier, Ahmadinejad was publicly embarrassed during a live interview when opposition chants of "Ahmadi, Ahmadi, resign, resign" could clearly be heard while he was speaking.

The incident also exposed the authorities' sensitivity to expressions of dissent in sporting arenas, especially football, which has an avid following in Iran. Days after the disputed election, four members of Iran's national team were banned from the game after displaying their support for Mousavi by wearing green wristbands during a World Cup qualifying match against South Korea.

It all goes to show that the protests are not over. There may not be the huge spontaneous demonstrations we saw in June but the protestors are just as motivated to get their message over. These are not the “Gilded Youth” of North Tehran as regime apologists like Seumas Milne and George Galloway claim they are from all sections of Iranian society. Their fellow protestors have been beaten killed, arrested, even tortured and still they protest.. I am not sure I would be as brave as these people.

Chatham House/St Andrew’s University report casts serious doubt on Iranian victory claims

Chatham House has published a paper titled Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election (available here as a pdf document).

Written by Professor Ali Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul of the Institute of Iranian Studies, St Andrew’s University the report casts serious doubts on the plausibility of the claimed victory and demonstrates irregularities in the official results.

According to the press release (I just can’t work out how to copy salient ponts from the pdf document!) the official statistics indicate that:

• claims that Ahmadinejad swept the board in rural provinces flies in the face of previous results

• The plausibility of Mr Ahmadinejad's claimed victory is called into question by figures that show that in several provinces he would have had to attract the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his former centrist opponent, and up to 44% of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005.

• Irregularities are found in conservative Mazandaran and Yazd provinces where votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters.

Professor Ali Ansari said: 'The analysis shows that the scale of the swing to Ahmadinejad would have had to have been extraordinary to achieve the stated result'. Thomas Rintoul said: 'The claimed results in minority provinces are particularity extreme, the numbers from Ilam, Lorestan and Hormozegan almost defy belief'."

This is just a summary of the executive summary. The whole paper is well worth reading. It certainly does confirm suspicions that the election was rigged an a gigantic scale