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Sunday: Updates on Iran’s Turmoil
To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Sunday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election, as we have for the last several days. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.
Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs — our address is: pix@nyt.com — or use the comment box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.
Update | 5:12 p.m. The BBC has posted newly uploaded amateur video from Saturday’s protests that appears to show protesters clashing with security forces on motorbikes. As with other videos, the BBC could not verify the exact location or time the video was taken.
Update | 4:32 p.m. On its Twitter feed, the Iranian-American Web site Tehran Bureau has posted comments received this morning from readers in Tehran:
A voice from central Tehran earlier this morning (Sunday 21 June):
[Translated] Things are so bad. They are massacring people here. Please tell Obama not to officially recognize Ahmadinjad. He’s not our real president. He’s a dictator. Please tell people that in Tehran they’re massacring people.
There’s nothing going on today. There was talk of something at 10 in the morning [Tehran time] at Enghelab [Square, presumably] but nothing happened. They had said [at the] UN [?]… I don’t know if it will take place or not. People are scared. They [officials] kill. THEY KILL.
A voice from central Tehran earlier this morning (Sunday 21 June):
If Obama moves to support the demonstration in strong terms, this camp will lose and Ahmadinejad will gain ground; also it is not good to make an American domestic issue from an Iranian domestic issue. Yesterday was brutal, but not as brutal we still do not know how many were killed, but from the set up of the riot police it is apparent that they want to keep people off street with the least casualty possible. This is not a praise, it is to say that government does not want to escalate things.If there is no demonstration today it does not mean it is over. This is just the beginning. The focus is on having an election.
You must see the people, this is a people united, all groups and sections are out there, war veterans, old revolutionaries, housewives. The first girl I saw beaten yesterday was wearing a chador, this is not a western thing here, this is a domestic issue in which Iranian people have the right to demand a new election.
Update | 4:20 p.m. Relatives of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani say all five members of his family, including his daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, have been released by Iranian authorities. As we noted this morning, state television said five members of the Rafsanjani family had been arrested on Saturday night.
Update | 4:11 p.m. The horrifying video of a young woman bleeding from an apparent gunshot wound on a Tehran street that was posted to various social networking sites and YouTube on Saturday has become a powerful rallying cry for Iran’s opposition movement. The video has continued to circulate on the Web and it has drawn a flood of comments to The Lede since we posted a link to it yesterday.
A screengrab from a video uploaded to YouTube of a woman, referred to as Neda, dying after an apparent gunshot wound to her chest.Though her name, the location, and the cause of her death cannot be confirmed, the video refers to the woman as Neda, Farsi for “the voice” or “the call.” Social networking sites appear to have heard that call. Several tribute videos have been posted on YouTube, and Facebook groups have been created in memory of the woman, including Neda, Angel of Iran and Neda for a Free Iran. On Time.com, Robin Wright comments on how the video has become a symbol of the escalating crisis in Iran.
Update | 1:50 p.m. Since our last post, the number of journalists reported to have been arrested since the June 12 election has risen to at least 24. Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari was arrested without charge on Sunday morning in Tehran, and has not been heard from since, the magazine announced Sunday. Mr. Bahari, a Canadian citizen, has been living in and covering Iran for the past decade. His most recent article for Newsweek examined opposition supporters’ concerns that pro-Ahmadinejad groups were staging violent incidents at their rallies to undermine support for their movement.
Update | 1:13 p.m. The Paris-based media advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders is tracking the press clampdown in Iran and reports that 23 journalists have been arrested since the disputed June 12 election.
The group posted a day-by-day accounting of the arrests on its Web site on Sunday:
Among those arrested on Saturday, according to the report, was Ali Mazroui, the head of the Association of Iranian Journalists. The online news daily Roozonline.com reported last week that security forces had broken into Mr. Mazroui’s house and said they were carrying arrest warrants for his son Hanif Mazrui, a journalist and blogger.
Even prior to the disputed vote, Iran had routinely jailed popular bloggers, notably Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger who was arrested last November and charged with spying for Israel.
Update | 12:07 p.m. More splintering among Iran’s clerics is reported by Reuters. The most senior opposition ayatollah, Hossein Ali Montazeri, distanced himself further from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared the June 12 elections valid and demanded a halt to public protests in a hard-line sermon on Friday. In a statement posted Sunday on his Web site, Ayatollah Montazeri said, “Resisting people’s demand is religiously prohibited … I am calling for three days of national mourning from Wednesday.” Last week the ayatollah described the election results as something that “no wise person in their right mind can believe.”
Update | 11:24 a.m. An amateur video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday shows a mass of protesters marching and shouting what the video blogger translates as: “Have no fear, we are all together,” and then “Down with dictator.” The video is said to be of a demonstration on Sunday on Shirazi Street in Tehran.
Update | 10:35 a.m. A Lede reader points out an interesting analysis of Iran’s election results that was published by London-based Chatham House. The analysis, based on the province-by-province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, challenges some of the assertions about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection made by Iranian officials.
The authors cite these highlights of their analysis:
1) At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout, and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
2) In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
3) In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.
Update | 9:52 a.m. The citizen journalism photo agency Demotix tells The Lede that one photographer from Tehran who has been sending images says that students there are clearing their e-mail accounts in case they’re arrested to prevent the authorities from finding incriminating evidence of their support for the opposition. The same source also suggests that the death toll on Saturday may have been much higher than the official estimates.
Update | 9:32 a.m. The BBC reports that Iranian authorities have asked its Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, to leave the country within 24 hours.
The BBC said its Tehran office would remain open despite the departure of Mr. Leyne, the broadcaster’s permanent correspondent there.
The BBC adds: “Iran has singled out Britain and the BBC in its widespread condemnation of what it calls meddling by foreign powers in its affairs. In the days following the 12 June election, BBC Persian TV was disrupted by “deliberate interference” from inside Iran, the corporation said. In response, the BBC increased the number of satellites that carry its BBC Persian television service for Farsi-speakers in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.”
Here is more video sent to BBC Persian TV, described as mobile phone images of Saturday’s protests and clashes in Tehran.
Update | 8:49 a.m. Iranian security forces arrested five close relatives of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Saturday night, including his daughter Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s state-run Press TV Web site reports.
The New York Times Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani at a June 17 pro-Moussavi rally in Tehran.Mr. Rafsanjani, who leads the 86-member Assembly of Experts, is thought to be playing a quiet but instrumental role in organizing the opposition. His daughter Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani is a former member of Parliament who gained notoriety for opening sports to women and was seen at a rally for opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi on June 17.
The five arrested were reportedly cited for having participated in an illegal rally on Tehran’s Azadi Avenue and “inciting and encouraging rioters” on Saturday.
Update | 8:30 a.m. More amateur video has emerged of Saturday protests. A clip posted on the BBC shows a bus set ablaze and a throng of protesters in an apparent standoff with security forces on motorbikes in Tehran. As with other video and images of the unrest, the authenticity of the video could not be verified.
Update | 7:31 a.m. As Iran’s security forces took a more aggressive stance against street protesters on Saturday, its leaders adopted a more combative tone toward the international community on Sunday.
Reuters, citing Iran’s internal ISNA news agency, reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran called on the United States and Britain to stop interfering in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs.
“Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation. Therefore I advise you to correct your interfering stances,” Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in a meeting with clerics and scholars.
The speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Ali Larijani, echoed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments on Sunday, warning the U.S., Britain, Germany and France not to interfere in the country’s internal affairs lest Iran respond to them in other fields, according to ISNA.
Stances adopted by the president of the United States, Britain’s prime minister, Germany’s chancellor and France’s president over Iran’s presidential elections and its developments showed other aspects of their adventurism when it comes to Iranians, he said.
It is embarrassing that the U.S., which has resorted to every cruelty on Iran’s nation over half a century, including backing the toppled Shah’s regime inhumane brutalities against people and imposing Iraq war on Iran, is now worried about Iran’s territorial integrity and human rights, Mr. Larijani added. He said to the U.S., “You showed the deceitful meaning of change too soon.”
“We Iranians know the way to resolve our differences very well. There is no need to your opportunistic and imperialistic gestures,” he said.