Conservative Iranian lawmakers on Sunday demanded the explusion of the British ambassador after he criticized the country’s human rights record. A group of hardline students also held a protest rally in front of the British Embassy in Tehran, trampling and then setting the British flag on fire and denouncing the United Kingdom as “Iran’s most evil enemy.”
British Ambassador to Tehran Simon Gass angered Iranian authorities after he said in a comment posted on the embassy’s website Thursday that lawyers, journalists and activists are nowhere under a greater threat than in Iran.
“Gass is a clear example of a persona non grata that must be expelled from Iran,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted hardline lawmaker Hossein Sobhaninia as saying Sunday. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, a prominent conservative legislator, said Gass “must learn the ethics of being an ambassador.” Another lawmaker, Kazem Jalali, said the parliament will discuss scaling down relations with Britain next week.
Hundreds of hardline students held a protest rally blaming Britain for the assassination of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last month. Lawmaker Hamid Rasaei called the British Embassy a “house of spies” likening it to the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran that was seized by militant students in 1979 and dozens of hostages were held for over a year.
The students also carried photos of Majid Shahriari and Masoud Ali Mohammadi, two slain nuclear scientists, one killed last month, the other back in January. “We hold you responsible for martyring Shahriani and Ali Mohammadi,” Rasaei said, addressing Britain.
source: AP
On Saturday, the English text of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s message for the upcoming religious month of Moharram was published. The analogy between the sacrifice of Imam Hossein, oppressed and killed by authorities in the 7th century, and those oppressed today is clear. So is the concluding call: “It is our responsibility to help protect the traditional social centers by organising and attending the ceremonies for commemorating the epic of Ashura [on 16 December] in this memorable month.”
You can read the complete text here. TehranReview brings you some highlights of the statement:
“The Islamic Revolution happened in a land with a deep-rooted culture and civilization, [with] people who had previously proven their leadership in recognizing their best interests in a transformed world and in this part of the world by the Constitutional Revolution [early 20th century], the movement to nationalise oil [1950s] and the movement of Khordad 15 [1963] and the creation of a dialogue on the pursuit of freedom, justice, and the search for independence [from foreign influence], bringing progress and achieving a society in which humanity can reach financial peace and pious blessing. We all remember how the roaring flood of the protestors on Tasua (the day before Ashura) and Ashura of 1357 [1978] ended a tyrant regime that had shut down all peaceful means of criticism and objection and in the last years of its life had hallucinations that more than anything were the results of being disconnected from the realities of the society.”
(…)
“Since the next day of victory, those people were enthusiastic to build and reconstruct the wreckage, putting hands in each others' hands with kindness. Even when disagreements escalated, they were united in front of the invading enemy [Iraq] and defended their inherited land. (…) They showed that they consider the mistakes of their leaders forgivable because of they believed that sincerity and confession to mistakes not only would not lessen the stature of their leaders but rather increase their affection in the hearts of the people. They showed that they have adopted a religion to guide their actions that has logic for its war and peace. They showed that for them, religious beliefs are guidance for them that would bring them to their destination in the mist of sand storm of the time. That was why whenever they would see themselves straying from the path, they would attempt to fix it: Khordad 2nd [when Mohammad Khatami was elected to President in 1997 with the birth of reform movement] and Khordad 22nd [ the Presidential elections of 12 June 2009] came from this vigilance.”
(…)
“But when angry and humiliated people took on the streets to peacefully and quietly demand their indisputable rights and respect for their votes, they (the totalitarians) declared shedding the people’s blood was not a sin with bloody events like the [Tehran] University dormitory attack, Kahrizak [prison abuses], and others. You remember what they did to the protesting mourners during last year's Ashura: They threw the protestors off the bridges, ran over their defenseless bodies with cars, and shot at their love-filled hearts. And then they shamelessly called this the reaction of angry people by showing incomplete and selective footage in their media as the riot of foreign-supported goons, as they [the regime] cried that Islam is in danger.”
(…)
“My Green-minded companions:
“These days the religion and its practice are going through difficult times and these days many of you ask, given all these deceptions, how one can save the pure hearts of this land's youths from the constant waves of those rejecting the religion? (…) Now, instead of facing the true face of the religion which is a kind and merciful one, they are facing an ugly face which knows no other language but violence and force. They witness how the rights of the people which have been stated in the Constitution are being ignored, how the separation of the branches [of the Government] which is a barrier against creation of…unlimited powers is being violated repeatedly, how the independence of the judiciary, judges and courts is destroyed by the security authorities, how the Parliament that is supposed to be on top of all affairs is influenced by orders, how reckless adventures in the foreign policy are becoming norm, how military officials end up in greed and the acquisition of money instead of fulfilling their duties how absolutely no opposition voice is being tolerated, and how prisons are filled with women and men that do not put up with these views of the rulers.
In these critical times, let us take action as Zeynab [the sister of Imam Hossein] did and give the true message of religion with its spiritual face to those who are thirsty for truth. It is our responsibility to learn and to teach others that the false claims of those pretending to be religious should not be considered as what the religion truly is. It is our responsibility to tell the true story of the Revolution for this generation…and in this telling the facts we should not be afraid from fairly criticising the past and at the same time we should avoid denying its great achievements.
It is our responsibility to tell the truth like Zeynab and erode the mortar that holds the palace of lies together. It is our everlasting responsibility to keep alive the memory of high-statured martyrs of the Revolution, the war, and the events after the [2009] election with the noble women and men in the prisons, just like all the family of Imam Hossein. And it is our responsibility to help protect the traditional social centers by organising and attending the ceremonies for commemorating the epic of Ashura in this memorable month.”
source: Enduring America
Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi condemned the government's attempts at using the Shiite events of Ashura to slander and oppress the protest movement.
Ashura is part of the ceremonies carried out in the month of Muharram by Shiites. In Iran the month of Muharram, marked by the death of the third Imam of Shiites, is a month of mourning, processions and retelling of the circumstances of the killing of Hussein, the son of Ali, and his companions by Yazid, the second Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate in Karbala in 7th century AD.
A directive sent out to mosque authorities calls on presenters of Ashura and Muharram ceremonies to describe the dimensions of the post-election protests of 2009, which the establishment refers to as "sedition.” According to this directive, the sermons are to include "elucidation of the different forms of confronting the soft war waged by the enemy."
The Islamic Republic claims the reform movement which has been trying to make gradual changes in the Islamic Republic through social and media activities is in fact a soft war to topple the system.
Mehdi Karroubi warns that the mosques have been directed to draw parallels between the murder of the third Imam of the Shiites with the protests that followed the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and maintains that the establishment is abusing the Shiite ceremony to vilify the opposition and further justify the oppression of reformists and dissidents.
Iranian reformists and protesters have been the target of widespread arrests and heavy judicial sentences in the past year and a half in which the government has made every effort to silence the protests.
source: Radio Zamaneh
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