Iranian Police Fire on Crowds During Ashura Festival

Related subjects: Asia / Pacific, Global, Iran, Middle East, Rights & Freedoms, Security & Surveillance, The Global Intercept, The Vote Comments (0)

27 December 2009 :: staff

Iranian police have fired on crowds of unarmed civilians demonstrating in Tehran on the feast day of Ashura, the commemoration of the most sacred martyr of the Shi’a strain of Islam. At least four people are reportedly confirmed killed, including one nephew of the leading opposition politician, Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose supporters —along with numerous international observers— believe he won the disputed presidential elections in June of this year.

According to the New York Times:

Iranian police opened fire on protesters in Tehran on Sunday, killing at least four people, including a nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, as vast crowds of demonstrators flooded the streets of cities across Iran and fiercely fought security forces, according to witnesses and opposition Web sites.

The protests, taking place on the holiday marking the death of Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest — and among the largest — since the uprisings that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election last June, with hundreds of thousands of people thronging Tehran alone, witnesses said. There were reports of hundreds of injured people and numerous arrests.

Having fired into crowds of unarmed civilians, and now having martyred a member of the family of the opposition leader himself, the Khamene’i-Ahmedinejad ruling power-bloc and their allies in the security forces have potentially nudged their nation closer to a period of destabilizing political violence. The Ashura killings will also lend far more popular sympathy and momentum to the Green Path of Hope movement that has grown out of the Mousavi presidential campaign and post-election protests of the summer.

Accounts from Tehran appear to indicate a planned, concerted assault on the demonstrators. Security forces, acting within the context of an official pledge of extreme measures to suppress demonstrations, first fired tear gas and assaulted civilians with batons. When the crowd failed to disperse, they reportedly fired “warning shots” in the air, and then turned their guns on the crowd and fired directly into the bodies of those gathered. It is unclear if the killings were the result of a handful of agents mistakenly firing on demonstrators or of direct orders to do so.

But reports across Iran and internationally suggest the perception is that there was a concerted effort to impose, as promised, a harsh crackdown with the use of extreme measures, to silence dissent. That perception will now likely turn into a groundswell of popular support for the opposition Green Path of Hope movement, and its protests against what they perceive as the dictatorial regime being illegally imposed by a power bloc including the Ayatollah Khamene’i and Pres. Ahmedinejad and their supporters.

Attention may also begin to focus on the holy cities of Qom and Isfahan, where Iran has strategically placed its nuclear research facilities, and where the heart of the opposition movement converges with key elements of the clerical establishment. In both cities, efforts to mourn the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were suppressed when security forces raided mosques and officially banned rallies honoring the pro-opposition ayatollah, and the regime’s aggressive crackdown on political and even religious expression is spreading anti-government sentiment.

The killings have resulted in violent clashes between demonstrators and police across the country. In some areas, protesters are said to have pushed police back, throwing stones and charging the police lines, while angry crowds of unarmed civilians attacked Basij militiamen, in what seems to be the most widespread public outcry against the government’s use of violent repression since the 1979 revolution.

The cities of Arak, Isfahan, Mashad, Najafabad and Shiraz, also saw clashes between police and demonstrators, according to reporting gathering accounts from opposition web sites. Protesters were reportedly heard chanting “This is the month of blood” and “Yazid will fall”, a comparison between the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i and the tyrannical medieval caliph Yazid, who ordered the killing of Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

Former president and key reformist politician Mohammad Khatami has reportedly said “The family of Imam are with us”, an apparent reference to Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, and its first supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an establishment figure who is reported to support the opposition movement. As support gathers for the opposition, there are widespread fears security forces will become increasingly aggressive in the violence of their repression of dissent.

Pictures from Iran, some of which are unconfirmed as specific to the Ashura protests, show numerous cases of severe injury and the level of violence used by security forces. One image, already treated as an icon of the day’s events, shows a young woman severely bloodied, apparently the result of being beaten about the head by batons wielded by security forces.

Social networking sites are the focus of efforts to get the word out about what has actually taken place on the streets, among the crowds. Eyewitness reports from Tehran seem to suggest there was little normal police presence in Tehran, only large numbers of Basij militia and Revolutionary Guards. As visual reports and media accounts are hashed out, the involvement of security forces closely linked to the president and supreme leader will be a focal point of opposition organizing and criticism.