Ashura_Iran_December 27, 2009_Part 2

Ashura, the 10th day of Mohram, is a religious holiday in Iran. This holiday is probably the most important religious holiday in Shite Islam. I am not going in to details of the significance of this day, but I believe the importance of this day, had persuaded many that the Iranian security forces were going to tolerate the rallies. But unfortunately this did not happen.

Instead they tried to disperse the crowd by using their effective tactics similar to what they have done in the past 7 months. These tactics include moving mass caravan of military type motorbikes into the crowds, using tear gas extensively, and hitting people with batoms. Interestingly, after the shooting incidents in June 30, 2009 and killing about 30 or more protesters including Neda Agha Soltan, the Iranian security forces have tended not to use fire arms in confronting the protesters.

But Ashura was a different story. Based on some inaccurate analysis among top military advisers to the Supreme Leader, the Iranian security forces were located in wrong positions in Tehran. Also because of the uprising protests in the other major cities, the government was not able to bring the extra militias to Tehran. On the other hand what made this day a complete disaster for the Iranian government, was the huge turned out of the protesters. As many other occasions, it is really hard to get an accurate number of the people in the streets, but based on the videos and eye witnesses, the number of people was much higher than the June 30, 2009 demonstration.

These all led to what you could see on TVs and Youtube. The important thing that made me upset was the ignorance of the international media in describing the violence in this day. The media is ignorant because they failed to say that it was the security forces who started hitting people and throwing tear gas and shooting in some occasions. What people did is a normal response to the act of the security forces. Also the media is ignorant since they failed to show some incredible pictures like these two:








In these two pictures, some of the protesters, including several brave women are using their own bodies to protect the riot police offices from the other angry protesters. Unfortunately, the international media failed to show this part of the story. And in fact I would like to argue that many Iranians are truly believe in non violence demonstrations. This is actually a kind of big change compare to the violent and bloody Iranian revolution in 1979.