Britain's Iranians add their voices
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Independent Minds
The brutal security crackdown on the streets of Tehran inflamed feelings on the streets of London last week. Hundreds of demonstrators from the UK's Iranian community besieged Iran's embassy in west London in protest at the repression imposed on their compatriots at home.
Overseas Iranians have rallied in response to the violence in their home country, but the embassy has been the focus of protesters' frustration. Each night, hundreds gathered to denounce Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Their message was clear. "Down with Khamenei, death to Khamenei," they chanted loudly.
Their numbers have swelled since the turmoil that has enveloped Iran after the 12 June election. The crowds that congregated last week included a mixture of youths, refugees and professional people.
Even as Ayatollah Khamenei blamed everyone from the British Government to the BBC for the bloodshed, several hundred students rallied in Piccadilly Circus in London in a show of solidarity with their Iranian counterparts. Many held candles for the "the martyrs of the election" – those who have died in the recent violence.
If the embassy witnessed the most fervent protests, elsewhere reaction to events did not lack vehemence. Iranian-owned businesses strung green lights and hung posters declaring support for the democracy movement.
In the Persian Bookstore in Golders Green, north London, a poster of Neda Agha-Soltan hangs on the wall. "When I watched this video, I couldn't eat, and at night I couldn't sleep," said Behnam Haji, 30, an employee at the shop. Daily he checks Farsi-language websites based here and in Iran for fresh news. Every day brings new videos of police violence. "There are more like Neda," he said.
There is a little support here for the declared winner of the election. "We are a nation with 2,500 years of culture. Before, we had respect," said Sue Karimi, a native Iranian who demonstrated outside the Iranian embassy last Tuesday. "With just four years under Ahmadinejad, the whole world is against us." Ms Karimi makes use of Britain's better internet access to send her family in Iran the latest political news. For others, communications are less easy. Contacts have been limited by shutdowns of mobile networks and the fear that all calls are monitored.
Mousa Ghanimati, 27, a grocery worker, avoids the phone, using Facebook to stay in touch with family in Iran.
"If you asked people before what they thought of Iran," said Arash Mohajerinejad, a student organiser, "people would say they have a nuclear programme, and a president who says stupid things about the Jewish Holocaust." The demonstrations showed his country in a positive light, he said. "Now people see that we are united. They can say we are about human rights, humanity and democracy."
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Comments
Little balance in an article that fails once again to address certain issues, an article that fails to respond to the facts that these mobs in Iran aren't nice calm people wandering around giving out flowers but rampaging mobs setting fire to property and cars, robbing banks and beating up people indiscriminately just because they might have a dissenting view to the Mousavites.
And then we have Britain and America claiming innocence yet over the last few years have stated quite openly that they intended to seed dissention and try and effect regime change in Iran and who better to bring that about than the American paid man Mousavi?
David Miliband acted as Tony Blair's representative on an operation called Cobra Strike where the US and UK would preemptively hit Iran with a nuclear barrage, something that seemed to fade away until the Minot Air Base mutiny where brave USAAF staff defied Cheney and scuppered a B-52 laden with nuclear weapons apparently on its way to the Middle East. (12 personnel including 2 commanders have died in "questionable circumstances" since that happened)
Note how the media play down or not mention at all Mr Mousavi's past transgressions, how many US soldiers died in Beirut that day? 200 or more? How many French? And yet the US and western media is being purposefully steered around this mans terrorist past, his time with the Iranian security services, his role in Iran-Contra, strange how the rest of the world can see who Mousavi is but not in the west.
Does this not strike people as odd?
I find it amazing that they have not learned anything from the experience of the Iraqi dissident groups who, by providing false "intelligence" about weapons of mass destruction, provided America with a pretext to invade Iraq, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen and leaving it in ruins.
Either they are breathtakingly naive or they just don't care about their fellow Iranians.
Those who left Iran when it became Islamic want to see Iran to be covertly controlled by the west so that they go back to their mischevious ways (like the shah's rule - only good for the rich).
We have to accept that the majority dont want to live under the influence of the west. The students are attracted by the false illusion of the west and the false freedoms it brings to eastern lands like Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan and the like. The students dont realise the so called freedom is really only available under the control of the CIA controlling the strings of a puppet ruler. Just like do with most other Muslim nations.
Let the Iranian majority find their own destiny and stand on their own feet....