Green Brief #16

I'm NiteOwl AKA Josh Shahryar - twitter.com/iran_translator on twitter - and I've been immersed in tweets from Iran for the past several hours. I have tried to be extremely careful in choosing my tweet sources. What I have compiled below is what I can confirm through my reliable twitter sources. Remember, this is all from tweets. [B](My work is released under Creative Commons (CC). So use it freely)

These are the important happenings that I can positively confirm from Thursday, July 02 in Iran.

In Italian: Gonzo Times � Blog Archive � 02/07/2009: Report di fine giornata


Protests

1. Thousands of people gathered at Iran’s Beheshte Zahra Cemetery and other smaller cemeteries to mourn the people who’ve died in the protests. The numbers were hard to confirm, but various sources claimed somewhere between 10-15 thousands. Large numbers of Basijis were reported to have been stationed in and around Beheshte Zahra, but no clashes were reported. Shopkeepers in Tabriz shopkeepers have reportedly stopped their strikes because of government intimidation and threats by the Basijis.

2. Mousavi’s Facebook page asked for protesters to form a human chain on Sunday, however, this could not be confirmed through other sources. This while about 120 women from the group Mourning Mothers gathered at Laleh Park again today and lit candles in memory of the fallen protesters. They have planned mass gatherings in Laleh, Andisheh and Mellat parks for July 4. Some relatives of detainees gathered in front of Evin Prison again today and asked for the release of their loved ones.


Government / International

3. Hard-line parliament members today again called on the Judiciary to prosecute Mousavi for allegedly breaking the law by calling protests and for instigating violence. The call had been made in the past as well and several state-run newspapers have also made similar demands in the past few days. Unconfirmed reports from Qom and Khorasan indicate that more clerics are considering to denounce the government’s actions in the past week and to declare the protests legitimat

4. Samareh Hashemi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s campaign manager, told PressTV today that the SMS outage and cell phone service restrictions were put in place to "ensure security" during and after the election. He added that Mousavi wasn’t really an opposition leader because he’s views closely matched those of the governments. He claimed that all the candidates fully know that the election was as impartial as any and that no voting fraud had taken place.
5. More international pressure is being mounted as in a meeting next week; EU member nations will consider pulling their ambassadors from Iran because of the government’s actions. Russia’s foreign ministry announced today that Russia opposed international sanctions against Iran and that the election and its aftermath were Iran’s internal issues that needed to be dealt with by Iranians, MosNews reported. A former Justice Minister of Canada, Irwin Cotler, has asked the international community to ban Ahmadinejad from entering their countries, Deutsche-Welle reported.
6. An Egyptian lawyer belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, Mamdouh Ismail, has filed a complaint in the prosecutor general’s office in Egypt asking them to ban Ahmadinejad from entering Egypt next month to attend a diplomatic meeting there. He has accused him of winning the election fraudulently and insulting two of Prophet Mohammed’s companions. This was reported on Al-Arabiya’s website.


Arrests, Casualties, Releases

7. Seven people were arrested in Qazvin today in connection with the protests. The head of Participation Front in Hormozgan province, Mr. Ramezanpour, was arrested there today. The government-owned media now claims that 20 people have died in the post-election protests. Real numbers are hard to obtain, but the number is reportedly much more than what the Iranian media reported. Iranian journalists Maryam Ameri and Omid Mohaddes were released from prison today in Tehran.

8. However, Saeed Hajjarian – a prominent politician and backer of Mousavi – is being said to be in deteriorating health. Amnesty International today once again called upon the government to release Hajjarian. On Wednesday News Week asked Iran for immediate release of their reporter Maziar Bahari who had been detained earlier and rejected accusations by the Iranian media that Bahari had a hand in the post-election violence. He was arrested on June 21 and has been denied access to a lawyer.

9. Meanwhile media reports of six protesters being hanged in Evin were denied by the government. Iranian Students News Agency reported on their website that the six people were accused of killing their spouses and other people. They didn’t indicate that any of the people were implicated because of any involvement in the protests.

10. Interpol today denied that the witness to Neda Agha-Soltan’s death is wanted by the Interpol. They also denied receiving any requests from the Iranian government for his arrest. Iranian media and government have claimed that the witness, Arash Hejazi, was wanted by the Interpol. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Iranian government’s intelligence agencies as well as the Ministry of Islamic Guidance are compiling a list of Iranian journalists which will be barred from traveling abroad.

11. Reports of torture at Evin and other Iranian prisons are mounting. Some sources claim that detainees are being beaten every night and others are being water-boarded with hot water in order to get confessions from them.


Statements

12. Yet another Ayatollah has joined the cause of the protesters. Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani today said that demand for justice and protesting for one’s rights was legal. He also denounced the suppression of protesters and called the act illegitimate. He asked Mousavi to stand for justice and help people get their rights. Zanjani joins Ayatollahs Taheri, Ghaffari and Montazeri in their support for the cause of the protesters. Karoubi announced again today that he would not recognize the government and would continue to stand by people demanding for their rights till the end of his life.

13. It has also been reported that Rafsanjani, who is also one of the Imams who rotate leading Friday prayers in Tehran’s largest mosques, has for the second week decided to not lead the prayers. Last week, his spot was first filled by Khamenei, but Khamenei pulled out at the last minute leaving Ahmad Khatami to lead the prayers. Rafsanjani is not planning to attend this Friday's prayer either.


Media

14. Parlemaan News’ website has been blocked by the government. The website was one of the only remaining sources of impartial news for the Iranian people. The government closed it after it posted several of Mousavi’s statements and Khatami’s criticism of the government. Parlemaan News – parlemaan means parliament in persian – is the official news webstie of the Imam’s Way faction of MP’s in the Iranian parliament. They had been warned last week by security forces and the Judiciary to restrict criticism of the government.

15. The BBC reported today that the Kingdom of Jordan had banned Iran’s state-run Al-Alam and Press TV stations from broadcasting in Jordan and revoked their operation permits. Al-Alam broadcasts news in Arabic and Press TV is the main English language news channel of Iran. The latter today showed footage of what it called ‘thugs attacking Basiji Headquarters in Tehran’ which showed several protesters chanting in front of the headquarters at an unspecified date. The footage didn’t show any of the ‘thugs’ actually using any of Molotov cocktails they were holding.


COMMUNICATIONS

16. Even though SMS was back in Tehran yesterday, reports indicate that it has been cut-off once again. Sources indicated that they’d asked twitter users from Tehran to not text each other using the service because it could be a ploy by the government to find dissidents. There are reports that Iran’s main telecom companies were trained in China in how to how weed out dissidents using their data posted on the net as well as monitoring and other techniques.

17. Even though yesterday’s news of four unopened ballot boxes being found in Shiraz couldn’t be verified, reliable sources indicate that the governor of Fars province where Shiraz is located announced today that the boxes were from past elections. He added that they will be stored as national documents. Mohammad Reza Nasab-Abdollahi, the journalist that broke the news, has been reportedly intimidated by the government and is being pressured to recant his report and deny the claim.

18. Chants of Allah o Akbar again echoed across Iran. Reports have suggested that dozens of people – in some cases the residents of entire apartment buildings – have been arrested by Basijis for chanting on their rooftops at night. Residents in Northern Tehran have also been warned that they could either stop chanting or risk losing their satellite antennas – which are illegal in the country, but widely owned by the public.

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Helpers:

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B. You could retweet this link and let more people know about what’s going in Iran.

C. The government in Iran is still increasing internet filtering and throttling in an attempt to silence their people. Anonymous info shows that many in Iran are looking for proxy and Tor information in Tehran and all around the country. Please donate your bandwidth to help bring down the Iran Curtain. Here are links on how to help and get help on this:

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Help us set up more bridges on Tor here: http://gonzotimes.net/?page_id=500

A Failure of Propagandic Proportions

It seems that CBS News has uncovered a bit of propaganda that the Iranian government had tried to spread. Iran’s government claimed that INTERPOL was investigating Neda Soltan’s death, when in fact they invented the probe.

Image via Wikipedia

Rachel Billington, a spokesperson for INTERPOL, said: "We've not received any request for information or for assistance on the death of that lady.”

This is just one more thing to add to the illegitimacy of the regime which has just declared itself in charge after fraudulently stuffing ballot boxes and refusing to hold a re-vote—the only way it might be able to ensure enough confidence in the process to prevent exactly the kinds of protests which are continuing to plague Tehran.

Makes you wonder what kind of madness they think they can get away with, doesn’t it?

Green Brief #15

I'm NiteOwl AKA Josh Shahryar - twitter.com/iran_translator on twitter - and I've been immersed in tweets from Iran for the past several hours. I have tried to be extremely careful in choosing my tweet sources. What I have compiled below is what I can confirm through my reliable twitter sources. Remember, this is all from tweets. [B](My work is released under Creative Commons (CC). So use it freely)

These are the important happenings that I can positively confirm from Tuesday, July 01 in Iran.

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

Protests

1. There have been unconfirmed reports of a protest in Tehran today. There were reports of clashes in Rasht that could be partially confirmed. Clashes broke out when police tried to disperse people who were mourning dead protesters. A doctor and two nurses were badly beaten in Loghman Hospital in Tehran after they tried to stop security forces from arresting an injured protester from the facility. A tweet source talked to a Basiji in Tehran today. According to the source, the Basiji claimed that he was working for Islam, but hoped that he wouldn’t be forced to quell protests again.

2. Protests are being planned for tomorrow - although none could be fully confirmed. A number of Iranian women who’ve formed a quasi-group called Mourning Mothers have announced that they will gather at Laleh Park on Saturday to mourn the dead. Reports from Tehran suggest that shops are being closed earlier than usual. Several sources claimed that the city is in a virtual state of an unofficial curfew.


Political Statements

3. Mousavi today released his 9th statement since the elections. He said that, “No opportunity to illuminate the extent of this lie and its historic repercussions should be lost and that the liars and cheats are only sheltering behind the law to impose their intentions.” He added that it was his and “all Iranians’ revolutionary responsibility to not let the blood of thousands of martyrs to have been in vain.” He continued to say, “It’s our historic mission to continue our protest and not abandon the cause of regaining people's rights.” He questioned the government’s legitimacy and said that he no longer believed the government to be lawful – a sentiment already recognized by the majority of Iranians. He called upon the Government’s Elite to help expose the election fraud by releasing evidence and documents currently in their possession.

4. Khatami criticized the government in a new, harsher tone that suggested outright contempt today. He called the elections a “coup d’état against democracy.” He asked, “How can the Iranian people calm down when their votes were stolen? When their blood is and has been shed? When they are being hauled away and arrested en masse? When the government and media blatantly ignore them?” He asked, “How is a National reconciliation even remotely possible in a country that is turning into a police state?” He went on to say that what’s happening now in Iran “is a direct violation of the very rights people are promised in the constitution.” He accused the media of attempting to provoke further unrest and violence and denounced the governments’ attempts at censorship. He predicted that Regime’s establishment would fail if this were to continue.

5. Khatami later met with several families of loved ones arrested during in the violence the past two weeks. He yet again asked for the release of those detained for protesting, including all political and media personalities. He slammed the Ministry of Interior for professing “obliviousness” over the fate of many of the detained.

6. A video of Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari, another prominent Shi’ite cleric has surfaced in which he directly accuses Khamenei of sinning against the people by ordering arrests and killings. This is the second high-ranking cleric in two days who has been reported to criticize the government so harshly. Ayatollah Taheri, the former Imam of Isfahan’s Friday prayers’s mosque, criticized the government’s actions yesterday.


Government

7. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly said today that there was as much truth to electoral fraud in Iran as there was for the Holocaust. (Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier.) Ahmadinejad reportedly cancelled his trip to Libya to attend an African summit today as well. The media reported that Ahmadinejad was too busy at work and there were ‘other priorities’ for him to get to. This comes at a time when some reformists abroad are secretly planning on creating a shadow government for Iran – according to unconfirmed reports.

8. The Imam's Way Faction (a group of MP’s) of parliament, which is slightly pro-reform, asked the families of detainees to send them documented information about their arrested family members. More high-profile Iranians were arrested today. Among the arrested were: Saeedeh Kordinejad and Zoia Hasani -members of Mosharekat Party, Vahid Amoozadeh-Khalili - the son of another pro-reform personality and Omid Mosleh - a prominent film critic. Mosleh was later released. Mohammad Mostafayee, a prominent lawyer who had been arrested two days ago, was also released on bail today.


Arrests, Releases and Investigations

9. Vahid Amoozadeh-Khalili’s detention could only be confirmed today, although he had been missing for two days. A high-ranking official in the Police Department confirmed that 1,032 people had been arrested since the start of the protests. According to independent sources, the numbers are likely much higher. There was partial confirmation of the release of 4 other British Embassy's local staffers from Iranian detention. One still remains under arrest. The government had previously claimed that some of the 9 staffers arrested were guilty of taking part in orchestrating the current unrest in Iran. This comes when the EU has threatened to pull out all its diplomatic missions from Iran if the staffers were not released.

10. The Iranian government claimed that the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan was in no way, shape, or form related to the recent ‘riots’. Iran’s Chief of Police announced today that one of the key eye-witnesses of Neda’s death, Arash Hejazi, is actually wanted by Interpol for unspecified crimes. The government had earlier claimed that the bullet that killed Neda was not shot by any weapon currently in use by Iranian Security Forces.

11. Mohmmad Ghouchani, the detained editor-in-chief of Etemade Melli, has deined denied reports published in IRG’s main media outlet Javan Daily that he confessed committing crimes and breaking the law in organizing protests. He also rejected Javan’s claim that he had been secretly trained in an Arab country to carry out subversion tactics. He claimed to not even own a passport.


Media in Iran and Miscellaneous

12. Etemade Melli will be published again starting tomorrow after being banned for a day by the government for reportedly attempting to publish Karoubi’s statements yesterday. Reports suggest that the government is now heavily censoring Etemade Melli as well as other newspapers in order to stop any such statements from getting out to the public. A reporter of government-owned Press TV has also quit his job over perceived bias in the station’s reporting of the events after the election.

13. Today, reporters accompanying the governor of Fars province and the Friday prayers’ Imam of Shiraz stumbled upon four unopened ballot boxes from the elections in Shiraz’s main library. Per electoral rules in Iran, all ballot boxes were supposed to be shipped to Tehran. According to reports, the governor promptly declared the contents of the boxes ‘national documents’ and asked the reporters not to report the incident.

(Here are some pictures of the boxes as they can be clearly seen sealed. The last picture shows the Imam voting on Election Day, wearing a different robe. We cannot fully authenticate the pictures as no dates can be seen in the pictures.):
پایگاه مستقل خبر رسانی عبرت www.ebrat.ir

14. Chants of Allah o Akbar continued to rattle Tehran and other cities of Iran at dusk. A report published by the Guardian reports through a protester's friend that the protester was arrested, beaten and raped. Here's the full story on The Guardian's website: Iran protester was arrested, beaten and raped, friend says | World news | guardian.co.uk


Read this if you want to help or get help!

Helpers:

A. We currently are trying to get the Brief out in as many languages as possible. If you can translate the brief for us in a language other than English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch or Greek, please let us know. It comes out every day so it'll be an every day thing so it's for the long haul. But if you can even do a summary, it will be great! Email me on dbosca@gmail.com if you're interested.

B. You could retweet this link and let more people know about what’s going in Iran.

C. The government in Iran is still increasing internet filtering and throttling in an attempt to silence their people. Anonymous info shows that many in Iran are looking for proxy and Tor information in Tehran and all around the country. Please donate your bandwidth to help bring down the Iran Curtain. Here are links on how to help and get help on this:

English:

Tor Browser Bundle

Tor Browser Bundle

Tor Browser Bundle

Tor and the Iranian Election - Bring down the Iran Curtain | Ian's Brain

Farsi:

Tor Browser Bundle

Tor: ?????? Tor

Help us set up more bridges on Tor here: Torrents list � Rivolta in Iran