By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 18, 2009
TEHRAN, June 17 -- The leader of Iran's protest movement accused the government on Wednesday of lies, fraud and murder, while the government turned its ire on the United States, declaring that the Obama administration is stirring the unrest over Iran's disputed election.
The increasingly bitter rhetoric came as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi defied a ban on unauthorized rallies and took to the streets again, as they have each day since Saturday, when the Interior Ministry declared that Mousavi lost the Friday balloting to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide.
Mousavi, 67, a former prime minister who contends he won the election, demanded that the country's legal authorities stop plainclothes police and vigilantes from attacking his supporters. In a statement on his Web site, he said a march Monday by hundreds of thousands of his backers -- the largest unsanctioned demonstration in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution -- had "infuriated" the government and its paramilitary forces, which he called the "Disciples of Lies."
"They tried to make bitter the sweetness of this great gathering with their beastly attacks," he said, referring to the killing of seven protesters by a government-backed, volunteer militia known as the Basij, which fired into a crowd outside its local headquarters at the end of Monday's march. Mousavi called it "an appalling murder."
He also complained about the Basij in a separate letter to Iran's Supreme National Security Council. The paramilitary organization, which has about 8 million members, has violated the "freedom, order and security [which] are the intertwined rights of all citizens," Mousavi wrote in the open letter, referring again to the government and its shadowy forces as the "Disciples of Fraud and Lies."
The government, meanwhile, summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Tehran, to complain of "intolerable" interference by the United States in Iranian internal affairs, state television reported. Iranian authorities had made similar complaints this week to the ambassadors of Germany, France, Britain and the Czech Republic.
In Washington, the State Department rejected the charge, saying the United States was in "good company."
"As the president has said, we are not interfering in the debate that Iranians are having about their election and its aftermath," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "This is not about the United States."
President Obama, who has come under criticism from some quarters in Washington for not speaking out directly on behalf of the Iranian protesters, said Tuesday that he hoped the Iranian government would affirm "the universal principles of peaceful expression and democracy" but that the United States was "not meddling" in the "amazing ferment taking place in Iran."
Efforts to clamp down on outside sources of information continued Wednesday as Iranian authorities blocked CNN's Web site and reportedly jammed some BBC satellite television broadcasts. Cellphone service, including text messaging, was turned off for the fifth day in a row, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter remained partially blocked.
Word of mouth is the main way for Iranians to get information about the protests, and some Iranians said they feared a complete shutdown of all Internet services and satellite TV broadcasts. Adding to those fears, Iranian state television aired a program, titled "The Green Wave," that portrayed the protest movement as being fomented by foreign media, including the BBC and the Arabic station al-Jazeera.
The deputy head of Iran's National Security and Foreign Policy committee, Hossein Sobhaninia, called this week for steps against CNN and the BBC, whose Farsi-language satellite channel is hugely popular here. "Without a doubt, foreign media, and especially the BBC's Persian service and radio, are the main orchestrators of disorder in the country, guiding rioting elements that support neither the candidates nor the Islamic revolution," Sobhaninia said Tuesday.
Many Iranians took a break from politics Wednesday to watch the national soccer team play a World Cup qualifying match in South Korea. But several of the Iranian players, including the captain, came on the field wearing green wristbands, in apparent solidarity with Mousavi's supporters. Some fans at the game, which was televised from Seoul and ended in a 1-1 tie, also waved banners reading: "Free Iran."
Arrests of opposition leaders, which began over the weekend, continued Wednesday. Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst who often gives interviews to the Western news media, was among those arrested Wednesday, sources close to him reported.
Yet tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of the capital, Tehran, in defiance of a ban by the Interior Ministry, which is headed by a staunch supporter of Ahmadinejad. Foreign journalists were not allowed to attend the demonstration, but witnesses and participants interviewed afterward said police officers, wearing yellow vests, stopped traffic as the demonstrators walked silently and peacefully from the central Haft-e Tir Square to Enghelab ("Revolution") Street. Riot police, who have been ubiquitous in Tehran since Saturday, were nowhere to be seen.
According to those interviewed, the crowd's diversity reflected the broad movement demanding the annulment of the elections and a new round of balloting. Young women in traditional black chadors walked next to businessmen holding briefcases, while a mother pushing a baby stroller held up a placard bearing the words "Where is my vote?" in English.
Some of the marchers held up posters of the founder of the Islamic republic, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, suggesting that they were protesting the election but not the Islamic system of governance.
Although green is the symbolic color of Mousavi's campaign, many of the protesters wore black shirts or black wristbands as a sign of mourning for the seven demonstrators who died Monday night. There have also been persistent but unconfirmed reports that five students were killed Sunday when members of the Basij raided dormitories at Tehran University, a focal point of unrest. The head of the university, Farhad Rahbar, who was appointed during Ahmadinejad's administration, issued a statement Tuesday denying any student deaths. But students continued to assert Wednesday that some of their classmates had been killed.
Elderly women waved in sympathy from balconies as the demonstrators walked in silence through streets normally bustling with traffic, witnesses said. Some marchers passed along leaflets saying the "green movement," a reference to Mousavi's campaign color, "must stay on the streets."
"The government has stolen our votes. We must continue to protest," said the leaflets, which suggested 12 forms of peaceful resistance, including sitting down in the street if attacked by the Basij or police. "Remember, police can attack a thousand people, but no police in the world can attack half a million," it said.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie in Tehran contributed to this report.
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