Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iranian authorities continued arresting hundreds of opposition members and accused the United States and Britain on Tuesday of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Sunday.

The sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi was detained on Monday night, according to opposition Web sites quoted by news agencies.

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said countries including the United States and Britain had miscalculated in criticizing the government’s response to the demonstrations, which the government said left at least eight people dead in Tehran. The opposition counted five more deaths in other cities.

“Some Western countries are supporting this sort of activities,” said the spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, according to The Associated Press. “This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it.”

He said the British ambassador to Iran would be summoned for discussions.

The British government said its ambassador, Simon Gass, would respond “robustly” to any criticism and would reiterate calls for Iran to respect the rights of its citizens.

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The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, rebuked American and British officials for their “disgraceful comments” about the demonstrations, according to the state-run PressTV. The criticisms of Iran’s action were “disgustingly vivid that they clarify where this movement stands when it comes to destroying religious and revolutionary values,” he said.

Iranian authorities arrested at least a dozen opposition figures on Monday, including former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, the human rights activist Emad Baghi and three top aides to the former presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, Iranian news sites reported.

All told, more than 1,500 people have been arrested nationwide since Sunday, including 1,110 in Tehran and 400 in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the pro-opposition Jaras Web site reported.

In Hawaii, where he is on vacation, Mr. Obama condemned the violence against protesters and called for the release of those “unjustly detained.”

“For months, the Iranian people have sought nothing more than to exercise their universal rights,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “Each time they have done so, they have been met with the iron fist of brutality, even on solemn occasions and holy days.”

He added that the protests in Iran had nothing to do with the United States or other foreign countries. “It’s about the Iranian people, and their aspirations for justice, and a better life for themselves,” he said. “And the decision of Iran’s leaders to govern through fear and tyranny will not succeed in making those aspirations go away.”

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The streets of Tehran were largely quiet on Monday and early Tuesday, as citizens absorbed the shock of Sunday’s violence. Thirteen people were reported to have been killed and many more wounded in street battles in cities across the country between security forces and protesters, who fought back more fiercely than ever before. The government said Monday that eight people had been killed in Tehran, and opposition Web sites catalogued five deaths in other cities.

The government said that it was holding the bodies of five protesters, including a nephew of Mr. Moussavi, the state-run IRNA news agency reported, in what appeared to be an attempt to prevent funerals that could turn into more demonstrations. The bodies were being held pending autopsies.

The authorities’ use of deadly force on the Ashura holiday drew a fierce rebuke on Monday from the opposition cleric and reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who noted that even the shah had honored the holiday’s ban on violence.

“What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” Mr. Karroubi said in a statement, according to the Jaras Web site.

Mr. Karroubi, a fierce critic of the government, was attacked Sunday by plainclothes security officers, and other attackers later smashed the front windshield of his car, the Sahamnews Web site reported.

Government supporters blamed opposition members for the violence and called for their prosecution. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement calling violence by the protesters a “horrible insult to Ashura” and called for “firm punishment of those behind this obvious insult,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Large groups of police officers stood guard in several central Tehran squares on Monday morning, witnesses said. At least three subway stations were closed, apparently to prevent any further gatherings.

Still, there were reports of continuing scattered protests on Monday in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir square and other areas, Jaras reported.

The police fired tear gas to disperse a group of mourners who gathered outside the Tehran hospital where the body of Mr. Moussavi’s nephew, Ali Moussavi, had been held, the Nowrooz Web site reported. A prominent opposition figure with ties to the Moussavi family said Ali Moussavi had been killed by assassins.

Family members said Mr. Moussavi’s body disappeared from the hospital overnight, and on Monday IRNA reported that his body and four others were being held while investigations were carried out.

A 27-year-old journalist who was reporting on the street clashes on Sunday was reported missing. The reporter, Redha al-Basha, who was working for Dubai TV, has not been heard from, according to a statement issued by Dubai TV. Mr. Basha was last seen surrounded by security forces in Tehran, witnesses said.

The group Human Rights Activists in Iran said that the 1,100 people arrested in Tehran were being held in Evin Prison, the Gooya Web site reported.

Among those arrested in Isfahan was the son of a senior cleric, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri. Ayatollah Taheri is the former Isfahan representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his son Muhammad is married to the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Ayatollah Taheri tried last week to lead a memorial service for the dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died Dec. 20. The arrest of his son was viewed as an effort by the authorities to pressure the ayatollah.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Peter Baker from Honolulu.

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Venezuela’s Brain Drain

Saturday, June 27, 2009

By Mac Margolis

When they first elected him in 1998, Venezuelans hoped that Hugo Chávez would be a healer. Instead what they got was a tyrant who seizes private companies and farms, crushes labor unions, and harasses political opponents. And now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. Artists, lawyers, physicians, managers, and engineers are leaving the country in droves. An estimated 1 million Venezuelans have moved away since Chávez took power, and a study by the Latin American Economic System, an intergovernmental research institute, reports that the outflow of highly skilled labor from Venezuela to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries rose 216 percent between 1990 and 2007.

The exodus is sabotaging the country’s future, and no industry has been harder hit than Venezuela’s oil sector. A decade ago, Petróleos de Venezuela ranked as one of the top five energy companies in the world. Then Chávez named a Marxist university professor with no experience in the industry to head the company. PDVSA’s top staff immediately went on strike and paralyzed the country. Chávez responded by firing 22,000 people practically overnight, including the country’s leading oil experts. As many as 4,000 of PDVSA’s elite staff are now working overseas, and the talent deficit has crippled the company: PDVSA produced 3.2 million barrels of crude oil a day when Chávez took control, but now pumps only 2.4 million, according to independent estimates.

Similar stories emerge from the media. Venezuela once had a combative and unfettered press, but no longer. In 2007 Chávez canceled the broadcast license for leading station RCTV, and now he’s threatening to shut down the only remaining independent network, Globovisión. The charge? Globovisión dared to break a story on an earthquake in Caracas ahead of the government press. Scientists have fared little better. Early on, Chávez diverted money from university science centers to official projects controlled by political allies. Now the country’s most respected research institutes are falling behind—the number of papers published by Venezuelans in international scientific journals has fallen by 15 percent in just the past three years.

It’s much the same elsewhere in the Axis of Hugo, the constellation of states that have followed Chávez on the march toward so-called 21st-century socialism. Leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media, and stoking class and ethnic conflicts. The result? More flight: a recent study by Vanderbilt University, for example, showed that more than one in three Bolivians under 30 had plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index. Fitch Ratings, which analyzes credit risk, recently demoted the debt of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador to junk status. These states may be commodity-rich, but their biggest export is no longer minerals or oil. It’s the one resource best kept at home: talent.

Hospitalized Iranians Seized

(CNN) -- Iranians wounded during protests are being seized at hospitals by members of an Islamic militia, an Amnesty International official told CNN.

"The Basijis are waiting for them," said Banafsheh Akhlaghi, western regional director of the human rights group, referring to the government's paramilitary arm that has cracked down on protesters during the violent aftermath of the June 12 presidential election.

Amnesty International has collected accounts from people who have left Iran and expatriates with relatives there who say the Basij has prohibited medical professionals from getting identification information from wounded demonstrators who check in, Akhlaghi said on Saturday. They are also not allowed to ask how the injuries happened, and relatives are hard pressed to find the wounded.

Once the patients are treated, the militia removes them from the hospital to an undisclosed location, she said.

Iran has restricted international news agencies, including CNN, from reporting inside the Islamic republic. However, CNN has received similar accounts, including that of a woman who arrived in the United States from Iran with a broken ankle and thumb. Watch reports of the crackdown on protesters at their homes »

The woman, who didn't want to be identified for fear of her safety, said she was injured in a rally, but was too scared to go to a hospital. Instead, a doctor came to her home to treat her.

"The point is, when they are being taken to the hospital they don't actually get there," her friend who accompanied her told CNN last week. "Just like the reporters are being told not to report what they really see. Hospitals, administrative levels, are being told to stay out of the public because they're saying you're accusing the regime of being hostile."

Amnesty International is also reporting the detention of at least 70 scholars and eight politicians -- most from former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's administration -- in addition to several opposition activists and international journalists.

More than two weeks into turmoil, Iran's leaders turned up the heat Friday as a high-ranking cleric warned protesters that they would be punished "firmly" and shown no mercy.

"Rioters and those who mastermind the unrest must know the Iranian nation will not give in to pressure and accept the nullification of the election results," said Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami during Friday prayers in Tehran, according to Iran's state-run Press TV.

"I ask the Judiciary to firmly deal with these people and set an example for everyone," Khatami said.

Khatami also blamed demonstrators for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition after her death a week ago was captured on a cell phone video. Khatami said the foreign media had used Neda for propaganda purposes.

Human Rights Watch, citing interviews with people in Iran, said Friday the Basij is carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly rooftop chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great).

The nighttime chanting is emblematic of the protests 30 years ago during the Iranian revolution, which toppled the monarchy of the shah.

"While most of the world's attention is focused on the beatings in the streets of Iran during the day, the Basiji are carrying out brutal raids on people's apartments during the night," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch.

Residents from northern Tehran neighborhoods told Human Rights Watch that the Basij fired live rounds into the air, in the direction of buildings from which they believed the chants were sounding.

Basij members kicked down doors and "when they entered the homes, they beat" people, a resident said.

The rights group said it had collected similar accounts of violence from several other neighborhoods. Such accounts also are consistent with numerous accounts CNN has received of nighttime roundups of opposition activists and international journalists from their homes. Amateur videos sent to CNN also show members of the Basij, wearing plain shirts and pants and wielding clubs and hoses, dispersing protesters and beating a handful of Iranians at a time.

Unrest in Iran erupted after the presidential elections in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Ahmadinejad's chief rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi, called the results fraudulent and has asked for a cancellation of the vote. Watch how Mideast cartoonists are capturing the unrest »

Members of Iran's National Security Council have told Moussavi that his repeated demands for the annulment are "illogical and unethical," the council's deputy head told the government-run Iranian Labor News Agency.

On Saturday Ahmadinejad slammed U.S. President Barack Obama, a day after Obama labeled as "outrageous" violence against demonstrators disputing election results.

"Didn't he say that he was after change?" Ahmadinejad asked Iranian judiciary officials in a speech. "Why did he interfere? Why did he utter remarks irrespective of norms and decorum?"

The National Security Council, which includes dozens of political leaders, assists Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's unelected supreme leader. Together, they set the parameters of regional and foreign policies, including relations with Western powers, and the country's nuclear programs.

The Guardian Council, which approves all candidates running for office and verifies election results, has declared that there will be no annulment of the votes. However, it has reminded opposition candidates they have until Sunday to lodge any further complaints about the vote.

In Tehran, a Mood of Melancholy Descends

By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — An eerie stillness has settled over this normally frenetic city.

In less anxious times, the streets are clogged with honking cars and cranky commuters. But on Saturday, drives that normally last 45 minutes took just a third of the time, and shops were mainly empty. Even Tehran’s beauty salons, normally hives of activity, had few customers; at one, bored workers fussed over one another’s hair.

People who did venture out said they were dispirited by the upheaval that has shaken this country over the two weeks since the contested presidential election, and worried they would get caught up in the brutal government crackdown of dissent that has followed.

Even in areas of the city not known for liberal politics, the sense of frustration, and despair, was palpable. Those who accuse the government of stealing the election said they had lost the hope for change they had during the protests that drew tens of thousands of people into Tehran’s streets. But others also confessed to feeling depressed.

One staunch supporter of the incumbent president, who the government says won in a landslide, said he was distressed by the street protests and the crackdown that, by official counts, claimed more than 20 lives.

“People have been hurt on both sides, and this is disappointing,” said the man, who sells light bulbs in Imam Khomeini Square. “We need to build our country, not engage in these kinds of clashes.”

By late last week, the country’s leaders had succeeded in quelling the massive demonstrations that challenged their legitimacy. But the widespread feeling of discontent — even among those who had no part in the protests — was likely to pose a lingering challenge to leaders’ attempts to move quickly past the vote and return life to normal.

There were further signs on Saturday that the opposition was running out of options in its attempts to nullify the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which has been confirmed by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Expediency Council, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, issued a statement that called the supreme leader’s decision the final word on the election, although it did say the government should investigate voting complaints “properly and thoroughly.”

Mr. Rafsanjani has been one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s strongest critics and one of the most ardent supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s chief rival in the election. But after the vote, the former president had been quiet, and many Iranians had hoped he would broker some compromise behind the scenes.

And although an opposition Web site carried a new message from Mr. Moussavi, the first in several days, he did not present any new plans for resistance. He instead reiterated demands for a new election, which the government has rejected.

At the same time, those in the opposition were increasingly fearful for the hundreds of government critics who have been jailed.

Amid rumors that the government was beginning to force confessions — a tactic leaders have used in the past to tarnish dissidents’ reputations — the IRNA news agency reported that a jailed journalist had said reformist politicians were to blame for the recent protests.

The journalist, Amir-Hossein Mahdavi, was the editor of a reformist newspaper close to Mr. Moussavi that was shut down before the election.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, responded Saturday to statements by President Obama, who made his most critical remarks of the Iranian leadership on Friday, when he called the government’s crackdown “outrageous” and said the prospects for a dialogue with Iran had been dampened.

Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that Washington’s stance could imperil Mr. Obama’s aim of improving relations, according to the ISNA news agency.

“Didn’t he say that he was after change?” Mr. Ahmadinejad asked. “Why did he interfere?”

On Saturday, security forces were still on the streets, but uniformed guards had replaced the most feared forces, the Basij paramilitary members, who were involved in many of the beatings and shootings of demonstrators, and the hard-line Revolutionary Guards in their camouflage outfits.

The shops on Baharestan Square, which was the scene of the latest clashes on Wednesday, and on Haft-e Tir Square, where the paramilitary forces attacked people a day earlier, were open Saturday. But shopkeepers said business was limping.

“We used to sell nearly $2,000 a day,” said a woman at an Islamic coat shop on Haft-e Tir Square. “But since the election, our sales have dropped to $900 a day.” She gave only her first name, Mahtab, citing fear of retribution.

Like many others who spoke, Mahtab said she was depressed by what she had seen since the election. She said that she was not a political person and had not even voted June 12, but that the repression on the streets was “beyond belief.”

“I am disgusted, and wish I could leave this country,” she said.

She said she had seen a paramilitary officer outside the shop hit a middle-aged woman in the head so hard that blood streamed down the woman’s forehead.

When Mahtab and her colleagues tried to leave the shop to go home, she said, the forces began clubbing them while shouting the names of Shiite saints. “They do this under the name of religion,” she said. “Which religion allows this?”

Daily life has also been affected.

Although people are still going to work, some parents have been reluctant to take their children to day care, fearing that unrest on the streets would prevent them from picking up their children. University exams have been postponed and many families have traded parties for small get-togethers, where the election is a constant topic of conversation.

“People are depressed, and they feel they have been lied to, robbed of their rights and now are being insulted,” said Nassim, a 56-year-old hairdresser. “It is not just a lie; it’s a huge one. And it doesn’t end.”