According to Borna News pro-government vigilantes and Basijis have attacked and vandalised the home of Iranian opposition leader, Mehdi Karoubi, who has been very vocal in his opposition to the rigged June 09 presidential elections and the subsequent violent government crackdown on the anti-government protesters.

This is clearly an attempt to silence Karoubi’s criticisms of the current government of Iran. So far, Karoubi and his family have been stoic in their resistance to intimidation.

(A Street Journalist) | March 14, 2010

Despite that the families of many detained journalists have secured the bail to release their loved ones for the Persian New Year, there is still no information on the date of their release.

There is no news on the release of Akbar Montejabi, Vahid Pourostad, Ehsan Mehrabi, and Somayeh Momeni, seven days after securing bail for the release.

According to opposition news agency Kaleme, after providing a bail deposit for the possible release of Mehrabi, Montejabi, Pourostad, and Momeni, the condition of these journalists has intensified, and again they are under interrogation. They have also returned to solitary confinement.

Despite the families following up and meeting with prosecutors and the head of Evin prison, there is no word on when the prisoners will be released, even after bail has been secured.

The families of the prisoners are under severe mental stress, yet they are hopeful that their loved ones will be released before Nowruz; Persian New Year which takes place this year on March 20th.

Translation by:Persian2English.com
Source: RAHANA

(Radio Zamaaneh) | March 14, 2010

Head of Iran’s Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged Iran’s national broadcasting organization, Seda va Sima, not to operate in the form of “a gang” or else it would lose the trust of the public. He added that Seda va Sima needs to assume a more “national” approach and pay more attention to people.

In the past nine months of protests to the outcome of the June presidential elections, the opposition has on several occasions spoken out against the biased nature of the national broadcasting organization’s reflection of the issues at hand.

Seda va Sima is the most powerful media outlet in Iran and has gone a long way in trying to portray election protesters as “a group of rioters.”

They have pursued this one-sided approach by producing programs that paint the leaders of the opposition, disputing candidates MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi as foreign-backed conspirators and refusing to give them any space to defend themselves.

The Seda va Sima Organization is under the direct supervision of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Government supporters and the conservative faction of the Islamic Republic have repeatedly commended the activities of the national radio and television broadcasting organization and described it as a true defender of the system.

On the opposite end, Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah Khomeini has accused Seda va Sima of even distorting the teachings of his grandfather, the founder of the Islamic Republic, in order to discredit the opposition.

Radio Zamaaneh reports that Khamenei has denounced the festival of Chahar Shanbe Soori, marking the start of Iranian New Year celebrations:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei described the ceremonies connected with the fire festival on the last Wednesday Eve of the Iranian year “void of religious roots and cause of great harm and corruption.”

The religious evaluation of Iran’s Supreme Leader was published on his official site and goes on to add that Iranians must “avoid” celebrating this event.

This fire festival, which is called Chaharshanbeh Souri, is an ancient Iranian pagan festival which involves the building of bonfires and symbolic gestures and chants that summon the fire to burn all sickness and lend its energy to a healthy new year.

A number of Shiite clerics have described the event “superstitious” and called for its dismantlement.

IRNA reports that another senior Shiite Cleric Ayatollah Sobhani has also spoken against the events of the last Wednesday Eve of the year and maintained that it is “a superstitious event and its customs are contrary to Islam and logic.”

He says: “The customs connected with the last Wednesday Eve of the year as it has become customary in Iran are backward and the harms are evident to all.”

Hashem Hoseini Boshehri,a member of Qom Seminary Teachers, has also announced that the events of last Wednesday Eve of the year “have no logical or religious basis.”

Iranian opposition forces have announced that they will take part in the events of the last Wednesday Eve of the year, which falls on March 16, and use it as an opportunity to reaffirm their protests against the current government which they claim has come to power through election fraud last June.

These protests have continued in the past nine months and during this time, protesters have used specific dates of national significance in the Iranian calendar to take to the streets and express their demands.

Iranian police force has warned the public that anyone arrested during these events would not be released until after the Nowruz holidays.

Opposition leader, MirHosein Mousavi has urged protesters not to use this day to stage protests to avoid hardliners from the turning the events into a violent confrontation.

On Wednesday, Iranians will celebrate the ancient fire festival of Chahar Shanbe Soori. Dating back to the time of the Zoroastrian’s (before Islam came to Iran) people set fires and jump of them at the start of the new year in an act of spiritual cleansing. Here is the Wikipedia page on Chahar Shanbe Soori.

This year’s Chahar Shanbe Soori has particular significance because Iran is in the middle of the biggest challenge to the rule and power of the regime in control of the country since the founding of the Islamic Republic. This challenge has been posed by a people’s movement, called the Green Movement, and has manifested itself primarily via massive, non-violent street protests that the government has tried to quell thru the use of violent force. The Islamic Republic views Chahar Shanbe Soori as a pagan ritual, but has never been able to stamp it out. It is considered by Iranians as a link to their cultural heritage and has always been a day in which they remind the so-called “Islamic” regime that they are still Iranian.

The following video serves as a rallying call for the Green movement to be present during this year’s Chahar Shanbe Soori:

(Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty) | March 12, 2010
by Golnaz Esfandiari

The Iranian authorities in recent weeks have begun to release some of the former officials, activists, and intellectuals detained in last year’s post-election unrest.

Those released in recent days include former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, activist Abdollah Momeni, and student leader Mehdi Arabshahi.

Those detainees have been released under varying conditions. Tajzadeh is reportedly on prison leave for the Iranian New Year, which is marked on March 21. Reports say Momeni has been given several days of leave on a bail of $800,000 dollars, and Arabshahi was reportedly released on a bail of $200,000 dollars.

The three are among over 2,000 reformist figures, students, human rights advocates and intellectuals detained in the postelection crackdown that followed the disputed June presidential election. Many have since been released, but scores still remain in jail, and some have been tried and sentenced to long jail terms.

Former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh is reported to be on temporary prison leave.
Former reformist legislator Fatemeh Haghightajoo believes the recent release of some prominent detainees is the result of an understanding reached “at the highest levels of the Iranian establishment.”

“I believe [former President] Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the so-called pragmatic conservatives have played a prominent role,” Haghightajoo said.

Rafsanjani has called for the release of postelection detainees as one of the steps to end the crisis the Islamic Republic is now facing. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi have also called for the release of political prisoners.

Haghighatjoo, who is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that international pressure and overcrowded prisons are among the factors that are forcing the Iranian establishment to gradually release some of their high-profiles detainees.

Paris-based reformist journalist Seraj Mirdamadi says the release of a number of detainees is partly a move by the Iranian regime to demonstrate that it has managed to put an end to the postelection crisis.

“The establishment is trying to show itself as having the upper hand following the engineered state demonstrations marking [the anniversary of the 1979 revolution and demonstrate that it has reached victory,” Mirdamadi said.

Revolving Prison Doors

But while some of the most prominent detainees have been released, there have also been reports of other lesser-known activists being arrested.

On March 11, news websites reported that Kurdish blogger and screenwriter Susan Mohammadkhani Ghiasvand was arrested in the city of Karaj.

Nevertheless, the recent wave of releases has led to some relief and hope that others might also be freed for the New Year’s holiday.

The alumni organization of Iran’s largest reformist student group, Advar Tahkim Vahdat, has called on the head of Iran’s judiciary to release the the organization’s leader, Ahmad Zeidabadi. Zeidabadi, a prominent journalist who was reportedly arrested just a few hours after last June’s vote, has received a six-year prison sentence and five years of internal exile.

Advar Tahkim Vahdat says in an open letter that Zeidabadi remains in jail even though his family posted the required bail.

Mirdamadi believes it is likely that outspoken detainees such as Zeidabadi will be kept in prison for the Iranian New Year as a warning to others. “The release of prisoners ahead of the New Year is not the result of kindness, tolerance, or leniency by the establishment toward the opposition,” Mirdamadi said.

He adds that especially those who have used tough words against the establishment and the Supreme Leader — including Zeidabadi, student activist Majid Tavakoli, and refomist journalist Issa Saharkhiz — are likely to spend the holidays in jail as a warning to others.

Mirdamadi believes Iran could balance the releases with more arrests, especially if next week’s festival of fire on March 16 leads to fresh antigovernment street protests.

The International Campaign For Human Rights notes that because of what it calls the “unreasonably high bail amounts” prisoners and their families have had to post, most prisoners appear to be hostages of the Iranian judicial system. As the rights group has noted, some of the bail amounts set are higher than a prisoner’s estimated earnings in 100 years.

And there is still much concern over detainees who could face the death penalty.

So far, two of the detainees put on trial over the postelection unrest have been executed. The two men, Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, were reportedly arrested even before the disputed vote and convicted of “Moharebeh,” or waging war against God.

There is now concern over the fate of about a dozen other individuals who are facing the same charge, which carries the death sentence. Among them is 20-year-old student Mohammad Reza Valian, who was arrested following the unrest that broke on the religious holiday of Ashura.

(The Newest Deal) | March 12, 2010
Masoud Shafaee

As the Persian Nowruz New Year fast approaches and Iran’s post-election crisis enters its ninth month, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani remains as mercurial a figure as ever in Iranian politics. True to his nickname of Kooseh, or “The Shark,” Rafsanjani has been paying lip-service to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while simultaneously signaling (if only tacitly) solidarity with Iran’s Green opposition movement. With his reputation as an incredibly calculating figure, it is hard to believe that this contradiction is coincidental. In fact, Rafsanjani’s high level of influence in the system may be paradoxically inhibiting him from more closely aligning with the Green Movement.

In many ways, Rafsanjani’s position resembles that of the boy who stuck his finger in the leaking dike in Hans Brinker’s classic tale. In the story, the boy’s plugging of the hole with his finger was not an attempt to solve the problem at hand, but rather, to prevent an immediate and far more dangerous outcome from occurring. Had the boy gone to fetch help to repair the dike, the levee would have broken and the city would have been flooded. By staying at the dike all night — not fixing the problem, but preventing it from worsening — the boy bought time until others discovered him the next morning and were able to make necessary, lasting repairs.

Rafsanjani may find himself in similar circumstances and equally incapable of making a significant move. Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard have shown no intention of curbing their quest to completely control the Islamic Republic. What started out hand-in-hand with the Supreme Leader (with his undoubted blessing of plans to rig the June election) has grown into something far greater. Only one month after the election, Ahmadinejad publicly disobeyed Khamenei by failing to immediately withdraw Esfandiar Mashaei as his top deputy after the Supreme Leader voiced his disapproval. A month later, he showed up unannounced in the Majlis parliament flanked by his armed bodyguards. Constitutional rights have been discarded in countless instances. Needless to say, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that “Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship” appears troublingly accurate.

Read the full piece in The Newest Deal

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