All reform movements, all promises and hopes – they would inevitably demand a transcendent moment. I fear that if we fail now, change will never arrive in our lifetimes. So, to everyone outside of Iran, do not recognize Ahmadinejad as our president.
I can’t believe it was just one week ago that we were all dancing and singing in the streets. Mousavi was winning, and we all knew it. The country was green throughout. I convinced many of my friends to vote, too. Because this time was different.
Ahmadinejad was ruining everything you would ever want in a country: economic livelihood, healthy foreign relations, freedom of speech. Most important, he was trouncing on our future.
The voting stations were exploding on Friday. Never, ever, in an Iranian election had people hit the polls like this. Even the “sulkers” showed up. Just to say a big no to whom many view as the “destructor of our homeland.”
But Ahmadinejad doesn’t take a “no” so easily. They must have known they were losing because text messaging was disabled the night before the election. Why? To make communication difficult, if impossible, for Mousavi’s apparatus, and to preempt organized protesters after they announced the shocking results.
The polling before the election heavily favored Mousavi. His team, in fact, was contacted by the interior ministry and told to prepare for a victory, fellow Iranians tell me. They were winning. Then cellphone connections suddenly went out, and the propaganda machine took over.
Saturday was the worst day of my life. Seriously.
I woke up to the results, and asked “What’s going on? What should we do? Where is Mousavi? Is this how they treat people after all these campaigns?”
People were swaying in shock by noon. There was news that Mousavi was meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei. At 2:00 pm everyone was at their TVs. They saw the leader’s message and congratulations to Ahmadinejad. Shock turned into hot, burning, fierce anger.
Shock turned into hot, burning, fierce anger.
Protests were disorganized at first. Communication was laborious and is still so. Mousavi has absolutely no media. No newspaper. No TV time. His websites are all filtered.
The military forces have attacked his supporters, even women and young teenagers. Cars, windows, and doors were severely damaged.
Sunday, Mousavi’s announcements finally managed to spread by word of mouth. They had asked for permission for a demonstration for Monday afternoon.
Student dormitories were attacked on Saturday night – then a worse attack occurred on Sunday night. “Tehran University’s Dorms Colored with Blood” was the headline on Monday evening.
They said demonstrations would be unlawful, but that didn’t stop people. People didn’t have time to organize without mobile telephone service, so we all showed up – in millions
The government also said Tuesday’s demonstration would be unauthorized, but the scope of interest was so great, we still conducted large-scale silent protests.
Demonstrations will continue as well: this is just the end of the beginning.
Every night people chant on their roofs in support of Mousavi. Five nights, non-stop, even after all the violence endured. Demonstrations will continue as well: this is just the end of the beginning.
The message is that we’re not giving up this time. Not a step back any more. We want a legitimate re-election, and we want all those who cheated to be punished by law.
This is a critical moment in Iran. All reform movements, all promises and hopes – they would inevitably demand a transcendent moment. I fear that if we fail now, change will never arrive in our lifetimes. So, to everyone outside of Iran, do not recognize Ahmadinejad as our president.
This article was published under a pseudonym whose author feared potential retaliation by the Iranian government.
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Thanks so much for a commentary from a Iranian's perspective. Enlightening, and props to you for writing about this. I live in the U.S. but have dyed my hair green and have been wearing green and black for Iran. May there be peace, fair elections and happiness.
June 18, 2009 at 1:22 pmI'm in support of fair elections in Iran. That's pretty easy to say, I know. But I'm not particularly for Mousavi. And I'm slow to believe anonymous articles coming out of Iran claiming the election to be fraudulent. There are lots of international interests in Ahmadinejad being removed from power and anonymous internet traffic denouncing the election results fits right in with what one would expect from US intelligence.
All that said, Ahmadinejad is an authoritarian who isn't in support of things the majority of Iranians want. Such as the right to vote for the Supreme Leader instead of the holder of that post being dictated to the population. Mousavi doesn't support this either however.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of recognition in the Western press of the internal dynamics of Iran. This election is being written about as the people vs the government. This is how US politics is often written about to and that version of events is often a smokescreen for ruling class fights. What are the dynamics of the Iranian ruling class? What are their interests in these matters? The NYTimes hasn't made that a central point in their analysis and that is worrisome.
And finally, I have read that polls indicate only a third of Iranians have internet access. I would assume that this is the upper class layers of the population. It is known that Ahmadinejad has done significant wealth redistribution. This is never popular in countries with significant class divides. Therefore, to see lots of anti-Ahmadinejad information coming out of Iran on the net is predictable and because of the digital divide that exists there, not a good litmus for judging what is actually happening on the ground. Unfortunately, most folks outside Iran depend on the net for information on the situation. And in this case, as in many cases, the net opinions will have a very high class bias and the class realities of this political situation must be honestly taken into account and not simply dismissed as most seem to be doing.
Here in the US, liberal political discussion is dominated by the middle and upper-middle class that has easy and frequent internet access. Those liberals are far more conservative than those with less wealth and less access to the discussion. If you were to only watch the US political discussion by way of the internet you would have a very biased and inaccurate view of the political situation here. You would likely not understand the political views of Black, Latin or poor Americans generally because of the way the digital divide acts as an economic censor to so many millions of political voices.
As a Black person in the US I understand this dynamic quite intimately and am very wary of the political narrative we are being fed in regards to Iran. I don't feel that the net saavy student movement in Iran represents the masses of poor people at all. Because they are young and using twitter, the story appeals to naive whites here in the US but it really doesn't make sense that this would be the group representative of the popular base in Iran. They are college students with far more resources than it appears most of the population.
My point in all of this is that we need to be far more discriminating about information coming out of Iran and use our common sense (which apparently is all too uncommon in the West).
June 18, 2009 at 9:38 pmHave something to add?