November 4 is the day that in 1979, a number of radical students attacked the US Embassy in Tehran and took its 53 staff hostage and held them for over 400 days and the embassy compound turned into a revolutionary guard garrison. The occupation of the Embassy was an attempt to demonstrate the students' objection to the US policies in the past and was supportred by Ayatollah Khomeini and many revolutionaries at the time.
Every year, this day is commomerated by demostrations in front of the compound attended by the usual supporters of the regime. Most of the original hostage takers are now in the opposit camp and either in prison or out of the circle of power. This year, the situation was far more different from any other year. Iran witnessed an election-coup in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected and re-instated by the order of the supreme leader. The subsequent days and months after the coup were a mixture of people's demonstrations to the vote-rigging and the regime's brutal response.
Iran is now in a dangerous cross-road. On the one hand the regime has imprisoned thousands all over the country, has tortured them, raped them and held mock trials in a desparate attempt to silence the people's voices. On the other hand, the people, supported by the two defeated presidential candidates and fed up with the 30 years of misery under the theocratic regime have no intention to back off. If in the first days, the people were demanding where is their vote, today their slogans are centred around their hatred of the leadership especially Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader who suported the coup and sided with Ahmadinejad.
This year on November 4 hundreds of thousands marched on the streets of the Iranian cities: Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Ahwaz, Yazd, Rasht and many smaller cities to show their anger. So far as the news indicate that hundreds have been detained and at least one case of fatal shooting in Esafahan is reported.
1- At the unviversity of Shiraz, about 100 Basij militia students gathered on the grounds outside the compound while hundreds of students were inside the building. According to eye witnesses, at some point, the basijis supported by police poured into the building and began beating the students with whatever arms they had; batons, clubs, etc. They then captured some 20 students and drove them out to an unknown place on their motorbycs. The females were placed in the back of the motorcycles with two men on both their sides. All this happened in front of the university staff who wouldn't dare to intervene; Ebrahim Azizi, Shiraz governor, Hojat Al-eslam Daneshi Attorney General and Colonel Ghafari, head of city's traffic. The police assualted three females who were about to exit the university, pulled their Chador from their heads and took them away.
2- In Tehran, about 400 have been detained in various places and unknown centres. Their is a wide-spread worry that females have been taken to a centre (Khovin) in Veramin which is allegedly as horrific as the Kahrizak detention centre. Two minibuses have taken some of the detainess to the revolutionary guard centres. It has also been reported that one of the Basiji commanders has allocated his private parking for the detainees.
3- In tabriz a number of students have been detained.
4- In Esfahan apart from detention, the police entered a house and shot a student dead in front of his family. This is the first reported death so far.
It has also been reported that many new sites are being prepared to serve as prison including the underground facilities in the Tehran Mosala where mass rallies and prayers are held.
In an alarming and unprecedented report, which reminds us of the assasinations of the 1980s and 1990s outside the country , General Masoud Jazayeri, cultural vice president of the Islamic Republic Army has announced that most of the opposition elements outside the country have been identified and the regime will deal with them accordingly. He has threatened that the regime cannot keep silence about what he called the atrocities of those who are outside the borders. General Jazayeri's commnets were given to the official media in Iran. The official website of the political bureau of the revolutionary guards (Basirat) also commented on the 'current 5 opposition groups' outside the country: a- Secular intellectuals, b-Journalists, c- Student activists, d- Artists who all support the Green Movement and the fifth, Mojahedin Khaleg and the Royalists.
This is a new phase in the regime's attempt to intimidate and suppress the voices of the Iranian people even outside the borders. It wouldn't be surprising if they dispatch their assasins to other countries. The Iranian people inside and outside have never been this much close and united as they are today. The regime itself has prepared grounds for the millions of Iranians who had left the country in the past 30 years to once again get closer to those who live inside and keep the world aware of the painful conditions in which men and women of Iran especially the youth are living. Three generations of Iranians were born and bred under the shadow of a regime which planned so hard to keep them under its reign. These are the generations who have experienced so much hardship, cultural, social and economic depravation that are not afraid to risk their lives to come to the streets and say enough is enough. We want freedom, democracy, life. We want to return to the world of the living and not the dead which has risen from the hallucination of thousand years.
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