At least 100,000 demonstrators marched silently through the streets of Tehran tonight in a direct challenge to the authority of Iran's clerical regime.
Witnesses said that the protesters, both young and old and many accompanied by children, marched through central Tehran Haft-e Tir square towards Vali Asr square in the heart of the city.
The rally was called by the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to protest against the "shameful fraud" that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected by a landslide in last Friday's election.
Mr Mousavi's appeal to supporters, issued via his website, flew in the face of a declaration by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, that the former prime minister should pursue his objectives through the electoral system and not on the streets
It also came despite a demand from the powerful Revolutionary Guard that websites and bloggers should remove any materials that "create tension".
But the regime is struggling to keep a lid on the protests. In an extraordinary display today, five players in Iran's World Cup qualifier against South Korea in Seoul took to the pitch with green armbands in apparent support of Mir Hossein Mousavi, although they removed the armbands for the second half of the match.
The same armbands were to be seen everywhere in the Tehran demonstration, along with placards accusing Mr Ahmadinejad of having "stolen" people's votes. Mr Mousavi was not attending the march, which has been branded illegal by the authorities.
According to the official election results, Mr Mousavi scored 34 per cent of the vote in last Friday's election, against almost 63 per cent for Mr Ahmadinejad. His supporters say that in reality it was he who was the clear first round victor after a massive upsurge in support for his moderate message, particularly from young urban voters desperate for change.
In the biggest political protests since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Tehran on Monday to protest against the alleged voter fraud. In clashes afterwards at a Basiji militia post, at least seven protesters were killed.
Yesterday, Mr Mousavi was forced to call off a mass protest in the heart of Tehran after Ayatollah Khamenei called a pre-emptive "unity rally" in the same square an hour earlier.
Today, the 67-year-old announced on his website: "We are after a peaceful rally to protest the unhealthy trend of the elections and realize our goal of annulling the election results." He also called for "a new presidential election that will not repeat the shameful fraud from the previous election".
He also called a day of mourning for tomorrow,asking people to come together in mosques or in peaceful demonstrations in solidarity with those killed on Monday.
The crackdown on the protests has been accompanied by a ban on journalists working for foreign media reporting from the streets of Tehran - officially they are only allowed to work on stories sanctioned by their Government minders.
The regime has also done its best to restrict access to the social networking sites and messaging systems through which news of planned protests has been disseminated – among them Facebook, Twitter and the video-sharing site YouTube.
They have not been able to prevent traditional word-of-mouth communication – usually through car windows at traffic jams in the capital.
Mr Mousavi condemned the government for blocking websites and trying to silence the voice of the opposition. The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering only to Mr Khamenei, said through the state news service that its investigators have taken action against "deviant news sites" that encouraged public disturbance and street riots.
The Guards are a separate military with enormous domestic influence and control of Iran’s most important defence programmes and are considered a key source of power for Iran's rulers.
The Guards alleged that dissident websites had been backed by Canadian, American and British interests, a frequent charge levied by Iranian hard-liners against their opposition.
"Legal action will be very strong and call on them to remove such materials," it said.
Meanwhile, tensions over the election appeared to be spreading further into the Iranian political and religious classes. The semi-official ISNA news agency and the private ILNA news agency reported that scuffles broke out between a reformist MP and a hardliner in an open session of the Parliament after they exchanged verbal attacks over the vote results.
The agencies said that hardliner, Ruhollah Jani Abbaspour, attacked Amir Taherkhani after a parliamentary committee probing the protests met Mr Mousavi and the speaker of parliament gave a report on the probe.
Iran’s most senior dissident cleric said that the ruling Islamic system had no political or religious legitimacy because of the alleged electoral fraud. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said in a statement that "no sound mind" would accept the results of Friday's election.
"A government that is based on intervening in the vote has no political or religious legitimacy," said Mr Montazeri, who had once been set to succeed Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme leader until he was ousted because of criticisms of the revolution.
The US-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said that several dozen noted figures associated with Iran’s reformist movement had been arrested yesterday, among them politicians, intellectuals, activists and journalists.
The Tehran-based analyst Saeed Leilaz, who is often quoted by Western media, was arrested Wednesday by plainclothes security officers who came to his home, said his wife, Sepehrnaz Panahi.
At least 10 Iranian journalists have been arrested since the election, Reporters Without Borders said. A website run by the former vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a noted reformist, said that he too had been arrested.
Saeed Hajjarian, a prominent reformer, has also been detained, along with his ’s wife, Vajiheh Masousi. Mr Hajjarian is a close aide of former President Mohammad Khatami.
In an attempt to placate the opposition, the main electoral authority has said it was prepared to conduct a limited recount of ballots at sites where candidates claim irregularities. The recount would be overseen by the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts close to the Supreme Leader.
Source:The times
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