photo modifiée
“Le site web porte le nom de Gerdab (ce qui signifie ‘tourbillon’) et appartient au Centre d’Information du corps des Gardiens de la révolution islamique (Pasdarans) pour les enquêtes sur le crime organisé. Il montre des images de 20 individus avec des cercles rouges dessinés autour de leurs visages et affirme sans fournir de preuves qu’ils sont impliqués dans la création de “chaos” à Téhéran. Les citoyens sont invités à téléphoner ou à envoyer un courriel s’ils peuvent identifier les gens sur les photos.” ¹

Extrait de Solidaires avec le peuple iranien ! Article de Bernard-Henri Lévy (27 Juin 2009) :

Aujourd’hui, le peuple iranien est baillonné.

Aujourd’hui, le peuple iranien tente de compter ses morts, ses blessés, ses disparus.

Aujourd’hui, les droits les plus fondamentaux des Iraniens sont systématiquement, sauvagement, bafoués.

Aujourd’hui, des nouvelles très inquiétantes, de plus en plus inquiétantes, nous parviennent : torture systématique des prisonniers, pression sur les familles des victimes, arrestation des têtes du mouvement et des militants et activistes sociaux.

Le monde ne peut rester silencieux face à cela.

Les États ne peuvent rester sans réaction.

“Solidaire de cette jeunesse iranienne qui défile contre Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”, Bernard-Henri Lévy évoque pour LEXPRESS.fr la situation en Iran, mais aussi les deux vidéos qu’il a postées sur Dailymotion cette semaine. Interview L’Express, 25/06/2009 :

(…) L’idée étant d’envoyer un message de solidarité, d’amitié, à cette jeunesse iranienne qui défile contre Mahmoud Ahmadinejad et contre la confiscation de l’élection. A eux comme, d’ailleurs, à ceux qui, égarés, restent aveuglément fidèles au régime, je dis la même chose: ce n’est que le début…

One cannot remain silent

“If we [Iranians] attend the banquet of silence to which we have been invited [by the Iranian government], the result will not only be suffocation and loss of our voices, but also eternal shame for ignoring the bloody murder of Neda [Agha Soltan, the 27-year-old Iranian woman killed by thugs in Tehran, who has become an icon of the struggle]. I believe in what [Julius] Caesar said [in William Shakespeare’s play] that, “a coward dies a thousand times, but the valiant tastes death but once.” Hence, it is with hope for freedom and justice for all Iranians that I take this perilous step [of writing the note].”

Filmaker speaks out : Bahman Farmanara : We cannot remain silent By MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles 27 June 2009

Poem by Simin Behbahani, Prix Simone de Beauvoir ²

When silver rules gold becomes God
When lie is the judge of any case
When the air, the air that we breathe, the air that sustains life
Becomes the death blanket over hundreds of voices [of protest]

[it is then that] one cannot remain silent ³

Solidarity with the Iranian people

Green balloons !! all over the world for Iran !

______________________

Bernard-Henri Lévy signs a joint letter calling on the French government “not to recognize the results of this rigged election and to keep diplomatic pressure on Iran demanding that the regime.”

Today the Iranian people are gagged.

Today the Iranian people are counting their dead, their wounded, and the disappeared.

Today Iranians’ most fundamental rights are systematically and brutally violated.

Today more and more distressing news comes to us of the systematic torture of prisoners, intimidation of the families of victims, and the arrest of opposition leaders and activists.

The world cannot remain silent.

States cannot hold back their reaction.

That is why we call upon the French government not to recognize the results of this rigged election and to keep diplomatic pressure on Iran demanding that the regime:

* immediately free all political prisoners and all demonstrators who are being held;

* halt the suppression of demonstrations;

* respect freedom of expression within Iran

source : In Solidarity with the Iranian People! open letter by Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and writer, co-signed with the following people: Marjane Satrapi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Reza, Samira Makhmalbaf, Javad Djavahery, Atiq Rahimi, Thomas Johnson, Jean-Claude Carrière, Manon Loizeau, and Ariane Mnouchkine.

Posted: June 27, 2009 Huffington Post

Iran Uprising Live-Blogging (Saturday June 27)

_____________________

TIMELINE: Iranian election and aftermath Jun 25, 2009

(Reuters) – Here is a summary of the main developments since Iran’s June 12 presidential election, which took place against a background of tension with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.

June 13 – Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially wins presidential election with nearly 63 percent of the vote compared with 34 percent for reformist challenger Mirhossein Mousavi, authorities say. Thousands of protesters clash with police. Mousavi calls result a “dangerous charade.”

June 14 - Mousavi says he has formally asked Iran’s Guardian Council to annul the election.

June 15 – Seven people are killed during a huge march by Mousavi supporters in central Tehran, state media says. There are also pro-Mousavi demonstrations in the cities of Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zahedan and Tabriz.

June 16 - The Guardian Council says it is ready to carry out a partial recount of ballots but rules out annulling the poll.

– Thousands of pro-Mousavi demonstrators march in northern Tehran. Ahmadinejad’s supporters mobilize thousands of demonstrators in central Tehran.

– Authorities ban foreign journalists from leaving their offices to cover street protests.

June 17 – Thousands march in central Tehran.

– Ahmadinejad defends the legitimacy of the vote, telling a cabinet meeting it has “posed a great challenge to the West’s democracy,” Mehr news agency reports.

June 18 – Thousands of Mousavi’s backers rally in Tehran to mourn those killed in the mass protests.

– Iran’s English-language state television reported eight people killed in five days of protests.

June 19 — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says protest leaders will be responsible for any bloodshed if rallies continue against the election, which he says Ahmadinejad won fairly by 11 million votes.

June 20 — The Guardian Council says it is ready to recount a tenth of the votes in the disputed election.

– Riot police are deployed in force, firing teargas and using batons and water cannon to disperse groups of several hundred Iranians who had gathered across Tehran.

– A suicide bomber blows himself up near the shrine of Iran’s revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reports.

– State television says more than 450 people are detained during clashes in Tehran in which at least 10 people are killed including Neda Agha-Soltan who, according to her fiance, had been caught up accidentally in the protests. Graphic footage of the woman’s death is seen around the world on the Internet.

Mousavi’s open letter to the Guardian Council which was supposedly investigating the election of June 12:

“We are not against the Islamic system and its laws but against lies and deviations, and just want to reform it.” And he told his followers: “Protesting against lies and fraud is your right, (but) in your protests continue to show restraint.”

Mousavi calls for purge of “lies Yahoo Sat Jun 20, 2009

June 21 — Mousavi urges supporters to continue protests, issuing an oblique appeal to security forces to show restraint.

– Ahmadinejad accuses the United States and Britain of interfering in Iran’s affairs.

June 22 — Hardline Revolutionary Guards issue a statement saying they will “firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law.” Police break up a protest in Tehran hours after the Guards issued their statement.

June 23 – Guardian Council again rules out annulment of the election, saying there have been no major polling irregularities. However, Khamenei accepts a request from the council for a five-day extension to the deadline for candidates to make complaints over the election.

– Riot police and Basij militia on Tehran’s main squares ward off mass protests.

– U.S. President Barack Obama says the United States is “appalled and outraged” by Iran’s crackdown.

– Britain expels two Iranian diplomats after two of its diplomats had been expelled from Iran.

June 24 – Iran pursues a security crackdown to suppress any more unrest.

“The [current] political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election,” Rezaei said in a letter to the Secretary of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.

Iran’s Rezaei withdraws election complaints Wed, 24 Jun 2009 : Rezaei came third in the election by winning 678,240 votes (1.73 percent).

June 25 – Ahmadinejad accuses Obama of behaving like his predecessor (former president George W. Bush) toward Iran and says there is not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologizes.

– Seventy professors are detained after meeting Mousavi, his website says.

– Mousavi says he is determined to keep challenging the election results despite pressure to stop his website reports.

A Twitter Timeline of the Iran Election the most noteworthy events, as told through tweets (Newsweek Jun 26, 2009)

June 26

The council said that the vote was the country’s “healthiest” since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“After 10 days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities,” Abbas Ali Kadkhodai, a Guardian Council spokesman, said.

“We have had no fraud in any presidential election and this one was the cleanest election we have had. I can say with certainty that there was no fraud in this election.”

Ahmad Khatami, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, told worshippers during a sermon at Friday prayers that Iran’s judiciary should charge such rioters as “mohareb“, or one who wages war against God.

“Anybody who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, fight him until complete destruction,” Khatami said in the nationally broadcast sermon at Tehran University.

“We ask that the judiciary confront the leaders of the protests, leaders of the violations, and those who are supported by the United States and Israel strongly, and without mercy to provide a lesson for all.”

Under Iranian law, the punishment for people convicted as mohareb is execution.

Call to execute ‘rioters’ in Iran Al Jazeera, June 26, 2009

Ayatollah Khamenei’s support for President Ahmadinejad has led both moderates and hard-liners to start plotting against him.

“according to several reports Rafsanjani has been lobbying fellow members of the powerful 86-strong Assembly of Experts, which he chairs, to replace Khamenei as the supreme leader with a small committee of senior ayatollahs, of which Khamenei would be a member. If Rafsanjani were successful, the constitutional change would mean a profound shift in the balance of power within Iran’s theocratic regime.”

Bataille politique

“La lutte entre conservateurs et réformateurs, qui occupa le devant de la scène pendant la présidence de Mohammed Khatami (1997-2005), n’est plus à l’ordre du jour.

Près de trente ans après la prise du pouvoir par les religieux, c’est désormais un combat entre «turbans» et pasdarans qui sévit. Autrement dit, entre la vieille garde religieuse et les ex-combattants de la guerre Iran-Irak (1980-1989).”⁴

Battle for Iran shifts from the streets to the heart of power The Guardian, Sunday 28 June 2009

Mir Hossein Moussavi a déclaré le 27 Juin :

«Le Conseil des gardiens, et surtout une commission qui est nommée par le Conseil (des gardiens) ne peut parvenir à un jugement équitable».

“J’insiste à nouveau sur l’annulation des résultats de l’élection comme la façon la plus appropriée de trouver une issue au problème», a-t-il ajouté sur le site internet de son journal Kalemeh.

Fin de non-recevoir de Moussavi au Conseil des gardiens Lefigaro.fr (avec AFP) 27/06/2009

Joan Baez sings “We Shall Overcome” (with some lyrics in Farsi) for the Iranian people ⁵)

____________

La jeunesse iranienne

Neda Agha Soltan
60 percent of Iranians are under 30.

Young Iranians horrified by the death of Neda Soltani are increasingly disillusioned with the country’s supreme leader.

How Iran betrayed its young The Guardian, Massoumeh Torfeh

We will know if it’s really over on July 31, 40 days after the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan. In the Shia tradition, that’s when the 40 days of mourning end. ⁶

Ils lisent Forough Farrokhzâd (1935-1967), la grande poétesse iranienne des années 40, et Ahmad Shamlou ⁷

“Je te reconstruirai, ma patrie”

Je te reconstruirai, ma patrie.
Même avec l’argile de ma propre âme.
Je te bâtirai des colonnes.
Même avec mes propres ossements.
Grâce à ta jeune génération, on s’amusera à nouveau.
Nous ne cessons de pleurer, tellement tu nous manques.
Même si je meurs à 100 ans, je resterai debout dans ma tombe.
Afin de faire disparaître le mal avec mon grognement.
Je suis vieille mais je peux rajeunir pour vivre une nouvelle vie aux côtés de mes enfants.

Simin Behbahani

_______________________________________________

No plans for resistance

“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. (…) 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.”

In Tehran, a Mood of Melancholy Descends NYT By Nazila FATHI June 27, 2009

De nombreux jeunes Iraniens sont tentés par l’exil Le Monde 27.06.09

1. extrait de l’article : Les autorités iraniennes “crowdsourcent” les identités des contestataires 2009-06-2 Global Voices [back]
2. prix Simone de Beauvoir en 2009 [back]
3. Bahman Farmanara: We cannot remain silent Los Angeles 27 June 2009 [back]
4. Pasdarans et «turbans» se disputent le pouvoir en Iran Beyrouth, Delphine Minoui 9.06.29 [back]
5. Joan Baez chante “We shall overcome” pour le peuple d’Iran (refrain en persan [back]
6. Gwynne Dyer: Iran’s young people betrayed again June 23, 2009 Daiton Daily News [back]
7. Ahmad Chamlou [back]