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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

July 9 Iranian Protests: Open Thread

On the tenth anniversary of the 1999 student uprising against the theocratic regime in Iran, protesters take to the streets again.

From Twitter:

Today the ppl fought back and the basij blinked and ran. We have reached a turning point.

i could see on the eyes of some police men, they wanted to join us, but someothers couldn’t even speak farsi

The New York Times’ Michael Slackman and Nazila Fathi have this report:

Thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran on Thursday, clapping, chanting, almost mocking the authorities as they once again turned out in large numbers in defiance of the government’s threat to crush their protests with violence.

As tear gas canisters cracked and hissed in the middle of crowds, and baton-wielding police officers chased protesters up and down sidewalks, young people, some bloodied, ran for cover, but there was an almost festive feeling on the streets of Tehran, witnesses reported in e-mail exchanges.

.snip.

“Tell the world what is happening here,” one 26-year-old engineering student said. “This is our revolution. We will not give up.”

Asked what he wanted, he said, “We want democracy.”

One witness gave this account: “The crowds are too huge to contain. Riot police running up and down Fatemi Street, beating people, barely got out of the way. The crowds just get out of their way and come back.”

Peive17’s channel on YouTube has a good collection of video from today.  This one added four minutes ago shows a lot of activity in the street:


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/ 16 Comments

16 comments

  1. Strummerson

    That one haunts.  

    In the stand-off that led up to Tienanmen, the authorities noticed that there were glimpses of fraternization between protesters and troops, many of whom were from around Beijing.  So they switched them out for troops from peripheral provinces.  

    The rest is…shall we say, history?

  4. HappyinVT

    from Juan Cole

    Thursday, July 09, 2009

    Demonstrators Tear-Gassed, Fired On

    Hundreds of protesters braved tear gas and even some live fire to march toward Tehran University on Thursday, commemorating a crushed student protest movement of 1999 a s well as protesting the allegedly stolen elections of June 12. Police intervened to disperse them. A new and significant feature of this demonstration was that simultaneous rallies also occurred in cities all around the country. Although the crowds were relatively small, this national coordination suggests a national underground organization is emerging. The authorities cut off text messaging capabilities on Thursday in a vain attempt to thwart networking.

    I’ve also read that individual crowds were small (in the low hundreds) at least in Tehran but that there were quite a few of these groups of protesters throughout the city.

    I just hope that they stay safe.

  6. Chris Blask

    I just listened to Sen. Burris announce that he isn’t going to run for office in 2010.  While my dislike of Senator is not similar in magnitude with my dislike of (for-now-) Gov. Palin, at the moment they just feel very similar to me.  I can assume for general purposes that both of them believe at some level that they are doing The Right Thing for the country but both continuously strike me as boringly vapid and tedious.

    Even CNN couldn’t bring themselves to air his entire statement.  Eventually (now) they cut back to the commentators and let Sen. Burris drone on silently in a box on screen.

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