Wednesday 24 June 2009

'Brainwashed by the West'

Today I read in two London newspapers, The London Lite, and The London Paper, that two arrested protestors appeared before Iran's state TV, maintaining that the 'Western media incited the election violence', and that they were wrong to protest. One could tell that they had been beaten, given the bruises marked on their faces.

As I had uncovered during my research for my Masters degree dissertation, it is common practice for the Iranian authorities to force 'political prisoners' and all those who protest against the state, to appear in front of the camera and renounce their activities and beliefs against the government. This formed the conditions of their release from arbitrary detention and detention incommunicado. Many students who opposed the oppressive hand of the IRI government, by either protesting or publishing articles exposing the double standards in the system, were arbitrarily detained, and held incommunicado. During such time, they would receive brutal and inhuman treatment that violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, a UN instrument that protects human rights, including the right to freedom of speech, and the prohibition of torture, cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment whilst in captivity (articles 19 and 7 respectively).

Again, the IRI are endorsing such treacherous and deceitful tactics in presenting to the international community the facade that the people of Iran do not oppose Ahmadinejad's 're-election', and that any violence against the protestors, such as the shooting dead of unarmed peaceful protestors, were either perpetrated by 'trouble-makers' in the demonstration, or that it did not occur at all.

I hope that such lies do not prevail over the exposing footage and limited press coverage over the last couple of weeks that illustrate the IRI authorities are the ones attacking and murdering their own country folk. To put it in perspective, the Iranain people are being shot dead for rejecting Ahmadinejad as their president; imagine what would happen to them if they outright protested against the 'Islamic' constitution and the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists (velayat-e faqih)!

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