Green Valentine's Day Turns Red

The Green tide of relentless protesting for freedom in Iran filled the Iranian streets once again on Valentine’s Day (25 Bahman). As the raging revolutions came to an ease to the west in Tunisia and Egypt, the world stood by with abated breath as the courageous youth of Iran commenced their movement once more since the 2009 presidential elections protests. Protestors were filmed tearing down and burning posters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei amidst their chants of ‘Mubarak, Ben Ali, now it’s time for Seyed Ali’ (the Supreme Leader).

However, the protests did not come without its courageous martyrs, for the Iranian government forces opened fire on the unarmed people once again. Sane Zhaleh was the first martyr of Monday's protests to be reported. He was a Sunni Kurdish student studying at Tehran Arts Faculty. The IRI regime fabricated the pitiful case that Zhaleh was killed by Mujahedeen (MKO) operatives during the protests. This is a ridiculous notion given for the last thirty years the regime has claimed the MKO is dead and buried, yet they are somehow operating today in Iran. They had argued the same pathetic line where Neda Agha Soltan's murder was concerned. Preposterous.

Mohamad Mokhtari is the second confirmed protestor shot dead in the protests. He was shot in the shoulder, and though he was still walking for a while after he was shot, because he wasn't taken to hospital soon enough, he had bled to death. Sense the irony, given his last Facebook status update read: “Almighty God! Let me die standing up, for I despise lying low in humiliation”.

Disturbing unconfirmed reports and footage reveal that both Mokhtari’s and Zhaleh’s body was forcefully taken away by the paramilitary Basiji and plain clothes agents, after they forced their way through the crowds attending the respective funerals. Furthermore, it is apparent that the Iranian regime exercises their intolerance towards foreign press and their cameras when the people are demonstrating their contempt for the tyrants - there is no Iranian equivalent of ‘Tahrir Square’, at least for CNN, BBC, etc. Therefore, the only way the authentic footage is sent to the rest of the world is through ‘YouTube’, filmed by the brave protestors in Iran on their camera-phones.

Another display of the Iranian government's brutal hypocrisy is embodied in their calls for Mubarak of Egypt to deal with the protestors in a human manner, whereas, both during the 2009 Iranian protests, and the recent 25th Bahman/Valentine’s Day protests the people in Iran were attacked with lethal force by the very same Iranian government.

In a speech delivered by opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi on Tuesday 15th February 2011, he condemned the killings of Zhaleh and Mokhtari as “brutal and inhumane act[s]”. He warned the IRI government “to remove the cotton balls from their ears and hear the voices of the people before it is too late. Violent acts and opposition to the demands of the people will only work for so long. Avoid the fate of other governments and learn from the people.”

Karroubi urged the IRI authorities to “Free political prisoners and remove your suffocating hands from the throats of independent newspapers and media outlets. Remain faithful to the promise and covenant you have made with the people known as the Constitution”.

However, let us not forget that Karroubi still demonstrates his allegiance to the IRI system, as he further expressed “I remain faithful to the promise and covenant I made with the people and their demands, to the ideals of Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution of 1979” It was the very same Khomeini who had thousands of political prisoners summarily executed and buried in mass graves in 1988; just as it was the same Khomeini who ordered the war crime of using child soldiers to walk the mine-fields in order to clear the mines during the Iran-Iraq war.

The former Iranian Prime Minister, and now opposition 'leader' Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was complicit in the 1988 massacre of thousands of political detainees in Iran, also gave a speech on February 15th, 2011 in Tehran. Whilst congratulating the Iranian people for their ‘victorious’ protests on Valentine’s Day, and expressing his condolences for the martyred protestors, Mousavi re-iterated a very troubling understanding:

“The Green Movement has always maintained its...values and main goal has always been to revive the ideals and aspirations of Imam Khomeini (founder of the Islamic Republic) and the Islamic Revolution and to support the various demands of the noble nation of Iran in its quest for freedom”.

This is the same Imam Khomeini who called for the spread of Islam throughout the world, even if it be at the gross expense of Iran, the country that he was allegedly empowered to protect and rule after the 1979 revolution; the same Khomeini who legalized sexual activities with infants so long as “one does not penetrate”. The very same Khomeini who introduced mandatory covering of the hair for women, and demoted them to second class citizen rights in his then newly established ‘Islamic’ Constitution, Civil and Penal Code.

Nevertheless, the people in Iran are demonstrating courage by marching into the tyrant’s bullets as they protest for their freedom; with or without ‘reformist’ Mousavi, they will take their freedom.