Iran: Inspiring Revolts And Western Hypocrisy

The protests and riots in Iran are inspiring at the moment. They seemed to erupt out of nowhere, people reaching a breaking point that the repression could not withhold. I’ve been following the BBC, blogs and Twitter for the latest updates.

From the BBC:

Hundreds of thousands rallied to support candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, but a group of them was fired on from a militia base they had surrounded.

Despite the censorship of the media and the Internet, Iranians seem to finding a way around it. TechCrunch reports that Twitter has even rescheduled maintenance to avoid interrupting the stream of Iranian Twitter users communicating what’s going on to each other, and outside of Iran.

Lenin’s Tomb has a good post on the issue in which he concludes by saying:

So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.

Saeed Valadbaygi is blogging from Iran at Revolutionary Road… with pictures, videos and interviews with participants in the protests.

The breakouts firstly started in tehran and was on the same day that the votes were announced, however at the moment all the cities in iran, and i have to say in most of the cities in iran the situation might even be worse than tehran. people even have started to attack the military guards and they have taken control over some of the cities.it has been reported that in other cities, the military guards and the people.

One point I’d like to make, as someone who thinks that Iran is a repressive state that need to be overthrown from within and someone who stands firmly against military intervention, is that the comments from Western leaders are blatantly hypocritical.

Their mock concern for protesters is only about advancing support for an invasion that would see the opponents of Ahmadinejad slaughtered by the West rather than their own rulers.

And Western leaders have attacked protesters against their own institutions and fraudulent elections. And they’d do it again. The US of course is no stranger to rigging elections in their own country and even in other countries. The US has a shameful history of funding coups, rigging elections and propping up unpopular dictators to keep the most pro-US governments in power.

And the example of Britain, with the G20 protests and the death of Ian Tomlinson, shows that the West are not adverse to fatally suppressing protests.

We need to support the protests in Iran. But our leaders are not our allies in a fight for democracy.

Update: The BBC is reporting that seven protesters have been killed by security forces in an attempt by the regime in suppress opposition demonstrations.

Global Voices Online has a comprehensive report on the situation in Iran full of photos, videos and links.

Photo by Hamed Saber

Technorati Tags: Iran, Twitter, Tehran, protests, revolts, West, hypocricy