The Paradoxes within Iran

TWELVE June 2010 marked the first anniversary of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term in office. It was also the one-year anniversary of the Green Movement, which began a year ago in the streets of Tehran, when supporters of the reformist candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, erupted in protest against the government’s announcement that Ahmadinejad had won the election by a landslide.

Over the past five years, Ahmadinejad’s radical government has repeatedly exhibited its bigoted ideology. The most conspicuous part of that ideology is Ahmadinejad’s blatant denial of the Holocaust, which he alleges was orchestrated to facilitate the creation of Israel.

This year, in early June, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, denounced the proposed ban on the burqa in public places currently being debated in France and Belgium. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mottaki called it “an example of the intolerance that exists in Europe.”

It is contradictory of the foreign minister to call a ban on women completely covering themselves intolerant, while his own government will not spare any effort to make sure that women in Iran have no choice whatsoever but to cover themselves for fear of a bloody reprisal by the Gashte Ershad, the moral police. If the regime thinks that Muslim women in Europe should be allowed the freedom to choose whether to wear the burqa or not, what about the same freedom for Muslim women in Iran?

Recently, on the eve of the Green Movement’s anniversary, the Iranian government again showcased its paradoxes by sending text messages to cell phones across Tehran in an attempt to thwart any efforts to stage protests:

“Dear citizen, you have been tricked by the foreign media and you are working on their behalf. If you do this again, you will be dealt with according to Islamic Law.”

But far from being skulduggery by the foreign media, the Green Movement was born of a rare instance of collective awakening. It was a coming together of people who had been repressed by a hardline regime, a grand and instantaneous mobilisation of millions of people asserting their rights and demanding liberty, which has so seldom been seen in that part of the world.

Last year, in the weeks leading up to the election, Mousavi’s green-clad supporters were seen everywhere in the streets of Tehran and many other cities of the country. For them, the election was supposed to be a shift away from the radical policies of Ahmadinejad, who is close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So when the government announced that, defying popular expectations, Ahmadinejad had won, Tehran erupted in unprecedented protest that continued for months. As the noise of the protestors grew stronger, so did the brutality of the regime. But the activists, angry and frustrated, relentlessly continued their resistance, grouping and regrouping.

From these protests emerged the biggest symbol of the rebellion—and, perhaps, the government’s most telling paradox—the video of the death of 27-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, an attractive aspiring singer, who was shot in the chest allegedly by a Basiji, a government militiaman, while she was watching an anti-government demonstration. Ahmadinejad’s government played right into its paradoxical role by extending implausible explanations, including one that a BBC correspondent had killed her.

A year later, on the first anniversary of the movement, the peaceful scenes on streets of Tehran were a contrast to the fervency of last year. On the face of it, at least, the government has succeeded in suppressing the protests.

But that hardly signifies an end to the protests. Using various covert means, the Green Movement lives on, in the hope that one day the people of Iran would be able to overthrow the regime.

And Iran’s protestors are inventive. Websites have been flooded with protest music, called ‘resistance music.’ Disallowed access to the media, protesters have co-opted another commonly circulated item: banknotes. Currency notes with protest messages written on them in green ink are not difficult to find in Iran—despite the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s best efforts to curb their circulation. The music and the banknotes aside, many Iranians have taken up civil non-cooperation in their private lives, distancing themselves from benefits that they see deriving from the government.

In the final analysis, however, it is the people in this land of paradoxes, governed by one of the most radical regimes in the world, who have emerged as the country’s most paradoxical entity—after years of being brutalised, they are still defiant. Notwithstanding the threats regularly being issued, a hardened group of politically aware dissenters is determined to carry on the struggle.

Anant Nath