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Hundreds of thousands of pro-government Iranians are rallying to mark the 31st anniversary of the nation’s revolution. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the rally to attack the West, and said Iran had produced its first stock of 20% enriched uranium. The opposition is trying to stage counter-demonstrations, but faces a big security crackdown, and several of its leaders have reportedly been attacked. The anniversary is the most important day in Iran’s political calendar. The government has warned that protesters will be dealt with. The BBC’s Persian TV channel has been covering events in Iran, The World’s Laura Lynch visited the channel.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. It’s been a day of both celebration and protest in Iran as crowds there mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in different ways. Iran’s President took the opportunity to announce that his country has made strides in processing uranium. The White House called that statement more politics than physics. Meanwhile, anti-government protestors took to the streets but it’s hard to get independent information on what’s going on in Iran. The World’s Laura Lynch has been following today’s events from the newsroom of the BBC’s Persian Service in London.
LAURA LYNCH: Trying to tell the story of the day from Iran has been a challenge for the BBC’s Persian Service for months. But editor Sima Alenijad says today has been even more difficult than usual. She suspects the Iranian authorities are jamming communication systems.
SIMA ALENIJAD: Telephone lines are not good. Internet is very slow. We don’t have any reporters and we don’t want to talk to people like journalists who put them in jeopardy because you know so many of them have been jailed in the past days because of today, the anniversary of revolution.
LYNCH: But video, photographs and information are still trickling out and Alenijad is the newsroom’s gate keeper, trying to verify that the material is genuine.
ALENIJAD: I just sent – - , this is the very latest.
LYNCH: So this is posted by somebody inside.
ALENIJAD: YouTube, yes, yes, yes. And it comes both ways. They send it to us and also we find it in YouTube, it goes to YouTube quite quickly.
LYNCH: This video shot on a cell phone shows a man being beaten by the security services. There are reports of clashes including attacks on opposition leaders as they try to draw demonstrators out onto the streets. Away from the violence huge crowds massed in Tehran’s Freedom Square to mark the end of rule under the U.S. backed Shah 31 years ago. President Ahmedinajad stood before them and boasted that Iran is now a nuclear nation. He insisted once again Iran isn’t interested in building a nuclear weapon. But he followed that declaration with defiance and a suggestion that something might change in the future.
INTERPRETER: Our nation is so courageous that if we want to create an atomic bomb we will announce it clearly and we will create it. We are not afraid of you.
LYNCH: Ahmedinajad may not be frightened of foreign leaders, but reports from Iran suggest government security services were anxious to muzzle protestors who gathered to shout death to the dictator. Seyed Mohammed Marandi, the head of North American Studies at Tehran University believes police were justified in cracking down.
SEYED MOHAMMED MARANDI: Well I think if you take into account the fact that there is a huge rally with millions of people on the streets in Tehran taking place. If another group of people want to come and create disturbances within that it could become very dangerous. So I think it was very, I think the police was doing its duty to keep these people from entering the main body of the crowd. Because if people turn against each other, I think that’s a very dangerous thing.
LYNCH: But those who oppose the government say they were trying to get their message across peacefully. Mohammed Reza Heydari used to be the Iranian Consul General in Oslo. He resigned in January over the government’s treatment of opposition protestors, the highest ranking official to publicly quit so far. He says violence won’t put an end to the opposition movement. While they respond to us violently, Heydari says, we defend ourselves. But we avoid violence and tell people not to act violently towards them. We ask everyone to join the people and to not allow the government to do what it wants, so that with these actions we can stop their violence. But with reports of beatings and arrests in cities across the country, there seems little room for compromise in Iran. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.
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