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Iranian young people
staged anti-government protests in Tehran and other
cities across the country today, using the annual
Persian "fire festival" celebration to burn effigies
and pictures of the country's leaders and set cars
ablaze belonging to the State Security Forces,
according to the London-based independent news
agency Iran Focus.
In the southwestern city of Ahwaz protestors set
fire to an effigy of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. Similar demonstrations were reported in
Garmsar, southeast of Tehran, and in the southern
city of Rafsanjan.
Youth in Tehran reportedly burned pictures of
Khamenei and Islamic revolution founder Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, according to dissidents who
reported to Iran Focus.
The independent news service said it received a
photo from the protesters who set fire to pictures
of leaders that had been placed on lampposts along
Tehran's Mirdamad Street.
The demonstrations were part of the traditional
"fire festival" celebration, or "Feast of
Wednesday," on the last day of the Persian year, in
which people jump over bonfires to "drive away
evil."
Iran Focus said the demonstrations took place
despite a massive crackdown by the country's
paramilitary police to prevent people from turning
tonight's festival into organized anti-government
protests.
Dissidents sent the news agency a photo of a young
man who was detained by security forces for taking
part in a demonstration outside the headquarters of
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the
western city of Khorramabad earlier today.
A de facto martial law was imposed in several
volatile cities in the northwestern province of
Kurdistan as paramilitary police, the Revolutionary
Guards and plainclothes agents of the secret police
moved in.
Iran Focus reported a heavy police presence at every
major junction, square and highway in and around the
cities of Sanandaj, Piranshahr and Mahabad.
On Saturday in Piranshahr, banks, police cars and
government buildings were set on fire as violent
clashes erupted between security forces and angry
residents. Protests began after state security
agents shot and killed a young man in his car at a
checkpoint. Young protesters set fire to at least
five police vehicles. Widespread clashes also were
reported Friday in the Kurdish city of Mahabad in
Kurdistan (northwestern Iran) after a detained man
reportedly was shot by security agents.
Iranian leaders, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution,
have attempted to stamp out the annual festivities
but largely have been unsuccessful, resulting in
clashes between security forces and festive crowds.
This year, Iran's main opposition group, the
Mojahedin-e Khalq, appealed to Iranians nationwide
to take part in celebrations and turn them into an
anti-government protest.
In recent months, expatriate Iranian pro-democracy
groups in the United States and Europe have been
calling for regime change in Tehran, arguing
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative
regime has reversed important reforms instituted by
the two previous presidents, Hashemi-Rafsanjani and
Muhammad Khatami. The new administration
systematically has replaced all top officials of the
national and provincial governments with
Revolutionary Guards militants, many of whom have
intelligence or security backgrounds.
Ahmadinejad appointed Interior Minister Mostafa
Pour-Mohammadi in January to head the new National
Security Council and also serve as the country's
Interior Minister. International human rights groups
have accused Pour-Mohammadi of systematic
extra-judicial killings of opposition figures,
including activists and intellectuals.
Analysts see the Iranian regime under the leadership
of Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei renewing
extreme measures to repress internal dissent as the
country presses forward defiantly with its nuclear
program, re-opening "research and development"
uranium enrichment at Natanz. But internal
dissatisfaction is building throughout the country,
observers say, as Ahmadinejad fails to deliver on
his campaign promise to redistribute Iran's windfall
oil profits to the country's middle class and poor.
In January, a television station run by the
pro-Iranian Hezbollah terrorist group announced
Ahmadinejad canceled his trip to Iran's southern
city of Ahvaz after a security tip warning him Arab
dissidents planned to assassinate him with a series
of bombings. In fact, two bombs exploded in Ahvaz on
the day he was to arrive.
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