Mousavi claims reform movement is alive, despite clerical pressure

Iran’s opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said yesterday through his website that the reform movement was alive, despite pressure from the clerical establishment, which was suppressing students.

Mr Mousavi’s remarks, which came a day before Iran’s commemoration of the killing of three students in 1953 under the former shah, may encourage his supporters to hijack the state-organized rallies to revive anti-government protests.

“Let’s say you suppressed students and silenced them. What will you do with the social realities?”, Mr Mousavi’s Kaleme website quoted him as saying, in a clear reference to widescale arrests of students in Tehran and other cities in the past few days.

“You [the authorities] do not tolerate the student day rallies. What will you do on the following days?”, Mr Mousavi said, suggesting that street protests will continue.

Iran’s presidential vote returned hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power with a wide margin. But his reformist opponents cried foul and thousands of people took to the streets in the biggest anti-government protests in 30 years.

Authorities denied vote-rigging and portrayed the post-election unrest as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the state.

Police and elite revolutionary guards have warned that any “illegal” rally will be fiercely confronted today.

The opposition, which relies on its websites or mobile phone text messages to reach its supporters, has called on people to gather near Tehran University, where the main state rally will be held today.

Iranian authorities have slowed internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before the expected protests to deny the opposition a vital means of communication.

Connections in Tehran have been slow or completely down since Saturday.

Blocking internet access and mobile phone service has been one of the routine methods employed by the authorities to undermine the opposition in recent months.

The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran’s internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch.

In another familiar tactic before such rallies, authorities have ordered journalists working for foreign media not to leave their offices to cover the demonstrations.

Reformist website Mowjcamp has warned of the possibility of clashes between security forces and demonstrators today.

In September, opposition demonstrators clashed with government backers and police at annual pro-Palestinian rallies.

Security forces also clashed with supporters of Mr Mousavi in Tehran on November 4th during an anti-US rally.

Mr Mousavi said suppressing the nation would not keep Mr Ahmadinejad in power. “After all these pressures, the [reform] movement has not ended . . . Believing that someone could rule the people despite their will is just a hallucination,” Mr Mousavi said. “The nation cannot tolerate their votes being stolen.”

The election dispute also exposed deep rifts within the normally opaque political and religious establishment.

Influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of Mr Ahmadinejad who challenged the poll results, accused Iran’s hardline rulers of “silencing any constructive criticism by closing the door on any criticism”.

“The situation in the country is such that constructive criticism is not accepted,” Mr Rafsanjani was quoted as saying by the semi-official ILNA news agency yesterday.