Police Are Said to Have Killed 10 in Iran Protests
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Police officers in Iran opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, in a day of chaotic street battles that threatened to deepen the country’s civil unrest.
Iranian protesters attacked police officers during clashes on Sunday in Tehran, where five people reportedly were killed. More Photos »
The Lede Blog
The Lede is tracking news of anti-government protests in Iran. Readers are encouraged to share accounts, videos or pictures.
Post a CommentMultimedia
Protesters in Tehran hurled rocks at the police and set their motorbikes on fire. More Photos >
The protests, during the holiday commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed the disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.
One of the dead was Ali Moussavi, a 43-year-old nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.
The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime.
In Tehran, thick crowds marched down a central avenue in midmorning, defying official warnings of a harsh crackdown on protests as they chanted “death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed growing intolerance for political dissent in the country.
They refused to retreat even as the police fired tear gas, charged them with batons and fired warning shots. The police then opened fire directly into the crowd, opposition Web sites said, citing witnesses. At least five people were killed in Tehran, four in the northwestern city of Tabriz, and one in Shiraz in the south, the Web sites reported. Photographs of several victims were circulated widely.
Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.
Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot Mr. Moussavi. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.
In some parts of Tehran, protesters pushed the police back, hurling rocks and capturing several police cars and motorcycles, which they set on fire. Videos posted to the Internet showed scenes of mayhem, with trash bins burning and groups of protesters attacking Basij militia volunteers amid a din of screams.
One video showed a group of protesters setting an entire police station aflame in Tehran. Another showed people carrying off the body of a dead protester, chanting, “I’ll kill, I’ll kill the one who killed my brother.”
By late afternoon, coils of black smoke rose over central Tehran from dozens of street fires, and smaller groups of protesters continued to skirmish with police and Basij militia members. In the evening, loudspeakers in Imam Hussein Square, where most of the clashes took place, announced that gatherings of more than three people were banned, witnesses said.
There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation. In one photograph, a police officer can be seen holding his arms up and wearing a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.
The Tehran police denied firing on protesters and in an official statement late Sunday said five people had been killed “in suspicious ways.”
Ahmadreza Radan, deputy commander of state security forces in Tehran, said dozens of police officers had been injured and “some were killed,” the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.
Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.
Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.
If the 10 deaths are confirmed, it would be the highest toll since the summer, when huge crowds took to the streets to protest what they said was rampant fraud in the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The White House condemned what it called the “unjust suppression” of civilians by the Iranian government on Sunday.
“Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States,” said Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The turmoil revealed an opposition movement that is becoming bolder and more direct in its challenge to Iran’s governing authorities. Protesters deliberately blended their political message with the day’s religious one on Sunday, alternating antigovernment slogans with ancient cries of mourning for Imam Hussein.
“This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall,” the protesters shouted, equating Ayatollah Khamenei with Yazid, the ruler who ordered Imam Hussein’s killing.
The protests may have received a boost from the death last week of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a patriarch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution who became a fierce critic of the country’s leaders, especially in recent months. His memorials have brought out not only the young activists and students who have dominated the protests in recent months, but also older and more conservative people, who revered him for reasons of faith as well as politics.
Sunday was the seventh day since his death, an important marker in Shiite mourning rituals. Late Sunday, the authorities declared martial law in the city of Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s hometown, the Jaras Web site reported.
The government crackdowns on mourning ceremonies in the past week provoked many people in the more traditional neighborhoods of south Tehran as earlier clashes did not, some residents said.
“People in my neighborhood have been going to the Ashura rituals every night with green fabric for the first time,” said Hamid, 33, a laborer who lives in the southern Tehran neighborhood of Shahreh-Ray and declined to give his last name. “They have been politicized recently, because of the suppression this month.”
Yet few protesters expected the scale of the bloodshed that broke out on Sunday. The memory of Imam Hussein is so potent among Shiites that killing for any reason is strictly forbidden on Ashura, and Iranian leaders have always tried to avoid violence or even state executions during a two-month period surrounding the holiday.
“Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament who is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.”
In another sign of the breadth of the crackdown, security forces on Sunday raided the offices of a clerical association in the holy city of Qum that has supported the opposition since the June election, the Jaras Web site reported. Guards surrounded the house, and members of the association and their families — who had gathered inside the association’s headquarters for an Ashura mourning ceremony — were not allowed to leave, the site reported.
Mr. Radan, the police deputy commander, said that only one of the protesters killed in Tehran had been shot. Two were run over by cars and one was thrown from a bridge, he said.
But a doctor working at Najmieh Hospital in Tehran said Sunday night that the hospital had performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. They were treating 60 people with serious head injuries, including three who were in critical condition, said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.
伊朗示威者再次與警方發生衝突
自6月份總統大選以來伊朗抗議示威活動此起彼伏。
繼四名反政府示威者在周日（12月27日）的抗議行動中喪生之後，伊朗示威民眾和警方在首都德黑蘭再次爆發衝突。
報道說，警察周日夜間至周一凌晨在德黑蘭多處地區釋放催淚彈，試圖驅散抗議民眾。
美國和法國都譴責了周日的暴力行為，這是自6月份總統大選後發生在示威者和警方之間最嚴重的暴力衝突。
周日的四名死者中包括反對派領導人穆薩維的侄子。
據穆薩維的網站說，他的侄子是在保安人員向示威者開槍時背部中彈死亡的。
但警方強烈否認與這些死亡事件有關。
警方說，這四名死者中有一人是從橋上掉下來摔死，另外兩人死於交通事故，一人被開槍打死，但開槍者不是警察。
當局表示正對開槍事件展開調查。
媒體被禁
警方說，在周日的抗議示威後有大約300人被捕。
官員說，數十名保安人員受傷，其中包括德黑蘭警方首腦。
由於外國媒體在伊朗被禁，報道無法得到證實。但目擊者說，一些示威者攻擊了警察。
反對派消息來源說，作為回應，警察向示威者開槍。但伊朗當局對此予以否認。
衝突從周日晚間一直持續到周一。反對派消息來源說，大批民眾聚集在由國家控制的廣播和電視大樓前。並說，警察釋放催淚彈驅散人群。
美國譴責說，民眾走上街頭是為了要求更多的自由和民主，警方採取的鎮壓行為令人無法接受，是「毫無道理的」。
沒有留言:
張貼留言