Iranian protestors
Vast majority of Iran's women and youth, who are more than 70% of the population, had voted for reformist candidate Mir-Hossain Mousavi and yet Ahmadinejad claimed that he had won the June 12 election. When the news spread that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast, most Iranians reacted with shock. By June 14, the shock and disbelief had given away to moral outrage and the people of Iran took to the streets to protest such a well-orchestrated voting fraud by the regime. Their demands were simple: a re-election or at least a total recount.
Faced with such massive protests, the regime unleashed its heavily-armed Revolutionary Guards or Pasdarans in Persian and their equally brutal sidekick the Basij militias. These armed goons went on a rampage, killing and injuring scores of Iranians. The climax came when one of them shot dead a young woman Neda Soltani who was talking in her mobile phone.
The ferocity with which the hardliners crushed the protest movement stunned the entire world. Tyrants by nature are intolerant of dissent and the Ahmadinejad regime is no exception. The prospect of mass executions now looms over these protestors. In a sermon on June 26, a senior Shia cleric -- Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami -- called for thousands of protestors who have been arrested to be punished "without mercy," branding them as "enemies of God." He declared: "Anyone who takes up arms to fight, is worthy of execution." That statement ignored the fact that the protestors were unarmed and only the Pasdaran and Basij militias used arms against them. Khatami's statement is an ominous sign that the regime is preparing the way for mass executions and the world must stand up to prevent any further atrocities against non-violent protestors.
The Obama administration has been wise to keep a low-key approach while giving moral support to the protestors. The administration doesn't want to give the Iranian regime an excuse to blame the Americans for the upheavals. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and his surrogates are already blaming America and Britain for instigating the Iranians. On Friday June 19, Ayatollah Khmaeini gave notice to dissenters that any further protests would be tantamount to treason. A prominent Iranian critic of the regime, Amir Taheri, wrote in London's Sunday Times that Khatami's speech meant the end of the marginal democratic charade.
It is time the international community sent a clear message to the Iranian autocrats that any executions will have far reaching consequences for Iran's international standing. The world must show its solidarity by making it clear to Iran's oligarchs that those responsible for last month's atrocities will pay a price. In international law, killing your own people to maintain the hold on power constitutes a crime against humanity.
The Iranian people will have to suffer the consolidation of power by a ruthless regime. But by declaring a war on its own people, the regime has been terminally weakened and it will face inevitable demise when most Iranians overcoming their fear will send the regime and its armed gangs packing.
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