"The Massacre One Year Later"

Ahmad Shokar's essay deserves to be read.  It very much relates to my earlier post on the repressive Egyptian regime.

Shokar observes:

The vigorous attempts by state officials, along with media and public figures, to justify the killings are signs that Raba‘a is an enduring trauma whose memory will not be easily expunged. Raba‘a is in fact the pivotal event of Egyptian politics after the coup. Even though, as Mosaab al-Shamy (one of the foremost photographers of the massacre) observed, the state works hard to scrub the public sphere clean of commemorative icons, Raba‘a is far from invisible. As competing narratives are made to serve rival political agendas, the very persistence of contestation over the facts suggests that the massacre will not die along with its victims.

Rosa Parks would approve

Human Rights Watch on Crimes against Humanity in Syria

The report may be downloaded in full (for free) in English.  The Summary and Conclusions are available in Arabic.

[Added: Hamza Ali el-Khatib is the 14-year old whose savage murder has enflamed anger against the Syrian regime.  Links to relevant social media may be found here.]

Police attack the behaved Pearl Roundabout Sit-in, Manama, Feb. 17, 2011: amateur video

Exceptional photos from Cairo (warning! some are brutal)

Friday, Jan. 28, 2011

Egypt's thirty year wait for a vice president ends, but then what?

“My analysis is, the government will leave them until they reach a level of exhaustion---Abdel Moneim Said, who heads the state publishing house al-Ahram.

Egypt is in a moment of enthusiasm when the people are propelled by adrenalin, coffee and anger.  Don’t stay up waiting for them to nod off to sleep in exhaustion.  The Mubarak regime has relentlessly worked to depoliticize society, but the people are now highly politicized, meaning that they share the view, many of them at least, that there is a political solution—Mubarak must go.

One impact of the Days of Anger gripping Egypt is that the plotting to put Husni Mubarak’s

Egypt's Yaum al-Ghadib: Speaking Truth to Power.

Thanks to J.
 Overview (in Turkish) of the reverberations of Tunisia's revolution in the Arab world.

Read Yasmine al-Rashidi's essay on NYReview of Books blog.  She cites the gutsy rap by Egyptian rapper Rami Donjiwan. The song is "against the government" song, for which the opening lines are:

Against the the government, against the Government.
Against the government, against the thugs and injustice.
Against the ruler and the government, and the long road of injustice.
Against the government and I have a 1,000 proofs.
...............

Closing with:
Against the government and the one who accepts humiliation.

Meanwhile, VP Joe Biden calls on Pres. Mubarak to respond to the legitimate demands for change, and adds that he does think of Mubarak as a dictator.  Let's be serious: The prospect that Mubarak will respond substantively to widespread demands for change is very unlikely.  

Compelling photographs by Timothy Kaldas from Tahrir during the January 25 demontrations

Thanks to JN

Patterns of detainee abuse in Iran

Torture admitted by General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, but attributes prisoners' deaths to a "viral illness."

Demonstrators, July 30, 2009: "Neda is not dead. This government is dead."

Mourners at Behesht-e-Zahra cemetary, where Neda Agha-Soltan and other demonstrators are buried, including Sohrab Arabi, whose mother is in the picture. (Credit to AP as published in LATimes.)

First person account of Friday prayers, Tehran, July 17, 2009.

Hashemi's Friday sermon leads to accusation that he supports opposition

Hashemi Rafsanjani's July 17, 2009, Friday sermon was notable for a variety of reasons including his explicit criticism of the Guardianship Council, his emphasis on the doubts about the election that were widespread in Iran, his mention of the alienation of senior 'ulama (Sources of Emulation), his view that restrictions on the press be lifted, and his call for the release of people imprisoned during the recent demonstrations. He calls for open dialogue, and does so in the explicit context of preserving the Revolution.

Some commentators have noted that Hashemi is a denizen of the system, and that is true; however, his carefully parsed speech is apparently being viewed by supporters of Ahmadinejad as proof that Hashemi is with the opposition. Indeed, he is accused of playing a major role in fomenting the crisis. For instance, see the following item (translated by the OpenSource Center) from the Fars news agency.

The OpenSource Center translated the item.

"Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi has accused Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani of supporting the post-election "riots."

"Mohammad Yazdi, who is a member of the Guardian Council, referred to the statements of Hashemi-Rafsanjani at 17-July Friday prayer sermon and asked: "Why did Mr Hashemi-Rafsanjani remain silent for a long time after the election? Is the silence not a kind of support for opposition groups and endorsement of the recent riots?"

"Yazdi also criticized Rafsanjani saying that he should not have called for the release of those arrested during post-election unrest. The former judiciary chief said: "If you ask me what should be done for those arrested, I will tell you that they should be punished, because there are laws in the country."

"The cleric condemned Rafsanjani for sending a letter to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i before the election. He said that Rafsanjani "has sown the seeds of doubts" in the society by sending that letter.

"He also questioned Rafsanjani's reasoning on people's role in the Islamic Republic system and said: "In an Islamic state, legitimacy is different from popularity and people's support does not bring legitimacy to the state." Ayatollah Yazdi added: "In Islam, the legitimacy of the state comes from God." "

Iran: All in the family

Also see this profile of Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, the former majlis member who is now in exile in Boston.

Goldstone human rights investigation of Gaza war continues; meanwhile, important reports from HRW and Amnesty

Human Rights Watch criticizes Israel for its failure to take sufficient steps to distinguish between civilians and combatants when using drone-launched missiles.

Amnesty International castigates Israel for its failure to properly investigate the alleged war crimes of its army, and also condemns Hamas for committing war crimes by firing indiscriminate rockets at civilian targets.

Amnesty's coverage of the unrest in Iran is also noteworthy and is available in Persian and English.

Has former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami found his voice?

While he was President Khatami established a penchant for backing away from conflict, particularly after he promised that he take a decisive stand. The courageous dissident Akbar Ganji once told me that the reformists were willing to pay the price for changing the system, but that Khatami had "spent them too cheaply".

In recent weeks, he has spoken out with unaccustomed candor, as the following statement illustrates:

"If you want to calm the atmosphere, why are you carrying out mass arrests? Oppressing people will not help end the protests," Khatami said.

Addressing the judiciary, he said: "If these people have committed crimes, why are their legal rights as citizens not preserved, why don't they have access to a lawyer, why are they not tried in a court, why haven't they been charged?"

Khatami added: "Obtaining confessions in front of cameras is a useless old method ... confessions under pressure are not valid."

Perhaps he has finally found his voice.

Dissent, repression and Iran's June election

A thoughtful, measured and informed appraisal of pre-election Iran, as well as a commentary on the election and the immediate aftermath. How may a discredited and pitiless regime be brought to accountability? If the authors (Kaveh Ehsani, Arang Keshavarzian and Norma Claire Moruzzi) are correct in their assessment of the widespread discontent with Ahmadinejad's leadership, then we may expect to see continuing unrest, perhaps in the forms of boycotts, strikes and work stoppages reminiscent of the 1978-9 revolution. Yet, as they note, many opposition leaders have been jailed, so it will be apt to see if the June demonstrations have given rise to a new set of leaders.

Recorded Feed--videocam--Tehran

Pirate BayVideos.

Google Videos.

June 15, 2009, Tehran

IR Ministry of Interior--official results (in Persian)

پورتال وزارت کشور - - نتايج آراء استان به استان و شهر به شهر دهمين دوره انتخابات رياست جمهوري
The figures for the major cities have been extracted by Alireza Doostdar and the link is here.

It is not implausible that Ahmadinejad would have won the election. What remains puzzling is the uneseemly haste in declaring the result.

Even if the incumbent actually won the elections, the street demonstrations in Iran may generate a momentum all their own. The men and women who toppled the Shah would know all about the cycle of demonstration-repression-demonstration-repression that became an unstoppable force in the Shah's Iran. Once that cycle gathered force, the Shah was unwilling to impose the bloodshed and repression that may have halted it. The Islamic Republic may evince less reticence to use force against its citizens, but the cost of doing so is high in terms of regime legitimacy. Putting down the demonstrations is made all the more difficult when regime elites are split, as they seem to be.

Added: An apparently credible poll showing Ahmadinejad well ahead in the weeks preceding the vote.

The roused Egyptian masses--الشعب المصري

An Egyptian intellectual who I have known for many years was reflecting some time ago on silence of the masses. He noted that without popular pressure on the government political reform would be long in coming, but he worried that when the people were roused, it would be hard to contain the anger. As I have noted here before, the lesson of the 1977 bread riots was perhaps forgotten in the West, has never left the minds of regime elites.

As one Youtube commenter said in an Arabic comment on the linked clip, it will be hard the army and the state-run media to sustain the fiction that the masses love Mubarak. Indeed.