Protests and developments three days after the election in Iran

Hi - if you're here due to a Twitter update, check the bottom of the post.

I'll be updating this post throughout the day as events warrant.

I must say, I'm very impressed with Huffington Post's Nico Pitney's continual attention being paid to the events in Iran after the election (although the page is far too large and may cause mayhem with your browser). I sometimes ding the Huffington Post when they publish something silly but their coverage of the events so far has been great. Andrew Sullivan is also doing a great job.

First, here's a video from last night with people chanting marg bar diktator (death to the dictator, مرگ بر دیکتاتور).



A very WTF statement from the EU came a few hours ago accepting the results of the election with the faintest of faint protests regarding the fairness of the election. Germany, however, knows a thing or two about dictators and elections and isn't quite so accepting of the results.

Here's another Twitter account worth keeping an eye on.

Found another short video of a demonstration in Tehran that doesn't seem to be getting much attention.



Another video of protests in Tehran last night. In the beginning they're saying "our vote was for Mousavi, you nasty liar (رای ما موسوی بود کثافت دروغگو)".



It's now approaching 9 am in Iran. I see on Peiknet.com they are promoting today's march which will start at 4 pm and go from Enghelab to Azadi Square, a distance of some 5 km.

Translation: "From 4 p.m. Against the coup d'état of June 12th (Khordad 22, the day of the election) from Enghelab to Azadi Square".

Here's the area:



You can explore the area for yourself here.


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Time has two articles on the loss of legitimacy for the entire government as a result of this here and here.

Also check out the live stream on BBC Persian - you don't even need to understand Persian to understand a lot of what's going on.

A Canadian news report on a demonstration in Toronto with about 1000 people, events in Iran and protests in other parts of the world.

A Norwegian reporter and his driver were arrested in Tehran today - "Aftenposten's reporter and his driver were arrested and taken to a basement in the Ministry of Interior in Tehran today. "It has become virtually impossible to engage in journalistic work on the streets", said Jørgen Lohne. He was filming at around 12:30 pm in the Vali-asr area when special police forces arrested his driver, and when he tried to stop them the police handcuffed him too. They were then taken to a basement in the Ministry of Interior where a lot of other people had their hands handcuffed behind their backs and their heads against the wall. Eventually his papers were checked and he and his driver were freed, and he eventually got his camera back as well. He says that many other journalists have been seized and that it's virtually impossible to work as a journalist on the streets there now.

Another link here in Norwegian says the number arrested over the two days has been 170.

9:55 am in Iran: just about every tweet in Persian for Mousavi (موسوی) is about today's march. Some link to this article on Deutsche Welle that also gives the same information.

There is a very WTF article here in the Washington Post today by the president of Terror Free Tomorrow, the group that put out a poll a few days before the election. (I mentioned it on the 8th of June as well BTW) Their argument is that since the poll indicated more support for Ahmadinejad, and because their poll was conducted from an organization outside of Iran, that the election on the 12th must therefore be a reflection of the Iranian people. The big problem with this is that the poll was conducted from the 11th to the 20th of May. The Iranian electoral period is very short, and the four candidates for president were not even approved until the 20th of May, so this poll was conducted on the assumption that these would be the candidates (and perhaps that's why the numbers only add up to 78% in total - 34% for Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mousavi, 27% did not know, Karroubi with 2% and Rezaei with 1%). It was also conducted well before any of the debates. That would be like conducting a single poll for the Canadian election in 2006 just before the election season started and deciding that Canadian voters thus preferred the Liberals in that election, when really the opposite was the case near the end.



Reddit now has a green alien on the front (they change the alien every once in a while to reflect what's going on in the world)



Edit: it's just past noon in Iran and here in Korea it's time to go feed the cats at the temple. Updates will begin again in about three hours, which will be just one hour before today's scheduled protests officially begin.

Edit 2: cats are fed, updates for the rest of the day will be posted here.