Heavy Crackdown In Iran As Protests Show No Sign Of Ending
An overwhelming presence of security forces prevented a large protest gathering in Abadan Monday night, but demonstrations took place in other Iranian cities.
An overwhelming presence of security forces prevented a large protest gathering in Abadan Monday night, but demonstrations took place in other Iranian cities.
Videos and reports published on social media show tens of security forces on each street, preventing movement of people in Abadan, and the government resorting to tear gas for dispersing crowds before gatherings could get larger. In some videos firing of military weapons are also heard but news coming out of Abadan is sketchy.
Disruption of internet access by the government in the restive Khuzestan province where Abadan is located has drastically reduced the flow of information about ongoing events. Cutting access to the Internet is a routine practice during protests to prevent information from spreading to other parts of the country and videos of government violence being shred.
Reports by activists on Monday spoke of many arrests in Abadan and other cities in Khuzestan. Some of these arrests target whole families if one member is seen in the protests.
But protests took place in Bushehr port city on the Persian Gulf and in the capital Tehran and some suburbs, despite a heavy presence of security forces, who appear both as special anti-riot troops and plainclothesmen who mingle near the protesters. Pockets of protesters defied security forces and chanted “Death to the dictator” and other slogans against the ruler of the Islamic Republic Ali Khamenei. They also chanted, “It is a lie America is our enemy, Our enemy is right here.”
Protests began a week ago in the south-western, oil-rich province after a 10-story building collapsed killing and trapping dozens of people. So far, authorities say they have pulled out 34 bodies and an equal number is estimated to be missing.
They also claimed that the owner was among the dead, which many people did not believe, as it quickly became clear that he was well-connected with powerful officials and some witnesses claimed they had seen him leaving the building before it collapsed. Authorities who had said immediately after the incident that the owner, Hossein Abdolbaghi was arrested, changed the story the next day and presented a badly damaged corpse as evidence of his death. Rumors began circulating that he fled to Turkey.
Evidence of systematic corruption at all levels of government has been piling up for years, which coupled with deteriorating economic conditions drive many people to question the legitimacy of the government.
The central government in Tehran was also slow to sympathize with the people of Abadan and send rescue reinforcements but was able to dispatch more security forces anticipating protests. Khamenei failed to mention the incident for three days and then issue a message of condolences to Abadan.
But the incident came after protests in mid-May against rising prices had already rocked the province and a tense situation prevailed in western and south-western Iran.
Activists and observers have been wondering if Tehran and other large cities would join the protests. First signs of defiance emerged Monday after thousands of people who gathered in Tehran’s Azadi stadium for a match chanted slogans in support of protests in Abadan and repeating the same popular chants of ‘death to the dictator’ and ‘America is not our enemy’. Later in the night videos showed sporadic demonstrations in the capital’s suburbs.
The main hotspots were in the south-western Khuzestan province, center of Iran’s oil industry, where protests erupted on Tuesday after the collapse of a 10-story building killing at least 29 people. More than thirty dead victims are still in the rubble of the building.
Thousands of security forces, some dispatched to Khuzestan in recent days, were present in Abadan where the building incident took place and in other cities. Nevertheless, reports said protests took place in Andimeshk, while in Abadan, nearby port of Khorramshahr and the provincial capital Ahvaz security forces tried to prevent large gatherings. In fact, activists said that the situation in these cities resembled marshal law.
There were also protests in a suburb of Tehran Saturday evening. In Shahre-Ray protesters gathered and chanted "Death to the dictator" in a popularized slogan directed at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Authorities also began a determined effort to arrest as many suspected protesters and protest organizers as possible on Saturday, but there is no clear information about the extent of these arrests. Usually, it takes a few days until news trickles out amid the internet disruption and the prevailing atmosphere of fear and police crackdowns.
The building collapsed that triggered the current protests has become a symbol of government corruption for Iranian, as it became clear that there were multiple violations involved, including the owner adding five floors despite strong objections by engineering inspectors. The mayor’s office in Abadan appears to have been complicit in approving or ignoring the violations.
From the very day of the incident on May 23, authorities began to realize the collapse of Metropol building would have political ramifications and began arresting some local officials. Initially they said that the owner was also detained, but a day later, on May 24 officials changed their story, saying he died under the rubble.
Many people and journalists on social media expressed deep skepticism, putting forward a different scenario that the well-connected businessman simply escaped and his friends in the government were attempting to cover up by claiming that he died in the collapse.
Iran International published two documents Friday that suggested a connection between the owner of the building Hossein Abdolbaghi and Mowud Shamkhani, son of the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, and other influential local officials who may have used their influence to help Abdolbaghi participate in large municipality-funded projects.
On Sunday, an Iranian official in Khuzestan revealed that a government-run free trade zone had ceded three parcels of land to Abdolbaghi, but the decision has now been rescinded. The powerful Shamkhani clan was previously running the free economic zone and the issue of land for Abdolbaghi shows there is perhaps more to hidden connections between political and business magnets, who use their combined means to engage in illegal deals.
In its report, Fars, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) claimed that police forces had to use tear gas and fire in the air because protesters insisted on entering the area where one side of Metropol twin towers, a newly built ten story building, collapsed on Monday. So far 28 bodies have been pulled from the ruins of the building and there may be tens more still buried under the rubble.
Reports by Iranians on social media said IRGC security forces fires on the people, but no casualty figures have been mentioned.
Not mentioning any of the slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other authorities, Fars fundamentally downplayed the size of protests in other cities. “In Ahvaz 200 people lit candles in front of the Central Library,” the Fars report said.
Videos and posts on social media, however, tell a completely different story. “We Are People of the War, Let Us Fight,” one of the videos shows a large crowd of protesters chanting in Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province, in reference to their history of fighting against Saddam Hossein’s forces during the eight-year war with Iraq (1980-1988).
Gunshots are heard in other videos from Ahvaz Friday evening and people fleeing from security forces on foot and on motorbikes. Social media users also said it was the IRGC, its Basij militia, and the anti-riot guards who shot at people, not the police, as Fars claimed. They have also reported continued disruption in internet access.
Thousands took to the streets to protest against the government and express solidarity with the people of Abadan in several cities Friday evening, including Shahin Shahr, a city in the central Esfahan Province where many Khuzestani refugees of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) still live, Behbahan in Khuzestan, and the port city of Mahshahr in Hormozgan Province.
Protesters in the past few days have been chanting slogans against the Islamic Republic, particularly Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who they blame for mismanagement of the country and corruption which allows well-connected individuals such as Hossein Abdolbaghi, the owner of Metropol twin towers, to bypass regulations and put people’s lives in danger. Authorities say the building collapsed because using his connections with influential officials, the owner had added five more stories to the original plan.
Referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s demand to pursue the culprits and to impose “exemplary punishment” on them, pro-government and state-funded newspapers such as Khorasan and Jam-e Jam have urged punishment to prevent corruption and further tragedies.
Iran has a long record of executing “disruptors of economy” and corrupt individuals but in a report Friday entitled “The Execution That Didn’t Teach a Lesson”, the semi-official Mehr news agency asked why such measures, including the execution of businessman Mahafarid Khosravi in 2014 for his part in a massive bank embezzlement scandal in 2011, have not stopped corruption.
Referring to the controversies over the authorities’ claims that the owner of the building was among those who died in the collapse of his building, the reformist Etemad newspaper criticized censorship and “absence of independent and credible media”. “Controversies over whether Abdolbaghi is dead or alive are a direct consequence of untrustworthiness of official media,” Etemad wrote.
Another article in Etemad, entitled “Metropol: The Height of Corruption”, said corruption in the country has taken deep roots because authorities have hugely targeted and restricted non-governmental organizations which could keep watch to prevent corruption and mismanagement of officials.