In case you haven’t heard yet the Islamic Republic of Iran is in a state of widespread protest over last week’s presidential election results. Really to no one’s surprise, the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the victor by a huge margin (a specifically curiously huge margin, even winning on his opponent’s home turf). Election result tampering coming from a nation whose leader openly denies the Holocaust doesn’t shock the international community as a whole, but the surprising part is that instead of rolling over and playing dead, Ahmadinejad’s opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, called upon his supporters to publicly dispute the results…and oh did they.
Iran is now into over a week of millions marching in the streets, protestors fighting police with stones and petrol bombs, cars and buildings on fire, police wielding batons from the backs of moving motorcycles, but most surprisingly of all it seems that the level of extreme violence has only been one way--the government officials and supporters beating down, and sometimes opening fire on the crowds of protestors and the protestors planning peaceful demonstrations. It is difficult at best to quantify the real accounts of violence, and to really know just how many protestors have been killed in the fray. It is difficult to get real information on the sentiment of the protestor’s feelings towards Moussavi over Ahmadinejad . Many analysts say that there really isn’t much difference from Moussavi the reformist and Ahmadinejad , and others argue that Iranians are simply using the situation and Moussavi in general to stand up for more of their rights to freedom. Yet to really know what is going on at all is difficult at this point, with the Iranian government revoking journalists visas, telling them they are not welcome there and perhaps most prominently the statement “we’re not responsible for what happens” if you stay or cover what is going on.
However information, videos, pictures, and stories are all still getting out, and it’s from the ground up, using a relatively new and interesting media—Twitter. Normal citizens of Iran armed with internet connections, cell phones, and social networking sites are organizing with each other and letting the rest of the world stay connected. The government of Iran has taken a very aggressive role in shutting a lot of these sites down, but information is still making its way out. Researching the issue myself I found a list of sites where the information is still flowing, at least for the moment. It is obviously tough to prove the validity of all the information out there, but one good way to stay connected is to look for the “#iranelection” tag on twitter. Also, check out some of these sites for yourself:
http://twitter.com/persiankiwi
http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran
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