FOLLOWING THE GREEN BANNER

FOLLOWING THE GREEN BANNER

Form the regime’s prospective it was all over. After three months of intimidation, arrests, show trial, torture, rape and killing, the government was fairly sure that it had regained control of the situation. The regime’s annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians held on the last Friday in Ramadan was an auspicious occasion for the regime to draw a line under all the controversy around the disputed election on 12th of June. However, the reality proved otherwise. Thousands of demonstrators with green banners and wearing green clothes took to the streets of Tehran and all major cities across the country. Despite all the preemptive efforts of the government, people created one of the most courageous demonstrations during the last three months. The magnificent presence of the crowd instantly echoed through the whole world. All the international news channels broadcast the footages of the people shouting “death to the dictator” and marching through central Tehran despite the heavy presence of the regime’s security forces.

During the last three months, the government has clearly underestimated the importance of the new ways of communication among its opponents. The social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed are the websites in which all the dissidents constantly exchange their ideas and opinion and harmonize their anti-governmental activities. This phenomenon, unprecedented in the political history of Iran, is literally breaking the backbone of Ahmadinejad’s government. In a desperate act in an attempt to drown out the voice of the people, Ahmadinejad for the second time in less than a month decided to use the Friday prayers as a platform to make another speech. He, who has a global reputation for making controversial speeches, once again questioned the Nazi Holocaust and claimed that the incident was designed to justify the existence of Israel. However, the diligent demonstrators, with their mobile phones, who were not far from Tehran University succeeded in engraving another historic day in the memory of the political life of Iran. The video footages recorded by these people sent a strong message to the rest of the world that today is neither about Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, nor about people in Gaza. Today is about people who have been deprived of basic human rights in their own country by their own government. Today is about ordinary Iranian people in the streets of this country who want their own rights before fighting for the rights of others. Gaza can wait and so can Palestinians.

Shahin M