Iran: Democracy Denied

Protesters clashing with police in the streets. Thousands marching and demanding an end to a tyrannical government. Hundreds arrested. Executions of those opposed to the establishment. A rigid clampdown on the media and press. That was Iran thirty years ago — and that is Iran today.

A year ago, Iranians could delude themselves that they inhabited a country with real, albeit limited, democracy. Now the gloves are off, and the regime has shown itself for what it truly is: an embryonic military dictatorship, taking on the veneer of religion, and brutally suppressing its own people.

Last June, Iran erupted in widespread protests after the disputed and fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (The usual means of ensuring that the “right” candidate won—reformers struck from the ballot by Islamic clerics—proved insufficient, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, personally intervened so his hand-picked designee would continue to wield authority.) The government of Iran responded to the protests with a campaign of ruthless repression against its population. Members of the Basij militia have brutally attacked demonstrators, and hundreds, if not thousands, have been detained by the government.

The theocrats ruling Iran have feared to let the information of what they are doing to their country spread around the world. Iran’s government has tried to suppress the free flow of information both within Iran and from Iran. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least sixty-five journalists have been imprisoned. Human rights activists have been both forced into exile and forbidden to leave the country. The Iranian police state is desperate to prevent news of what transpires in the cities of Persia from being broadcast throughout the world, but information has trickled out, through blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and other forms of internet media.

The clashes between the government and the protest movement have only intensified in recent months. During confrontations during the Shi’ite festival of ‘Ashura, the government shot dead at least ten protesters. Subsequently, several detained protesters were executed for being “enemies of God.”

There is a powerful popular movement by the Iranian people to fully exercise their rights as human beings — but there is a vicious campaign of repression being waged by the government to prevent the expression of those rights. The world is watching.