The Daily Background

Except for the last item in this post (which is an official statement from Obama), everything here is information gathered from Iranian Twitter users I’ve been following, and should be taken as unconfirmed rumors.

– The Fatemiyeh Hospital in Tehran has recorded 200 injured and between 30 and 40 people dead today in state-instigated violence that has surpassed all the violence in the past week combined.

– There are also unconfirmed reports that helicopters are A) delivering guns to Basij troops (the Basij are government-authorized un-uniformed militias) and B) in some cases spraying chemicals on protesters which causes the skin to burn.

– There are also reports that public railway transportation (Metra) has been shut down in an effort to stop people from coming into Tehran to join the protesters. People are still planning to join them by using other ways to get there though.

– Injured protesters are being cautioned in some cases to avoid hospitals which Basij troops are stationed at (they have supposedly been known to arrest people and deny them medical treatment), and instead are told to go to foreign embassies which the Basij cannot attack because it would be a violation of diplomatic code. The Canadian embassy is rumored to be turning injured people away, while the Australian embassy is said to be accepting wounded people and treating them using their own resources.

– Some Basij offices may be being attacked and burned by protesters.

– Mousavi has called for a general strike if he is arrested or killed, and says he is “ready to die for the truth” (this one is confirmed, not just a rumor). Additionally, he is using the slogan “down with the coup d’état,” in reference to theories that he won the election and that Admadinijad is effectively committing a coup against him, although this also invokes the 1953 coup against Iran orchestrated by the CIA.

Here is the White House statement on violence in Iran today:

For Immediate Release, June 20, 2009

Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog