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Iran elites call for end to post-election violence
[Iran Press TV Latest] Fifty-seven Iranian elites and lawyers have signed a letter calling for an end to the violence and use of force against post-election protesters. The petitioners cite a number of acts of violence, which they say have been perpetrated against the protesters, including "firing at defenseless people and killing a number of them, widespread arrests of young people without notifying their relatives, violating universities premises and attacking students, illegal entries into private residences, destruction of public property, interventions by unknown and un-uniformed forces under the pretext of restoring order and the imposition of widespread and unjustifiable restrictions on telecommunications services." The petitioners, among whom are a number of clerics, are mainly academics from the prestigious Tehran, Shahid Beheshti and the Allameh Tabataba'i Universities, as well as a number of attorneys-at-law, express their sympathies with the families of those killed and call on the bodies "empowered by the constitution to safeguard the citizens' rights and liberties to process the public's demands in a peaceful way." "The blocking of legal channels for the enforcement and the restoration of the rights of the people is not the way to solve the problems. The justice-seeking cries of the people must be heard and their rightful demands obeyed," they said. Iranians went to the polls on June 12, in unprecedented numbers to elect a new president. However, when the results were announced the next day, giving almost a 2-to-1 lead to the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the runner-up Mir-Hossein Mousavi, he and many of his supporters rejected the Interior Ministry figures as a "charade", and took to the streets in rallies to register their dissatisfaction and demand for annulment of the election. Although Mousavi has called on his followers to remain peaceful and avoid provocations, violence has erupted in several places resulting in a number of casualties. Mousavi and the other two losing candidates have reported more than 600 "irregularities" to the supervisory body, the Guardian Council, and the council has convened a meeting scheduled for Saturday to discuss the complaints with them. Posted by: Fred 2009-06-20 |
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