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Iranian opposition forms Takhimeh Vahdat as united front
After years of bitter internal divisions and a series of crackdowns from the Islamic republic, the Iranian democratic opposition in the last two weeks has organized a united front to push for a referendum on the powers of the supreme leader. In an interview with The New York Sun, a founder of the new front, which comprises the major student groups as well as leading lawyers and activists inside the country, said organizers this week began fanning out across the country to collect the names of fellow citizens for a petition supporting changes to the constitution to allow a referendum. "We think this is a good step that all the opposition groups are united in one direction, the direction of the referendum," Mohsen Sazegra said in a telephone interview from London. "As far as I know, this is a unique event. All groups from monarchists to republicans, from left to right are now behind us and they support the referendum movement."Mr. Sazegra is a founder of what in Farsi is called Tahkimeh Vahdat, which is translated into "strongest unity." The organization includes many of the reformists who had tried to work within the system with President Khatemi, as well as supporters of the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlevi. Perhaps most important though, the new unified front includes the Islamic student organizations active in the country's universities. These groups originally supported the 1979 Islamic revolution but in recent years have demanded more political freedoms for the Iranian people. Indeed, activists led by one such leader, Abdollah Momeni, shouted down Mr. Khatemi yesterday in one of their boldest acts of defiance before the international press in recent months. In the middle of a speech at Tehran University, the onetime reformist president was heckled with taunts of "Shame on you," and "Where are your promised freedoms?" according to a dispatch from the BBC and wire services. Mr. Khatemi, who was reported to be visibly flustered, responded by saying, "My period is going to be over soon but I do not owe anyone," the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying. "Those power-seeking fanatics who ignored the people's demands and resisted reforms...the ones who destroyed Iran's image in the world, they owe me." The confrontation between a group of students and Mr. Khatemi could go a long way in dispelling the notion in the West that Iran's democratic opposition has been demoralized after hard-line clerics prohibited most reformers from running for the elected assembly and have recently intensified efforts to arrest anti-regime bloggers and shut down critical newspapers. For years, Iran's opposition movement was driven underground and was said to lack a unifying leadership. Often, Western reporters would not print the names of the anti-regime rebels because of a fear of repercussions from the state, which has jailed and in some cases tortured and killed leaders of demonstrations in the country. Furthermore, there was little agreement among the Iranian opposition on the regime's repression. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-12-07 |
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