This article was last updated on May 21, 2022
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Marking the 3-year anniversary of 25 Khordad rallies
The Coordination Council of the Green Path of Hope has called for commemorations to be held on the third anniversary of the electoral coup that sparked the largest demonstrations in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
In a statement on Friday, the Coordination Council, the pro-democracy Green Movement’s highest decision-making authority, called on Iranians to hold “silent” protests in “public spaces, especially in the city’s main parks” on Thursday 25 Khordad (14 June) to mark the three-year anniversary of the country’s 2009 presidential election.
A day after millions of Iranians went to the polls to vote for their president on 12 June 2009, Ahmadinejad’s Interior Ministry claimed he had one a landslide reelection “victory.” The results triggered large-scale protests across the country and opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi refused to acknowledge authenticity of the outcome.
Tehran’s conservative mayor estimated that on 15 June 2009, more than three million people marched to protest peacefully against what they saw as a monumental fraud.
The non-violent protests were met with the security forces’ brutal crackdown. It is believed that close to a hundred demonstrators lost their lives in the unrest that followed Ahmadinejad’s alleged election “victory.”
The highly disciplined and mainly self-organised mass demonstrations went on for another seven months, but waned after the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution on 11 February 2010.
No major opposition rallies would be held for another year.
However, in February 2011, the Green Movement’s leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, called for rallies in support of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings. Following the demonstrations, the men were placed under house arrest along with their wives and were cut off from the outside world.
Iranian authorities have not yet charged Mousavi, his wife Rahnavard or Karroubi. Nor have they granted them access to a lawyer or fair trial. Rights groups say their continued detention goes against Iran’s own constitution as well as international conventions on human rights.
Green Movement’s ‘pluralist’ character
“We must learn to tolerate criticism, and at the same time, to be mindful of efforts by autocrats and the security-military apparatus to cause schism and division amongst the companions of the Green Movement,” the Coordination Council warned on Friday.
“The ‘Green Movement’ is a movement, and not a [political] party. This means that in mobilising the movement, it is wrong to expect the formation of organisations and a pyramid-like organisational [structure] similar to most parties … The movement seeks to broaden the base of the pyramid and to bring it closer to the apex so as to lay the groundwork for the active presence of [green] companions as well as respect for increased pluralism and diversity.”
The Council also encouraged the formation of new self-supporting cores within the Green Movement. “What connects these nuclei together like the beads of a Tasbih [1] and give it a unified identity, is the minimal set of common [demands and principles] put forth in the charter of the Green Path of Hope, which have been approved by Mr Mousavi and Karroubi.”
The Council members also extended their gratitude and respect to those slain during the post-election unrest, as well as the countless activists, journalists and human rights defenders who have endured various forms of imprisonment and hardship since then.
Note:
[1] The Tasbih is a string of beads used by Muslims in devotional prayer. It normally holds 99 beads.
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