“Death to the dictator. Dictator, run, look at Mubarak.”
These chants erupted from tens of thousands of young people in Iran, on Monday, Febraury 14. Videos and photographs captured by cellphones leaked out of Tehran and onto the Internet - documented evidence of the illegal dissent sweeping the city.
Protestors filled the corners of the capital, combatting waves of tear gams road blockades of burning garbage bins, along with thousands of armed police.
WIth now several wounded and one killed, the regime shut down the Internet Monday, in addition to interfering with various cellphone signals, in fear of an uprising to parallel Egypt and Tunisia.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, an integral aspect of the current regime’s protection of power, have already begun to express willingness to torture, imprison, and execute protestors en masse. As the military warned Iranians not to go outside, the country’s known protest leaders were placed under house-arrest.
In lieu of the degree of these threats, the defiant and sizeable crowds came as a surprise. Naming themselves the 25 Bahman (a reference to the Iranian calendar and the date of protest), the organizers have been using a Facebook page to call for daily mass demonstrations.
Late Monday night, a post was made reading, “Please stand by via any means of communication you have. We are victorious.”
Anti-government protests have also ensued in Shia villages surrounding Bahrain’s capital, Manama, leaving one dead and dozens injured.
Calling Monday the ‘Day of Rage’, too inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, demonstrators are demanding political reforms in addition to the end of systemic discrimination faced by the Shias, at the hands of Bahrain’s Sunni rulers. The Shia people represent roughly 70 per cent of the country’s population.
