Late Tuesday night in Tehran, pro government militia raided university dormitories and injured hundreds of college supporters of Iranian Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Protests have grown since the election results came out last Friday. Mousavi plans another one in Tehran for Thursday after an apparently peaceful rally went on today.
Details of election protests are limited because the government of Iran has prevented foreign media from leaving their offices and hotel rooms to write reports. Many Iranians have turned to the World Wide Web to share their circumstances with the world and plan further rallies. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been used to deliver images, videos, and news.
The Ahmedinejad government issued a statement Wednesday saying, “we will very soon inform the public the details of these destructive Internet networks and we ward the people who want to use cyberspace to incite riot, threaten people and create rumors that legal action will be taken against them and the penalty they will pay is very heavy.” The government of Iran told media outposts that they could not film footage of the protests, and that their safety could not be guaranteed.
Reports Wednesday said that pro- Ahmedinejad supporters have been using bats, and batons to aid their violent counter protest to the youthful demonstrators behind Mousavi. The protests have claimed at least seven lives so far. In another development, two people were arrested Wedneday after leaking a forged letter from the Ministry of the Interior saying that Mousavi had won the election, receiving 19 million votes to Ahmedinajad’s 5 million.
Also Wednesday, the Islamic Combatant Clergy Association, which is close the reformist camp, said the vote counting process was “widely engineered” and that the results should be nullified. Iran will recount some of the ballots but analysts say it will be highly limited.
