Quiet Crackdown Drains Iran Dissidents

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Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices or face arrest. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation, in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the June 12 disputed presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have also put dozens of the country's most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars and are harassing dissident politicians while they are at prayer services.

The purpose is to prevent dissidents and their factions from any type of peaceful assembly or communication. Merely meeting an alleged dissident for lunch is a sufficient basis for arrest or detention. The Iranian government continues to expound the belief that the protests and demonstrations were the product of foreign interference in Iranian affairs, apparently unwilling to admit that they made an enormous strategic error in denying the election recount.

All of the present turmoil in Iran could have been avoided simply by conducting a recount of the votes collected in the Presidential election. Even a quasi recount could have been sufficient to satisfy the citizens that their votes were not discarded or destroyed.

Instead Iranian authorities behaved with arrogance and belligerence in denying the Iranian citizens their fundamental right to fair elections and ignored the repeated requests for a recount.

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