Arash Aramesh

In an interview on his website Kaleme, Mir Hossein Moussavi, the leader of Iran’s opposition, criticized the government’s “engineered demonstrations” on February 11, when Iranians commemorated the thirty-first anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, and asked the government to allow for a free demonstration for the supporters of the Green Movement.

Moussavi, who is also known as Imam Khomeini’s prime minister, said that the government bused people to the demonstration in an attempt to neutralize the Green Movement’s presence on that day. According to Kaleme, Moussavi asserted, “In previous years, people of all sorts could participate in the processions but this year, angry agents could not even tolerate young people wearing green or a cleric who had green prayer beads.” On February 11, the government deployed large numbers of security forces to the streets of Tehran preventing members of the opposition to join the state-sponsored rallies held that day. A number of people were detained or beaten by the security forces as well.

Moussavi asked the government to respect the twenty-seventh article of the Iranian constitution in which people are guaranteed the right to assembly and to hold demonstrations as long as they are not carrying weapons or violating any laws of Islam. The Iranian government has consistently denied the Green Movement’s demands for a peaceful and legal demonstration.

Moussavi asked the Green Movement not to forget its goal, which is “implanting reforms in the framework of the laws.” He asserted that demonstrating on the streets is only one of many ways through which the Green Movement would realize its goals but not the only way. Moussavi then criticized the government’s surveillance and eavesdropping methods that fringe on people’s right to privacy and said a mature nation needs not to be under constant surveillance.

The leader of the Green Movement said that the Green Movement’s main strategy should be to inform the masses. He proposed that the strategy of “Each Citizen, A Medium” must be implemented in the absence of journalists and political organizations due to unprecedented number of arrests in recent months.

Moussavi responded to a question about the social composition of the Green Movement by saying that it was composed of members of all social classes from all walks of life. He asserted, “A significant number of clerics are also present in the body of the [Green] Movement. The Greens must know that the positions of a few radical clerics are not the positions of all Sources of Emulation and all clerics.”

In response to a question about his cooperation and coordination with Mehdi Karroubi and former president Mohammad Khatami, Moussavi said, “There are contacts with these great men. Because of arrests that have taken place on a large scale, the need for such direct contacts is even more necessary today.”

Moussavi’s interview with Kaleme was conducted two weeks after the February 11 demonstrations, which many observers called a tactical defeat for the Green Movement. The government managed to produce larger crowds than the opposition and declared victory against the Green Movement. Members of the opposition complained that the government did not allow their supporters to join the processions and bused in its own supporters to engineer a crowd.