Serious threats imposed by the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary guards did not stop thousands of protestors from marching in the streets of Tehran last Sunday.The protestors wanted to make it clear that the post-election momentum has not dissipated.
Security forces barricaded the city’s main roads to prevent the opposition from gaining force as plain clothed and uniformed guards spread through streets using aggression and, in some reported incidents, violence to deter the demonstrators.
Sunday’s protests commemorated the murders of political activists Dariush Forouhar and his wife, Parvaneh, who were viciously stabbed to death in 1998.
The Forouhars were the founders and leaders of the Hezb-e-Melat-e Iran, or the Nation of Iran Party, that openly criticized the Islamic regime.
Protest organizers arranged small-scale protests in various corners of the city to begin in the morning and to march toward the Forouhar home, located in central Tehran, in the late afternoon. Before protesters could get close to their neighborhood, riot police had already closed off the area with metal blockades.
“My parents and many like them died in the name of freedom for the people of Iran,” said Parastou Forouhar, the daughter of the slain couple, in a phone interview while Revolutionary guards were still vigilantly loitering outside her parents’ home Sunday night.
Parastou and her brother Arash, who flew into Tehran from Frankfurt, Germany, where they currently live, visit their parents’ home every year on the anniversary of their deaths.
“I want to keep their memory alive and to keep the momentum of the Iranian opposition going. We have to remember the crimes of this regime,” she said.
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