Iran’s Invisible Crowd
July 27th, 2009While there’re thousands of articles and Photos shared around the net, just few have put their opinions on fair basis, most of them often using half truths and inducing in minds certain vocabulary.
In Iran’s colorful political arena, The green color got more attention from the western Media, maybe because they liked the candidate behind it more than the others and they assumed he’ll realize wishes of their governments for the better.
OR from a more optimistic point of view, during pre and post election events, Media was so attracted to Green color of Mousavi campaign, since in Tehran the capital it was more visible into eyes than a common Iran’s flag as a sign of Ahmadinejad’s campaign.
While multicultural Iran is not just Tehran, nor those active in the streets were all the population.
Iranian society with its complicated structure, can not be shown as a black and white documentary.
As Mohammad Salemy -an artist and curator of the former DADABASE Gallery- has points it out very well, quoting Ervand Abrahamian, a scholar of Iran’s contemporary history, based on George Rud’s observation that perhaps no historical phenomenon has been so thoroughly neglected by historians as the crowd:
“Unlike the reformist crowd that has quickly emerged through the recent presidential campaign of Mir Hossein Moussavi, the pro Ahmadinejad crowd has a long thirty years history in the making. A once official crowd in service of the
state. Ahmadinejad crowd has been made mostly of those who returned to the street, and the ballot box, after a decade, to launch their own reform against corruption and to renew their support for the regional resistance against the USA and Israel. This invisible crowd, particularly those not working for the security services and government agencies, was asked by the state to stay home throughout the riots to prevent the situation from turning into a civil war.”
The matter is you look at the story from different sides, not just how other people look at it. Now after the election has taken over, Mohammad Javad Jahangir, a Tehran based Iranian artist with background in Islamic studies from the seminary who has worked with Iranian artists Abbas Kiarostami on several projects and with featured works By BBC, Reuters and other international news organizations, decided to share photos of the other side of Iranian society, the invisible part.
The Invisible Crowd photo exhibition is about those who were present during election campaigns and at the ballot boxes, participating some certain demonstrations and the famous Friday prayer, but they’ve not got enough attention from the western media. His “virtual” photo exhibition on Dadabase.ca site borrows its name from a sign that has inspired the work:
“During one of the early pro Ahmadinejad rallies before the vote, Mohammad Javad Jahangir, who was present at the scene, noticed a sign in the crowd that poked fun at the lack of the global media coverage of large pro Ahmadinejad demonstrations. The sign depicted a television containing a still-frame of an empty city street with the CNN logo at the bottom. Underneath the television set read the words ‘We are the invisible crowd for the western media.’” Salemy says.
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Very good post. Neglecting the Flag-Bearing Crowd is what makes many people believe that the official results of presidential election was far from reality.
Mohammad, Thank you for your comment.
Being an Iranian student in Tehran, can’t agree with you more, Shahrzaad. Thanks for your post. We need to educate foreign people about what all Iranian people think, not just Mousavi’s supporters.
LOL, You must be kidding.. You might fool arabs and the idiot left….
There was no need for anyone to demonstrate if the supposed winner had agreed to re-election. If Ahmadinejad was so sure of his supporters coming out in droves to vote for him, why be so afraid of redoing the election?
You madame are insulting our intellligence.
The Mask has fallen from the IRI’s hiddend face and what’s behind it is pretty ugly. The whole world despises you apologist/islamists.
“hahaha”
I wonder what do you think about “the law”. What would happen if every loser demanded a re-election in every election?
What if they lost again? How can we be sure that they wouldn’t cry foul again? Then elections would indefinitely be held until they win!
Nobody is insulting you. You are calling us apologist/islamists, and at the same time playing the role of the ill-treated.
Please be fair, and always try to look at things impartially. Also put yourself at the place of the other side and try to understand their concerns and arguments, instead of blindly blaming them.
Please note that not all of us in the West are not out seeking answers from the source. I’m American, but went to friends all over Iran to get their inputs…everything from how Musavi was talking about a rigged election before they even took place to him possibly having mob connections. I’m not trying to speculate, just know that there are those of us in America who care about Iran and the rest of the world because we chose to educate ourselves outside what we are shown in the media. I figure if after everything so many Iranians and Arabs can be open-minded about America, we should be willing to do the same. My best to you all and this wonderful site. Paiane shabe siah sepid ast.
For people who are unable to educate themselves, it is hard to not believe what they see within the media. I look at the news everyday and see all the bad and wrong in this world. Do I know if it is exaggerated or not? No. That is why our generation needs to have a mind of our own and not be controlled/manipulated by ignorant powermongers who want to enslave our minds and eventually our freedom. Although the election could have been rigged, we may never know.
DO NOT BE CHEATED.
1. Pro Ahmadinezhad protesters are not silent or invisible. They are the same people who are beating, torturing or killing young people on the streets. They are in plain clothes or in uniforms.
2. They are not silent . They do not need to protest. They have the state TV and ALL the free media and all parties closed.
3. Mousavi is not a US puppet. Almost all famous reformist leaders have been the main founders of the Islamic revolution. They started and continued this when Ahmadinezhad was a kid. This is a coup d’etat aganist people.
4. Ahmadinezhad is provdinig the best excuse for external invasion. That is the main concern of Mousavi. His dominanace will lead to war or he will have to give up like what happened in Libia.
5. Iranians reformists are fighting for democracy and independancy, both.
6. For evidence on huge vote rigging see the open legal letter of Mousavi with pages of evidence. Ask Iranians to translate it for you. The evidence is so extensive that there are 3 links to them.
http://ghalamnews.ir/news.aspx?id=21213
http://ghalamnews.ir/news.aspx?id=21217
http://ghalamnews.ir/news.aspx?id=21218
“telto”
You haven’t mentioned that if you add up all that “extensive evidence”, it even doesn’t reach 1m votes, and the results won’t change (the difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad is 11m). The question is not whether cheating happened or not, but whether it was massive and centrally controlled. It’s quite possible and it happens in every election that some overenthusiastic supporters try to rig the votes in favor of their favorite candidate, and this is natural in the hand-operated process which 500000 of regular people are involved as organizers. But these have a very small impact on the overall results (e.g. around 1%), and candidates generally ignored them before, because the riggings weren’t centrally coordinated. But in this election the lost candidate is trying to use these as an evidence of massive fraud, either by mistake or intentionally.
And there are millions of Ahmadinejad supporters who are ordinary people, living their (often difficult) lives, have lower access to education and wealth and often ignored, who hope that Ahmadinejad can bring them what previous presidents haven’t brought them. They are not savages, and many of them condemn the violent crackdown on the protests. But they support Ahmadinejad, he’s their man.
I’m not one of them, but I know many of them. Most of them don’t have access to the Web and to Western media to express themselves. I think they and their votes should be respected as well as Mousavi supporters’ votes. Everyone should respect the election outcome even if it’s against their will.
Dear Hossein,
DO NOT DECEIVE YOURSELF.
You know well that this was a huge organized rigging. Just few months back the Ministry of interior was changed by Ahmadinezhad to be able to conduct the fraudulent poll. First Kordan was appointed but was sacked in weeks by the parliament because he had faked his PhD degree- just Google.
Then he introduced Mahsouli a billionaire revolutionary guard general – they are rapidly increasing in number- who just won parliament’s confidence marginally.
A quote from him is: “What Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] has prohibited is the attitude and demeanor of living in palaces, not [actually] living in palaces itself.”)
It was not an incident that two questionable figures where identified to run the elections as Ministers of interior. Mahsouli changed all staff in charge of elections and brought trusted friends to do a perfect huge rigging.
I agree with Hossein that vote rigging is common in Iran. But people were used to 3-4 millions not to 11 millions. That was why this time the protests erupted.
If you read carefully different areas of the fraud mentioned in Mousavi’s documentation, it is quite understandable where the extra 11 millions came from.
Four years ago, Ahmadinezhad had just to commit a small vote rigging to win because the educated and the students boycotted the elections. But this time they decided to win.
I admit that Ahmadinezhad has more supporters among the less educated but not among the poor. Do not forget that only 35% or Iranians live in rural areas and every family in Iran even the poor have a university student among them. They were able to mobilize the people exactly same as what happened during Khatami. That is why Mousavi really won.
This exhibition is not the proof of a clean election. Mohammad Javad’s work is astonishing in putting faces to a crowd that no one is interested in. These people are real and they need to be factored in the theories of those who claim that the election was rigged. This crowd is as vocal, political and diverse as Moussavi’s crowd.
tellto
To be honest, at first I was suspicious of the results when Mousavi confidently claimed that fraud had happened. I thought that confidence meant that he had some undeniable evidence and I was waiting for him to release his documentation. But when I read that final report which you provided links to it, I was dissapointed and thought “well, after all, it’s natural that a loser claims fraud”. Many of his claims aren’t verifiable and he hasn’t provided the details to help verify the claims. My suspicion of his fraud claims was even reinforced when Ministry of Interior released detailed numbers of more than 40000 polling stations vote counts and Mousavi didn’t even name any polling station whose numbers was inconsistent with his representatives’ numbers. In fact I have heard numerous supervisors and candidates’ reps at polling stations who admit that the released number for their station is consistent with what they witnessed during vote counting. People have pointed at irregularities such as rounded up numbers and zero counts for some candidates, but I have seen these reports and their sum hardly passes 1 million votes.
Many parts of Mousavi’s “documentation of fraud” are speculations of the type you offered in your comment on the Minister of Interior. He even has resorted to protesting Ahmadinejad’s pre-election remarks, especially at the debates (Those could be breaches of law, but this is not “vote rigging”). I think with a detective-like thinking, one can make speculations supporting every kind of conspiracy theory, but they are different from evidence. Mousavi does make some valid arguments, but as I said before, they aren’t indicators of such a massive-scale rigging which could change the results.
Also Mousavi’s claims have been generally answered by Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Guardian Council. If you buy Mousavi’s speculations about fraud, you should also pay attention to election authorities’ explanations to be fair. While they could be lying, I think their clarifications were satisfactory, and to be impartial, it’s not possible to say for sure who’s lying here. If you were a supporter of Mousavi, it’s natural to believe him and disbelieve the authorities’ explanations. But from an impartial point of view, you cannot ignore one side and embrace the other without reason. For example, MOI has explained the reasons that why some Mousavi representatives weren’t allowed into some polling stations and I think they are believable. And despite all the hubbub about how many Mousavi representatives weren’t allowed into polling stations, they were less than 1% of his reps. Mousavi had reps at about 90% of the stations. MOI should be very sophisticated and extraordinarily clever to hide such a massive rigging from Mousavi!
As a final note, you know that hundreds of thousands of people, most of them being voluteers and ordinary people who aren’t employees of MOI, are involved in the election process and are present at the polling stations during voting and counting the votes. If you read the election law of Iran, you see that there are many checks and balances to assure overally healthy results. As I said, some of these people may be malicious and try to rig the votes but the bureaucracy prevents a centrally coordinated rigging. Even if such rigging took place at the MOI central building, it could easily be uncovered by the detailed polling stations results. Remember that releasing these numbers is not mandatory, and MOI has publicly released them for the first time in IRI elections history. If their hands were dirty, they wouldn’t do that!
Dear Hossein,
LET US BE FAIR,
1- Especially in the third part of his report, Mousavi is referring to the detailed MOI data with clear referrences. The rigging is clear.
2- Most members of the guardian council and the Minister of interior himself had clearly referred to their choice before the election. They are senior members of pro-Ahmadi coup who have claimed many times in the past that Ahmadi is selected by the 12th Imam of Shiia.
3- The great majority of what you call the people who observed the election were actually the basij and their families.
4- The final counting and reporting was done in a special room in the MOI where NO BODY from the candidates’ representatives got permission to enter. This is the main place where the most important part of the fraud was “engineered”.
I understand those who love Ahmadinezhad because of his superficial chantings against the west and Israel, and his dishonest shoutings against corruption but in fact he is destroying Iran and is creating a new corrupt elite. He is pro-power and not pro-poor. His MOI is a neaveu-billionaire and his backers in Motalifa party are multibillionnaires and corrupt. A new class is also rising around him among the previously clean revolutionary guards who are enjoyng his favourism and very soon the old corrupts will be replaced with a new generation of “armed billionnaires”.
The Mousavi supporters love their country and their people and hope that people like you would soon join the green movement which is an original move from inside the country.
This would also provide a better future for all Middle East.
About SHAHRZAD !
Dear all,
I understand this is a link to Shahrzad weblog.
Please note that I have already posted 5 comments to that weblog polite and substantiated. But all were deleted. This is pro-Ahmadinezhad democracy !!!
Thanks everybody for your comments. And especial thanks to Hossein who tried to bring some logic to the argument here.
Though, I was not actually discussing whether the election was rigged or not. I was announcing an online photo exhibition which contains very interesting photos of the other side of Iranian society. I especially put it for people who call Ahmadinejad’s supporters as members of especial groups.
Mohammad Javad Jahangir has shown the diversity of Pro Ahmadinejad supporters with his wonderful skills. Just browsing the photos of exhibition, i doubt if a person with an open mind and free will, would again claim that Ahmadinejad supporters are those beating people in the streets!!
In the photos, one can see,men and women; Ordinary citizens with different backgrounds: University Students, Teachers, traiders, rural and urban crowd, young and old, religious and irreligious, all with Iran’s flag as their candidate’s sign.
These photos are good evidence to reject stereotypical claims and there remains less to argue. However, i dont blame people who live aproad, for example sitting in Switzerland and following what biased western Media has to offer them.
They can hardly ever come to a ‘fair’ viewpoint about Iranian society, bcs they do not know its complicacy and diversity very well as much.
There’s nothing in Iran as black and white, as i once discussed with one my dear Baha’i friend, she was so amazed that how much Iranian society has been misunderstood by others, especially Iranian expats.
Anyhow, as i mentioned within the post, the matter is you look at the story from different sides, not just how other people look at it.
Some people ‘like’ to hear what they like and some people like to hear the truth. I am here for the second group.
Tellto:
If you’ve not checked the Photo Exhibition yet -link is available within the text- I’d kindly advice you to check it out.
Since you were so quick to judge me, you easily failed to configure that there’s always different possibilties for an issue.
As for that, I have to educate you about the Wordpress system: There’s an option that puts ‘new’ commentators in moderation untill i login and check them. If you would refresh the page you could see the sentence above your comments “You’re comment’s awaiting moderation”.
Otherwise you check my blog, every time with different IPs. There’s another possibility that comments with ‘fake’ IP or fake email or without the website link, directly go to spam box of blog.
SO, If you were so concern about ‘democracy’ of my blog, instead of pointing finger, you could simply email me from the email page that you can’t see your comments.
As all my dear readers know, I don’t delete comments (if i did, i would delete your comments on MEY as well), but when the comment contains so much stupidity, i apparently put it on trash page for public to judge by own.
So next time, if you dont find your comment, they’re still awaiting moderation or they’ve been moved to trash page.
Dear Shahrzad,
YOU CAN NOT LEGITIMIZE AHMADINEZHAD.
I admire your writing style and your computer skills. You are right, I am naïve in computer, never had a web log and I admit that I do not know how word press works. I hope that in the future I will become even more certain that when I do not find my submitted comments for days it is still under moderation.
Should I believe that the only reason you have written this “invisible people” has been to show that the people supporting Ahmadinezhad are not from the same group and not following the stereotypes people commonly hold. I think you are very bright and it would be an insult to your wisdom if people believe your claim. In my view you desperately but elegantly try to “legitimize” Ahmadinezhad’s presidency which is stolen from Mousavi.
I have no objection that all people supporting Ahmadinezhad are not of the same group. But the great majority are basij members, the revolutionary guards and their families. But there are also the less educated in some rural areas and smaller towns, families of some new billionaires who are enjoying the new shift of power which started four years ago. Thanks to the unfair quota for basij students there are a minority of students who keep spying on the rest of students and obey the orders of their commanders to beat up the students or attend formal ceremonies in the name of 90% of all university students.
I admit that in addition to this, a minority of Ahmadinezhad supporters are the more sophisticated people like you who are better educated and more literate politically.
This means nothing because altogether only 10-30 per cent of all Iranian population support Ahmadinezhad. Among supporters of Hitler, Stalin ,Pinoche and Zionist leaders you can find different types of people as well but interestingly the most committed have always been the armed people or the militia? THINK WHY?
Ahmadinezhad has stolen the election and you are wasting your time bringing back the already gone legitimacy. Just read the latest confession of Raja news-probably one of your favourite websites- which unwantedly confessed that Larijani was one of the first who congratulated Mousavi on his winning the elections, of course before they announced the rigged results:
http://rajanews.com/detail.asp?id=34034
Does my level of “stupidity” now qualify me to go into the trash bin now? Do not hesitate.
Whether I survive your trash bin or not the truth will always be there.