Posted by 2courtneyb on September 27, 2009 at 8:54pm
In early summer there was an election in Iran. It was between Muhammad Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi. It had been a very close election and was thought to go to the second round. Muhammad won the election. Mousavi had more supporters and they thought that they gotten cheated out of the election. Most of Muhammad’s supporters were the urban working class and rural poor. Mousavi’s supporters were young and educated. In June after the election Mousavi’s supporters were campaigning by dancing until the sun came up. They handed out campaign brochures. This had never been seen in this country because women are supposed to wear headscarfs and an overcoat. Also the sexes are not allowed to mix unless they are married or related. Rallies for both candidates had tens of thousands of supporters.All of the sudden there were riot police with camouflage uniforms that fired several grenades. These grenades scattered the crowd. All of Mousavi’s supporters finally realized within second that they were stun grenades. The police had fired them to scatter the marchers. Young men started shouting and running forward after the police that had set off the stun grenades. Running up to them was a very brave move, but also a bad idea. There was smoke in the air and two of the motorcycles that belonged to the police lay burning in flames.
The riot police came back on their motorcycles and had more stun grenades. But this time the marchers regrouped and the confrontation continued. There were burning trash bins with riot police swinging batons at bystanders. This continued throughout the night and there was a report of one person that got killed. The disappointment that Mousavi lost quickly turned into anger. Mousavi told is supporters to stay calm, but very few people listened.I think that it was a good thing for Iran to have such a close and emotional election. I also think that you can never really know what the actual outcome was because there is no way to honestly know what the votes were. I think it would have been a very big step for Iran if Mousavi would have won because he is more progressive. Muhammad is more of a Dictator and old school.
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