Over 20,000 fans at Rouhani rally
The 20,000 chanting fans might have come to support Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday but it was clear their real heroes were the ones still locked away by the regime.
“Mousavi! Karroubi! Khatami!” they chanted at deafening volume, over and over, at the election rally in a stadium in western Tehran.
Those first two names, drawing such passion from the crowd, belong to reformist leaders who have not been seen in public for six years now.
Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both candidates in the controversial election of 2009 that triggered months of protests after allegations of rigging, were placed under house arrest in 2011, allowed out only for medical treatment.
The third is Mohammad Khatami, President from 1997 to 2005 and spiritual head of the reformist movement, who is banned from travelling abroad or appearing in any form in the media. An immense roar came from the crowd when their images appeared on the screen.
The Green Movement, as the protests came to be called, were the biggest Iran had seen in three decades of Islamic revolution, driven by anger over the shock re-election of hardline populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Brutally put down, the regime prefers to call it “the sedition” and the green flags being waved by youngsters in the stadium on Saturday night might normally have attracted the attention of police or hardline militias.
But a slightly more permissive atmosphere prevails six days ahead of a presidential election, when the regime is keen to get as high a turnout as possible to buttress its legitimacy. Only six candidates were allowed to run this year by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council.