Furious miners protest president at explosion site
TEHRAN — Angry coal miners besieged a car carrying President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday after he visited the site of a deadly mine explosion, a rare protest targeting the nation’s top elected official as he campaigns for re-election.
Soot-covered miners, enraged over the disaster that killed at least 35 miners Wednesday in Iran’s northern Golestan province, kicked and beat the armored sport utility vehicle carrying Rouhani.
The incident offered an extraordinary sign of very public dissent ahead of Iran’s May 19 presidential poll, a contest largely viewed as a referendum on Rouhani and his nuclear deal with world powers.
Official state media did not immediately report on the incident, first brought to light by videos posted online by the semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies. Both are believed to have links to Iran’s hard-line Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that Rouhani criticized during a televised presidential debate Friday.
Fars went so far as to say on Twitter that state media “had censored pictures” of the protests, without elaborating.
Videos showed one miner atop the SUV carrying Rouhani, a banner in his hand, as another miner jumped up and down and kicked its hood. Others beat the hood and body of the SUV. Rouhani’s vehicle eventually nudges its way through the crowd amid the shouting. Another miner rushes up to kick the back of it as it sped away down.
Hamid Aboutalebi, a political adviser to Rouhani, later tweeted that the provincial governor of Golestan had told him not to let the president travel to the site as the miners were still greatly upset over the disaster.
“President Rouhani told me I am the president in the time of their pain and fervor, if their shouts at me could lead to national peace, I have to go,” Aboutalebi wrote.
Rouhani’s stop by came amid his campaigning for another four-year term as Iran’s elected president, serving under the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say over all state matters.
Rouhani remains the favorite in the election as every Iranian president since Khamenei himself took the presidency in 1981 has won reelection. However, many in the country remain discontent as the benefits of the nuclear deal have yet to trickle down to the average Iranian.