Reform cleric: Give permission for peaceful protest!

Abdollah Nuri

Reformist cleric, Abdollah Nuri proposed that by issuing election protesters legal permission for peaceful demonstrations, the government can weigh the extent of support for MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. According to Mr. Nuri, if the protesters discover that they are “a minority,” they will voluntarily “close shop.”

Advar News reports that Mr. Nuri who spoke in the gathering of a group of reporters at his home said, failing to provide such a permission will produce the “doubt” that the government also believes that the protesters “are the majority and not a minority.”

Former Interior Minister Nuri announced that allowing the gathering of the protesters, could untie the knot without any need for “teeth and hands.”

Since the announcement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory in the tenth presidential elections in Iran, no official permissions have been issued for peaceful demonstrations. Protesters have recently used state approved days of march and demonstration like the Qods Day on September 18 and the coming November 4 day of march to express their protests to the alleged fraud in the June elections.

Mr. Nuri criticized government’s confrontation with election protesters in the past four months and maintained it must be clear to the state that their approach has not given “favourable results.” Therefore, they need to “reconsider” their stance and “apologize” to the public.

He added: “If the state uses all its might to silence protesters, they should realize that they will not recover the trust that they have lost.”

He warned that social pressures will only internalize opinions and beliefs and possibly force things out of their “legal path” and in that case “the government will have to be replaced.”

He also called into question government claims that the “confessions” of detained protesters in the televised mass trials are genuine and said: “It is better that the government realizes that if matters concerning the elections and the current socio-political matters or human science theories or even religion and God were advertised in such a manner, they would become questionable.”
In the post-election events over 4000 people have been arrested which according to official reports, 300 of them still remain in prison.