Iranian opposition leader: Awareness government's Achilles heel

MirHosein Mousavi

Iranian opposition leader says that awareness is the “Achilles heel” of the Islamic Republic establishment and therefore, they “cannot even stand one single weblog free at work.”

In a meeting with pre-Revolution political prisoners, Mousavi slammed the government’s filtering of websites and weblogs and urged the supporters of the Green Movement “to spread social and political awareness as much as they can.”

He maintained that one of the demands of the Green Movement is to fight against corruption and lies and added: “We want to have a proper judiciary that does not engage in oppression. Not one that forces a confession and then executes people based on that.”

He also stressed that the government needs to be transparent about its confrontation with the violators of detainee rights in Iranian prisons.

The former head of the Academy of Fine Arts said that the Green Movement “will not be stopped by bans, arrests, threats and imprisonments” because its “demands have risen from the real needs of human beings." He went on to say that the Green Movement "is a movement for all seasons. It renews itself and manifests itself in various forms.”

The opposition leader said: “Some people think they can run a country by creating an atmosphere of fear, but a country must be run with freedom and justice; not the Evin Prison.”

Referring to the political struggles prior to the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Mousavi said: “There was time when we dreamed that the prisons would be empty and we would celebrate the closure of Evin Prison, but now construction projects are on-going there so that it does not run out of cells.”

Mousavi condemned the repeated arrest of “Muslim students, workers, artists, filmmakers and journalists” and reminded the establishment that Iran’s former regime did not survive despite all its arrests and imprisonments.