There is some pretty insane shit happening in the middle east right now. Iran held elections for president on Friday, claiming a democratic process. As it turns out, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election. There has been a general outcry of disbelief and many claims of vote tampering. There are reports of rioting, demonstrating, and many reports of abuse, including shots at one demonstration. It seems, however, that there is also a lot of censorship going on as the Iranian government strives to put down the riots and demonstrations while downplaying the whole event to the rest of the world.
Twitter and the internet at large seems to be playing a big part in this, however, as various people in Iran use whatever means possible to get the news out. Twitter in particular is being used to pass around open proxies, usable by those in Iran to get unfiltered access to the Internet at large. Other users are using Twitter as a means to report on the current happenings inside of Iran. Two users I’ve come across are Change For Iran and persiankiwi. Of the two, persiankiwi seems to be the one most up to date at the moment. Change for Iran mentioned going to a rally a few hours ago and that there was a danger in doing so. They have yet to update since then, so I’m a bit concerned about their safety.
From the reports I’ve been hearing, it seems that most of the violence is due to the government forces in the street trying to stop the demonstrations. I’m sure there’s rioting as well, which should be brought to an end, but peaceful demonstrations are being broken up by police in riot gear tossing tear gas and beating citizens with batons. In some situations, the demonstrators are fighting back, in others they are trying to stop the fighting peacefully. Overall, it seems to be a bad situation and I hope some sense of sanity can be restored soon.
For more pictures of the what’s going on, check out The Big Picture.