Attack on Karroubi should be condemned
Members of the Basij-militia are attacking the house of Mehdi Karroubi, according to his son:
A mob ransacked the entrance to the Tehran apartment complex of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi late Thursday, an assault that resulted in an attack on the head of his security detail, his son said.
“Our situation is not good at the moment,” Mohammad Taghi Karrubi, Karrubi’s son, told CNN.
People have demonstrated in front of his house for four straight days, the son said. Demonstrators gathered outside and chanted for the first two days, but late Thursday a mob broke into the building.About 40 to 50 demonstrators returned on Friday. Many, armed with guns and paintball guns, surrounded the house Friday and shouted chants against Karrubi and the opposition movement.
This is not the first time that Karroubi is being attacked by Basiji’s or other gangs linked to the regime. Since the 2009 presidential election in Iran Karroubi has been attacked at least three times. This method of trying to intimidate people is not new in Iran; it is actually a very mild version of the terror that the regime has used against its political dissidents since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
The regime knows that it would not be wise to physically hurt Karroubi to such an extent that his life would be in danger, because he would turn into a symbol for his supporter. The same goes with putting him in prison. So they use this method to, first ridicule him and to portray him as a pathetic figure that is not strong enough to challenge the ruling elite, second to frighten him and anyone else that might think of challenging the regime, and third to show individuals and groups that took part in the demonstrations against the regime after the election that the regime has not forgotten and that they are waiting for the right moment to lash out the appropriate punishment.
Karroubi himself was a supporter of this and other much harder methods when he belonged to the ruling elite, he even had his own prisons, in which dissidents were tortured and even killed, according to different sources. But this does not mean that we should not condemn these attacks on Karroubi, even though he has to some degree represented much of the violence used against political activists in the past. True democrats will condemn these attacks and struggle harder so that no one, even people who has innocent peoples blood on their hands, will be subjected to this kind of violence.







